Sazerac Isn’t Finished Shopping Yet
Spirits / M&A
Sazerac Isn’t Finished Shopping Yet
Eleven days after completing its Au Vodka deal, Sazerac signed a binding agreement to buy Berentzen, one of Germany’s oldest spirits companies, at a 68% premium. That is five acquisitions and two stakes this year, plus a rejected $15 billion approach for Jack Daniel’s. Somebody in Louisiana has decided this is the moment to buy everything.
By Vim, Editor of 12×75
In brief
- On September 21, 2026 Sazerac signed a legally binding business combination agreement to acquire Berentzen-Gruppe AG, confirming a Bloomberg report from five days earlier.
- The offer is €5.55 per share in cash, about a 68% premium to Berentzen’s three-month weighted average price before September 16. Sazerac intends to delist the company from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
- Berentzen is more than 250 years old, operates in over 60 countries, and owns Berentzen schnapps and Apfelkorn, Puschkin vodka and a portfolio of non-alcoholic drinks and juices.
- It follows Au Vodka (completed September 14, reportedly over £300m), Garrard County Distilling, Dirty Shirley, and stakes in 818 Tequila and SipMargs. Sazerac’s roughly $15bn approach for Brown-Forman was rejected.
- The deal is subject to shareholder approval and expected to close at the end of the year.
Ten days ago I wrote about Sazerac completing its purchase of Au Vodka, the Swansea brand two school friends built into a £300 million business, and noted in passing that the company was on a buying spree. That now reads as an understatement.
On Tuesday, Sazerac signed a binding agreement to take over Berentzen-Gruppe, a 250-year-old German spirits company listed in Frankfurt, at a price 68% above where the shares had been trading. Bloomberg had reported talks five days earlier and the company confirmed them. In the same year it has bought a Welsh vodka brand, a Kentucky distillery group and an RTD brand, taken stakes in two others, and had a roughly $15 billion approach for the owner of Jack Daniel’s turned down.
The deal
Sazerac and Berentzen
AnnouncedSeptember 21, 2026, confirming a Bloomberg report of September 16
StructureLegally binding business combination agreement, followed by a voluntary public takeover offer
Price€5.55 per share in cash, about $6.31
PremiumAbout 68% over the three-month weighted average price before September 16
Next stepsSubject to shareholder approval; expected to close at the end of 2026
ListingSazerac intends to delist Berentzen from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, which the Berentzen board supports
TargetBerentzen-Gruppe AG, founded more than 250 years ago, active in more than 60 countries
BrandsBerentzen schnapps and Apfelkorn, Puschkin vodka, plus non-alcoholic beverages and juice brands
SitesSazerac says it will continue operating existing sites and invest in them
Sources: BeverageDaily, Food Dive, Brewbound.
A 68% premium is the number to sit with. Companies do not pay that for a business they intend to run as it is. Sazerac chief executive Jake Wenz was explicit about what he is actually buying: the ability to “manufacture and distribute spirits products for the whole of Europe and beyond with greater flexibility and pace, including brands from the Berentzen Group, Sazerac as well as private-label ranges.”
Read that again. Sazerac is not buying schnapps. It is buying a European factory, a European sales force and a European route to market, and Apfelkorn comes with it.
That is the whole logic. Sazerac is an enormous American company with more than 500 brands and a comparatively thin European operation. Building that from scratch takes a decade. Buying a 250-year-old German producer with plants, distribution in 60 countries and spare manufacturing capacity takes one press release and a premium. Berentzen’s executive board members, Oliver Schwegmann and Ralf Bruehoefner, called it an outstanding opportunity, which from a board recommending a 68% premium is not a surprising position.
What Sazerac has bought this year
A year of acquisitions
2026Dirty Shirley, the RTD brand, acquired.
2026Stakes taken in 818 Tequila, Kendall Jenner’s brand, and in SipMargs, founded by Alix Earle.
2026Garrard County Distilling: a group of Kentucky whiskey facilities.
Aug 2026Unsolicited approach for Brown-Forman at $32 a share, valuing the owner of Jack Daniel’s at about $15 billion. Rejected.
Sep 14Completes the acquisition of Au Vodka, reported at more than £300 million.
Sep 21Signs a binding agreement to acquire Berentzen-Gruppe.
Put together, the pattern is not random. Three things are being bought at once: youth, through Au Vodka, Dirty Shirley, 818 and SipMargs, all of which sell to drinkers under 35; production, through Garrard County and now Berentzen’s German plants; and geography, with Europe the obvious gap in a portfolio built in America.
The Brown-Forman approach is the outlier and the most revealing item on the list. Sazerac tried to buy Jack Daniel’s, was told no, and within six weeks had spent serious money on two international businesses instead. That is a company with capital and a thesis, executing the thesis by other means.
Why buy anything in a market this bad?
This is the part that makes Sazerac interesting rather than merely acquisitive. It is buying into the worst conditions the drinks industry has seen in twenty years.
