Brown-Forman Results | Tequila Down 12%, Cans Up 20%

Every so often a company’s quarterly results say something the whole industry has been trying not to say out loud. Brown-Forman, the Louisville giant behind Jack Daniel’s, Woodford Reserve, Herradura and el Jimador, reported its first quarter last week, and the headline was dull: net sales down 1% to $911 million. The detail underneath was not. Its tequila portfolio fell 12%. Its ready-to-drink portfolio, the cans, rose 20%. And the single biggest engine of that growth, a brand called New Mix that soared 48%, is a tequila drink. Read that again. Brown-Forman’s tequila fell by an eighth, and its tequila-in-a-can rose by half, in the same three months, in the same company. Nobody stopped wanting tequila. They stopped wanting the bottle.

I’ve been writing about this shift for a while, from the $3.8 billion can problem to what RTDs even are, and I’ve occasionally wondered whether I was overstating it. This quarter settles that. Here are the numbers, why they matter more than the usual results-day noise, and what they mean if you make, sell or simply drink the stuff.

For the quarter to 31 July 2026, net sales were $911 million, down 1%, and operating income fell 3% to $252 million. Whiskey, the vast majority of the business, was flat: Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey flat, Tennessee Honey and Gentleman Jack down, the international rollout of Tennessee Blackberry propping things up. Tequila fell 12% (13% organically), with Herradura down 17% on lower US volumes and weaker pricing in Mexico, and el Jimador down 10% on lower US pricing. And ready-to-drink rose 20% (11% organically), driven by New Mix, up 48%, on demand in Mexico, currency and its launch in the United States. The Jack Daniel’s cans, by contrast, have been softer, down 5% over the last full year, partly because Canada pulled American products from most of its shelves. The company’s own framing, from CEO Lawson Whiting, was that RTD momentum “helped offset pressures elsewhere in the business.” That is a polite way of saying the cans are carrying the quarter.

It isn’t a one-quarter blip either. Over the full fiscal year to April 2026, RTDs grew 11% while tequila fell 4%, and New Mix grew 41%. The direction has been the same for two years; this quarter just made it impossible to ignore. Two other things from the results worth knowing: Brown-Forman rejected an unsolicited takeover approach from Sazerac in July, and Whiting is retiring. A company facing a hostile bid and a leadership change, with its second-largest category growing 20% and its glamour category shrinking 12%, is a company that knows exactly which way its future points.

Here’s the bit that makes this more than a results story. New Mix is not a vodka soda or a hard seltzer. It’s a tequila cocktail, essentially a Paloma in a can, tequila and grapefruit soda, and it has been the best-selling RTD in Mexico for years. Brown-Forman launched it in the United States last November. So in the same quarter that Americans bought 17% less Herradura, they bought a lot more tequila, provided it came pre-mixed, cold, in a can, at a fraction of the price. The demand for the spirit didn’t vanish. It changed shape. That’s the whole thesis of canned cocktails versus hard seltzer playing out on a corporate balance sheet: the growth in RTDs isn’t coming from people who never drank spirits, it’s coming from people who used to buy the bottle.

And it’s not just Brown-Forman. Across the industry the same spirit is losing in the bottle and winning in the can. IWSR’s US data for 2025 shows spirits volumes down 4% while spirits-based RTDs grew 14%. DISCUS puts US premixed cocktails at $3.8 billion, up 16.4%, in a year the spirits industry overall shrank 2.2% and tequila and mezcal fell 4.1%. WSWA’s SipSource found that in the first quarter of 2026 spirits-based RTDs jumped 30% in dollars to make up 28% of all spirits volume sold in shops. And in June, IWSR reported that RTDs had overtaken vodka in global value. The category Brown-Forman calls its second-largest is now the second-largest in the world, behind whisky.

It’s no accident that tequila is the category taking the hit. For a decade tequila was the premiumisation story: every celebrity launched one, prices climbed, and the industry sold the idea that drinkers would keep trading up forever. I wrote last year that celebrity tequila was running out of celebrities, and the numbers now agree. When money gets tight and drinking gets more occasional, the $50 bottle of reposado is the first thing to go, and a $3 can that tastes of tequila and grapefruit is the first thing to replace it. Herradura’s 17% fall and New Mix’s 48% rise are the same consumer making the same decision: I still want this flavor, I just don’t want to pay for the bottle, the mixer and the evening. It’s the exact pattern I’ve seen in whisky, where Scotland made too much of the expensive stuff and the affordable end is what still moves. If you want tequila the old way, the best tequilas are still there, and worth checking for additives; the market has simply decided most people don’t.

