Campari Group said on 29 July 2026, alongside its first half results, that it had agreed to sell Cabo Wabo tequila and Bisquit & Dubouche cognac to Cobblestone Brands, a Dublin based premium spirits company. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Campari told investors that two pending disposals within its portfolio streamlining programme carried an estimated combined value of about 30 million euros, roughly 34.5 million dollars, without breaking out a price for Cabo Wabo on its own. The Spirits Business reported the Cobblestone deal is expected to close by 31 October 2026.
The comparison with what Campari paid is instructive. In May 2007 the group agreed to buy 80 percent of Cabo Wabo for 80 million dollars, and it acquired the remaining stake in 2010. Sammy Hagar, the former Van Halen singer who founded the brand in 1996, was reported at the time to have taken about 94 million dollars in total across both stages. Nineteen years after the first payment, the brand is leaving the portfolio inside a pair of disposals whose disclosed aggregate value is a fraction of that original outlay. Campari described the programme to investors as a strategy of fewer, bigger bets.
The arithmetic that made celebrity tequila work has changed
The peak of that arithmetic was 2017. Diageo agreed to buy Casamigos, founded four years earlier by Rande Gerber, George Clooney and Mike Meldman, for 700 million dollars in initial consideration plus up to 300 million dollars through a performance linked earn out running over ten years. The headline figure, up to one billion dollars, was underwritten by an assumption of compounding volume: a brand growing fast enough that the earn out would pay for itself.
That assumption has stopped holding. In the 2026 edition of Drinks International's Millionaires' Club, which tracks brands selling more than a million nine litre cases a year, Casamigos fell 20.2 percent to 1.9 million cases, its weakest showing since it entered the ranking in 2020. Diageo has reported a double digit decline for tequila in the United States. The category around it is softer too. The Distilled Spirits Council put United States supplier revenue for tequila and mezcal down 4.1 percent in 2025 to 6.4 billion dollars, and NielsenIQ measured tequila off 4.3 percent across the 52 weeks to 11 July 2026.
Fame is not what separates the winners from the losers
The 2026 ranking is not a uniform decline. Jose Cuervo, still the largest brand in it, slipped 3.9 percent to 7.3 million cases. Don Julio rose 2 percent to 4.5 million. 1800 fell 3.4 percent to 2.8 million, Patron 3.6 percent to 2.7 million and Hornitos 5.6 percent to 1.7 million. The standout was Heaven Hill's Lunazul, up 35.3 percent to 2.3 million cases, a value priced brand with no celebrity attached to it at all.
Campari's own agave business tells the same story from the inside. House of Agave, about a tenth of group sales, grew 6.9 percent in the first half of 2026, led by Espolon at 8.2 percent. Campari told investors Espolon had been placed on more than 7,000 menus, double its original target. Espolon is a bartender route brand built on price position and on premise placement, and it is growing in the same market where Casamigos is contracting by a fifth. The variable that predicts performance in this ranking is not fame. It is price tier and distribution.
What a celebrity brand is worth once the novelty is priced in
The useful way to read the cycle is that a celebrity is a customer acquisition channel with a decay curve, not a moat. It buys trial cheaply and quickly. It does not buy the second bottle, which is decided by the liquid, the price and whether the brand is still on the shelf when the consumer comes back. Once acquisition slows, the asset reverts to whatever its distribution and margin are worth. That is roughly the position Cabo Wabo occupies now: a brand approaching its thirtieth year, with an established following across more than twenty United States markets, being valued as a distribution asset rather than as a story.
That does not mean the format is finished, only that the terms have hardened. Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul brought their Dos Hombres brand into tequila in 2026 after six years in mezcal, and did it by naming their distillery and their maestro tequilero rather than leading with themselves. Whether that version of the model holds up is a live test rather than a settled question. Tequila Watch has no commercial relationship with any brand named here, sells nothing, and scores bottles blind.
What we are watching
Five checkable items over the next two quarters. First, whether the Cobblestone transaction closes by 31 October 2026 as scheduled, and whether Campari's full year statement discloses a brand level price for Cabo Wabo. Second, what happens to Cabo Wabo depletions in the United States once the brand leaves Campari's distribution network. Third, whether Casamigos decelerates in the 2027 Millionaires' Club or repeats a double digit decline. Fourth, whether Diageo's next United States tequila disclosure shows the decline narrowing. Fifth, whether any celebrity backed tequila launched since 2024 reaches the one million case threshold that gets a brand into the ranking at all.