Global alcohol volumes fell for a third straight year in 2025. Brown-Forman’s tequila dropped 12% in a quarter. Wine is in a structural decline severe enough that historic wineries are filing for bankruptcy. The only category growing is ready-to-drink, which passed a billion cases last year and which happens to be exactly where Sazerac has been spending.
Downturns are when the disciplined buy, because assets are cheap and sellers are motivated. Sazerac is privately held by the Goldring family, which means it can make ten-year decisions without explaining them to shareholders every quarter, and that is an enormous structural advantage over Diageo and Pernod Ricard right now, both of which are managing falling numbers in public. Buying a European manufacturing base during a downturn, at a moment when tariffs have made shipping American spirits into Europe expensive and unpredictable, is not opportunism. It is a hedge.
The tariff angle nobody is stating outright. A company that makes its spirits in Kentucky and Louisiana and sells them into Europe is exposed to every trade dispute between Washington and Brussels. A company that also owns plants in Germany is considerably less so. In a year that has produced whiskey tariff turmoil in both directions, owning production on both sides of the Atlantic looks less like empire-building and more like insurance.
What happens to Apfelkorn?
For most British and American readers, Berentzen means one thing: Apfelkorn, the apple schnapps that has been decorating student kitchens and continental ski bars since the 1970s. It is a genuinely significant brand in Germany and a minor curiosity elsewhere, and the obvious question is whether Sazerac intends to do anything with it.
The evidence says probably yes, because that is what Sazerac does. This is the company that took Fireball, a cinnamon whisky nobody took seriously, and turned it into one of the biggest spirits brands in America by understanding exactly which occasion it belonged to. It did something similar with BuzzBallz. A sweet, flavoured, low-intensity liqueur with heritage and an existing following is precisely the kind of asset that portfolio knows how to grow, and flavoured spirits are one of the few bright spots in a flat market.
Puschkin vodka is the other piece worth watching. Sazerac already owns Svedka, and now, with Au Vodka and Puschkin, it has three vodka brands at three different price points in three different markets. That is either a coherent portfolio or the beginnings of a tidy-up, and the next twelve months will tell you which.
The non-alcoholic and juice brands are the quiet part. Berentzen also makes soft drinks and juices, a category Sazerac has not historically played in, and in a year when functional and no-alcohol drinks are among the only growth stories in beverages, those may turn out to be worth more than the schnapps.
The bigger picture
There is a version of the current drinks market in which everybody retrenches, cuts marketing, closes plants and waits for demand to come back. Diageo is restructuring around cans, Brown-Forman is cutting, and the Scotch industry is sitting on more stock than it can sell.
Sazerac is doing the opposite, in public, at premiums, with its own money. Whether that is visionary or expensive will not be clear for five years. What is already clear is that the company has decided the downturn is a buying window rather than a crisis, and that it intends to come out of it substantially larger and considerably more European than it went in.
And it has not stopped. A company that makes an unsolicited $15 billion approach for Jack Daniel’s, gets refused, and then closes two international deals in a fortnight is not a company that has finished shopping. The question is no longer whether Sazerac buys something else this year. It is what, and from whom.
Everyone else in drinks is cutting. Sazerac is buying. One of those strategies is going to look very clever in 2031.
Quick answers
Who is buying Berentzen?
Sazerac, the privately held American spirits company owned by the Goldring family, which also owns Buffalo Trace, Fireball, Southern Comfort, Svedka, BuzzBallz, Myers’s Rum, Paddy’s Irish Whiskey and Paul John Single Malt, among more than 500 brands.
How much is Sazerac paying for Berentzen?
€5.55 per share in cash, about a 68% premium to the three-month weighted average price before September 16, 2026. The total value depends on acceptance of the takeover offer.
What brands does Berentzen own?
Berentzen schnapps and Apfelkorn, Puschkin vodka, and a range of non-alcoholic beverages and juices. The company is more than 250 years old and operates in over 60 countries.
When will the deal close?
It is subject to shareholder approval and expected to complete at the end of 2026, after which Sazerac intends to delist Berentzen from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
What else has Sazerac bought in 2026?
Au Vodka, completed September 14 and reported at more than £300 million; Garrard County Distilling in Kentucky; the RTD brand Dirty Shirley; and stakes in 818 Tequila and SipMargs. Its roughly $15 billion approach for Brown-Forman was rejected.
Did Sazerac try to buy Jack Daniel’s?
It made an unsolicited offer for Brown-Forman, Jack Daniel’s parent company, at $32 per share, valuing it at about $15 billion. The bid was rejected.
Sources
- Bloomberg: Sazerac in talks to buy German schnapps maker Berentzen, September 16, 2026
- BeverageDaily: Sazerac continues acquisition drive with takeover deal for Berentzen, including the Jake Wenz quote
- Food Dive: deal terms, premium and Sazerac’s 2026 acquisition record
- Brewbound: Sazerac pushes to acquire Berentzen
- BevNET: after the Brown-Forman snub, Sazerac in talks with a European beverage group
Deal terms are as announced and remain subject to shareholder approval and regulatory processes. The Au Vodka price is a reported figure; Sazerac did not disclose terms. Correct as of September 25, 2026. Please drink responsibly.