The occasion changed. Drinking is less frequent and more deliberate now, as I laid out in how Gen Z actually drinks and the death of the six-pint night, and a single sealed serving suits a single deliberate drink far better than a 750ml bottle that implies a habit. The price changed. A can is an impulse purchase; a premium bottle is a decision. The work changed. The can does the mixing, which is exactly why the best canned cocktails have started competing with bars rather than seltzers. The label changed. Cans put the ABV and the calories on the front, which a generation trained by hard seltzer now expects; if you want to see how much that matters, the calories and standard-drink maths behind a can are more transparent than for almost any bottle. None of these is a fad. All four are structural, which is why the growth has survived two years of a shrinking alcohol market.

For the big houses

The playbook is now obvious and every major is following it: take the spirit you already own and put it in a can. Brown-Forman did it with Jack Daniel’s and Coca-Cola, then New Mix; Diageo, Pernod, Bacardi and Beam are all doing versions of the same. The risk is cannibalisation, and this quarter is the first clear evidence it’s real: the can isn’t only recruiting new drinkers, it’s taking some of the bottle’s. For a company whose margins live in the bottle, that’s an uncomfortable trade even when the top line grows. Expect more sports-drink vodkas, more spheres, more canned Espresso Martinis, and, crucially, more premium spirits brands quietly putting their own name on a 12oz can.

For the bottle shop and the bar

Fridge space is the new shelf space. The hard seltzer wall is being replaced by a spirits-based one, and a retailer that still treats RTDs as a summer novelty is fighting the numbers. Bars have a different problem: when a $4 can gets within striking distance of a $16 cocktail, the mediocre cocktail has nowhere to hide, which is the uncomfortable conclusion of my blind tasting.

For the drinker

You’re winning, mostly. Competition among 750-plus can brands means the good ones have got very good, and the tequila in a well-made can is real tequila. The only thing to keep straight is the thing the marketing blurs: read the base and the ABV on the back, because as I keep saying in what’s actually inside a canned cocktail, a can that says Paloma and a can that contains tequila are not automatically the same object. New Mix, to its credit, is the real thing. Plenty of its imitators won’t be.

What were Brown-Forman’s latest results?

For Q1 fiscal 2027 (quarter to 31 July 2026), net sales were $911 million, down 1%. Ready-to-drink sales rose 20% (11% organic), led by New Mix up 48%; tequila fell 12%, with Herradura down 17% and el Jimador down 10%; whiskey was flat.

What is New Mix?

Brown-Forman’s tequila-based ready-to-drink cocktail, a Paloma-style mix of tequila and grapefruit soda that is the best-selling RTD in Mexico. It launched in the United States in November 2025 and grew 48% in the latest quarter.

Why did Brown-Forman’s tequila sales fall?

Lower volumes and weaker pricing in the US, plus lower pricing in Mexico, in a tequila category that has become intensely competitive after a decade of premiumisation. Consumers are trading the premium bottle for cheaper, more convenient formats, including tequila RTDs.

Are RTDs really growing while spirits shrink?

Yes. IWSR data shows US spirits volumes fell 4% in 2025 while spirits-based RTDs grew 14%; DISCUS puts US premixed cocktails at $3.8 billion, up 16.4%; and in Q1 2026 spirits-based RTDs were 28% of US off-premise spirits volume, per WSWA. Globally, RTDs overtook vodka in value in 2026.

Is Brown-Forman being taken over?

In July 2026 it rejected an unsolicited proposal from Sazerac. CEO Lawson Whiting has also announced his retirement. No deal has been agreed.

BY VIM, EDITOR OF 12×75. Figures from Brown-Forman’s Q1 fiscal 2027 results (quarter to 31 July 2026, reported 3 September 2026), IWSR, DISCUS and WSWA, correct as of 7 September 2026. Nothing here is investment advice. Please drink responsibly.