Campari Group has launched Ride the Rooster, a global marketing campaign for its Espolòn Tequila brand built around a direct critique of exclusivity in premium spirits marketing, according to a statement reported by Global Drinks Intel in late August 2026.
The campaign will debut in the United States before rolling out to Australia, Canada, Italy and Mexico, and centers on four video advertisements featuring the brand's label characters, the rooster Ramón and the skeleton Guadalupe.
What the campaign actually says
Campari Group described the effort as a marketing platform that calls out the culture of exclusivity in premium spirits. Explaining the rationale, the company said that traditional notions of premium have become increasingly defined by curation and access, and argued that consumers are seeking something more real and connected. Digital banners built around the platform carry lines including a jab at celebrity endorsement deals and a claim of zero ego to pair with the tequila's 100 percent agave content.
Andrea Sengara, managing director of Campari Group's House of Agave division, was quoted saying that too much of today's culture is built around exclusivity and that Espolòn has always stood for bringing people together. Sengara framed the platform as a belief that premium doesn't have to mean exclusive, and that it should instead be authentic, welcoming and full of character.
Who owns Espolòn and where it is made
Espolòn is produced by Destiladora San Nicolas, a distillery in the Los Altos highlands of Jalisco carrying NOM 1440. Founder Cirilo Oropeza established the Casa San Nicolas distillery in 1995, with the Espolòn brand introduced in 1998. Campari Group purchased the brand and distillery in 2009, and Oropeza remained master distiller until his death in October 2020.
The brand now sits inside Campari's House of Agave division. In the company's first-quarter 2026 results, that division, which the company said represents 9.4 percent of group revenue, grew 4.9 percent, with Espolòn's blanco expression cited for strength in the US and double-digit growth in Australia.
How this follows Campari's prior Espolòn campaigns
Ride the Rooster is not Espolòn's first attempt at a coordinated global push. In June 2024, the brand launched To the Bone, described at the time as its first-ever global campaign, produced with creative agency forceMAJEURE and director and photographer Lou Escobar, timed to the 25th anniversary of Espolòn Tequila Blanco and rolled out to Australia, Canada, Italy, the US and other markets. Campari Group cited IWSR Drinks Market Analysis data at that time to describe Espolòn as one of the top three premium tequilas in the world, and pointed to first-quarter 2024 sales that had jumped 13.2 percent in value terms year over year, the fastest growth rate in the company's portfolio that quarter.
What this means
Ride the Rooster reads as brand positioning rather than a claim about what is in the bottle, and nothing in the reporting here speaks to liquid quality or purity. For context, Tequila Watch's blind tasting panel has scored Espolòn Blanco 86 and awarded it the Verified Pure mark, meaning the panel's own assessment found no evidence of additives at the tasting table. What remains unverified is Campari's underlying premise: whether exclusivity marketing is actually losing ground with tequila buyers, or whether that is simply the story Espolòn needs to tell as a mass-market brand competing against smaller, allocation-driven labels.