Campari Group has agreed to sell Cabo Wabo Tequila, the brand Sammy Hagar built out of his Cabo San Lucas cantina and sold to the Italian spirits company for $80 million in 2007, to Dublin based Cobblestone Brands.
Campari disclosed the deal on July 29, 2026, alongside its first half earnings, pairing Cabo Wabo with the 1819 cognac house Bisquit and Dubouché in a single divestment. The announcement landed the same season a Celebrity Net Worth feature recirculated Hagar's long standing account of how he named the brand: after watching an intoxicated local stumble into a barbed wire fence outside a Cabo San Lucas taco stand.
Where the name Cabo Wabo came from
Hagar has told the same story in interviews for decades, including to 7x7 magazine: driving to his favorite taco stand one Sunday morning, he watched a drunk man weave into a barbed wire fence, shirt torn, and told a friend the man was doing the cabo wabo. The phrase became the title of a 1988 Van Halen song, then the name of the cantina Hagar opened in Cabo San Lucas in 1990, and eventually the tequila brand itself.
How a cantina's house pour became a national brand
Hagar first fell for 100 percent agave tequila on a furniture shopping trip to the town of Tequila, Jalisco, according to VinePair. For his cantina he later commissioned a house tequila from Juan Eduardo Nuñez, a third generation distiller at the family run Tequila El Viejito in the Jalisco highlands, and began packaging it under the Cabo Wabo name around 1996. A Napa Valley importer, Wilson-Daniels, began bringing it into the United States in 1999. Sales climbed from roughly 37,000 cases in that first year to about 140,000 cases annually by 2006, making Cabo Wabo the second best selling premium tequila brand in the country, according to Wikipedia's sourcing of the period and a Celebrity Net Worth account of the brand's growth.
What Campari actually paid, in two parts
Campari's own investor materials from May 2007 confirm the headline figure: the company agreed to pay $80 million for an 80 percent interest in Cabo Wabo Tequila, a price equal to 11.8 times the brand's expected 2007 earnings. The deal closed in early 2008. Campari exercised its option on the remaining 20 percent in 2010, paying $11 million plus a $4 million earn out, according to Van Halen News Desk's reporting at the time. Tallied across both transactions, Hagar's take is most often put at $94 million to $95 million, a figure some outlets round up to $100 million. The Cabo Wabo Cantina restaurants and nightclubs, including the flagship in Cabo San Lucas, were never part of the tequila sale and remain under Hagar's ownership.
Why Campari is selling now
Campari CEO Simon Hunt framed the Cabo Wabo and Bisquit and Dubouché disposals as part of a strategy of what he called fewer bigger bets, including the shedding of non priority brands, in comments tied to the company's July 2026 half year results. The sale follows other recent Campari exits, including Cinzano to Caffo Group and the Averna and Zedda Piras liqueurs to Illva Saronno. Terms of the Cobblestone deal were not disclosed, and the transaction is expected to close by October 31, 2026. It covers intellectual property and finished goods inventory for both brands, along with a transitional manufacturing agreement that keeps Cabo Wabo's current production in place for now. Cobblestone CEO Brian Fagan said the brand carries authenticity and consumer loyalty that most brands never achieve, while Campari confirmed Cabo Wabo is currently distributed across more than 20 US states and still produced at Destiladora San Nicolas, NOM 1440, in the Jalisco highlands, the same facility that makes Campari's Espolòn line.
What this means
Hagar has no financial stake in this transaction; his tequila attention has been on Santo Spirits, the brand he built with Guy Fieri after his Campari non compete lapsed. Neither Cabo Wabo nor Santo appears in Tequila Watch's scored database, so there is no house score to attach to this story. What remains unverified is whether Cobblestone changes anything about how or where Cabo Wabo is made once the deal closes in October.