Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton's non-alcoholic blue agave spirit, Almave, makes its Southeast Asian debut in October 2026 at Singapore's Marina Bay Sands, timed to the Singapore Grand Prix weekend.
Marina Bay Sands announced the tie-up alongside Hamilton's apparel label +44, making the integrated resort the drink's exclusive outlet in Singapore for a year and pairing agave-based mocktails with a streetwear pop-up during race week.
What Almave is, and why it isn't tequila
Almave is distilled from blue agave grown in the Jalisco highlands, the same region and raw material used for tequila, and runs through copper stills using methods adapted from traditional distillation. The brand's own materials note that the agave piñas are harvested, cooked and crushed in Los Altos, but the process deliberately skips the step where sugars convert to alcohol through fermentation. Because Mexican law reserves the word tequila for a protected denomination of origin tied to that fermentation and distillation process and enforced by the Consejo Regulador del Tequila, Almave is marketed as a blue agave spirit rather than tequila. The range now spans three labels: Blanco, built for mixing, and Ámbar, built for sipping, were the original two expressions at launch, and a third, Humo, arrived in August 2025 as a smoky alternative modeled on mezcal rather than tequila, using Espadín agave harvested near the Popocatépetl volcano in Puebla and pit-roasted in a traditional oven before distillation.
Who owns Almave
Almave launched in Los Angeles on October 25, 2023, unveiled by Hamilton alongside Iván Saldaña, the co-founder and master distiller of Mexican spirits company Casa Lumbre. The brand's founding group also included the advisory and investment firm Copper. Less than a year later, on August 29, 2024, Pernod Ricard acquired a minority stake in Almave; the financial terms were not disclosed. The deal marked the fourth time Pernod Ricard had partnered with Casa Lumbre, following earlier investments in the spirit Ojo de Tigre, the Mexican whisky Abasolo, and Nocheluna Sotol, a project Saldaña developed with musician Lenny Kravitz. At the time of the launch, the two-strong Blanco and Ámbar range retailed for $39.99 per 700ml bottle in the United States; Humo, added a year later, launched at $36.99 for the same size.
The Singapore rollout
Marina Bay Sands said the collaboration, confirmed September 21, 2026, brings Almave and +44 to Southeast Asia for the first time, built around Singapore's race week from October 8 to 15. A cocktail called The Lewis, co-created with Hamilton, runs at Bread Street Kitchen, LAVO, Mott 32, WAKUDA Singapore and Yardbird Southern Table and Bar during that window, with a wider Almave Circuit of drinks also poured at Spago and Paiza Sky Residence. Bottles go on sale at The Gift Shop in Hotel Tower 2 over the same eight days. From October 16, 2026 through September 2027, the cocktail continues at an expanded list of Marina Bay Sands restaurants and bars, including CUT by Wolfgang Puck and estiatorio Milos, under the resort's Zero Edit alcohol-free programme. Hamilton, 41, told the Straits Times that Marina Bay Sands is a stop he tries to make when visiting Singapore for food or shopping, and in a separate statement said he was grateful for the platform to bring his brands to the region. Irene Lin, the resort's senior vice president and chief marketing officer of resort marketing, said Hamilton's influence extends beyond racing and called the partnership a way to bring fashion, culture and lifestyle experiences together for guests.
What this means
Almave sits outside Tequila Watch's tequila database because it is not tequila under Mexican law, so it carries no TW Score and none applies here. The Singapore push lands as both agave spirits and non-alcoholic alternatives have expanded rapidly worldwide, giving Pernod Ricard an incentive to test a zero-proof brand in a market it has not reached before; what remains unverified is how Almave's sales in the region will actually perform once the exclusivity period at Marina Bay Sands ends.