The North American wing of the company owns Maker's Mark, Knob Creek, Booker's, Basil Hayden's, Canadian Club and more. By volume, the company is the third largest distiller in the world (behind Diageo and Pernod Ricard). Beam-Suntory itself is a holding of a Japanese company called Suntory Beverage & Food Ltd., which is, of course, a subsidiary within Suntory Holdings. Starting in 1989 with a handful of former Seagram's Distillery products (one of which eventually became Fireball, one of the best-selling booze SKUs of the 21st century), Sazerac has bought up, rebranded, repositioned or remade brands into superior versions of their past selves.īeam-Suntory is an American company that makes scotch whisky, bourbon whiskey, rye whiskey, Japanese whisky, Irish whiskey, Canadian whisky and even Spanish whisky. Smith Bowman Distillery) are all near-household names is a testament to Sazerac's deftness in the art of the acquisition. The fact that the bourbons made there (and elsewhere in the Sazerac portfolio, like at the Barton 1792 Distillery and A. Stagg Distillery and has become home to what is likely the most robust lineup of premium bourbon in the world. The Frankfort, Kentucky distillery was previously called the George T. Its whiskey holdings aren't limited to high-profile, high-price whiskeys, though the company owns Fireball and Southern Comfort, too.įor most whiskey drinkers, it's Buffalo Trace Distillery and the products made under its flag that demand the most respect. Its asset sheet is a who's-who of whiskey mania - Buffalo Trace, Weller, Blanton's, Pappy (technically a joint venture between the Van Winkle family and Buffalo Trace Distillery) and on and on. For comprehensive lists, visit each company's brand page.)įormally founded in 19th century by a French businessman in New Orleans, Sazerac is one of the largest privately owned spirits businesses in the world. (Note: not every whiskey brand is represented in the images for each respective parent organization. These are the parent companies of the brands who hold court in the modern whiskey world.
That said, to better understand who's making what whiskey and how it's all related, one must know who owns who. In the aggregate, this is excellent for whiskey drinkers. To different degrees, this is how Jim Beam, Heaven Hill, Jack Daniel's, Four Roses, Buffalo Trace and the rest bring about consistency, incremental quality improvements and experimentation. The modern macro-whiskey production site is an array of measuring instruments and gauges with computers monitoring everything. Instead, they use their billions in capital smartly. For the vast majority of America's favorite whiskey labels, the image of a gruff whiskey man toiling away in a rickhouse, building the perfect whiskey, is, in 2021, high fantasy. This doesn't mean brands don't have histories of their own, of course, or that those highly marketable histories aren't based in truth, but it does provide some perspective. Despite the folksy stories behind so many whiskey brands, many are run by companies with market caps approaching $100 billion.