Campari Group has added craft spirits brand Wilderness Trail to its American whiskey presence through a majority-holding purchase in the brand’s Kentucky-based namesake owner.
The acquisition of 70% of Wilderness Trail Distillery, for US$420m, will be followed by the purchase of the remaining 30% in nine years’ time, Campari said today. Wilderness Trail’s portfolio features a Bourbon and a rye whiskey, along with six- and eight-year-old Bourbons, with SRPs ranging from $55 per 75cl bottle to “$75+” for the aged expressions.
Last year, the distiller saw sales total $40.8m, $7.2m from its brands while the balance came from bulk sales, storage fees and the distillery’s visitor centre in Danville.
Sales this year are expected to climb to around $57m, “with an increasing weight of the higher-margin business generated by the Wilderness Trail Bourbon and rye brand”.
The total value of the takeover prices Wilderness at around 16x annual EBITDA.
Founded ten years ago by Shane Baker and Pat Heist, Wilderness Trail will sit alongside Wild Turkey in Campari’s American whiskey camp, having bought the Bourbon from Pernod Ricard in 2009. Earlier this year, the group also bought a 15% holding in banana-flavoured Bourbon Howler Head, before announcing a stake purchase of the same size in brand owner Catalyst Spirits last week.
According to figures from trade association The Distilled Spirits Council of the US, the super-premium end of the American whiskey category has been posting healthy growth domestically in recent years: Volumes in the US at the more expensive end, defined as $210+ per nine litres in supplier revenue, have soared from 2.4m nine-litre cases in 2017 to 4.7m cases last year - a compound annual growth rate of 14.4%.
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