Each year, Shanken’s Impact Newsletter honors the best-performing brands across the industry with its “Hot Brand” awards. This year, the Hot Brands roster includes 45 fast-growing brands from the wine, spirits, and RTD categories.
There are three different ways to qualify as an Impact Hot Brand: a contender must have shown double-digit growth in each year from 2022-2024, or be an established player with at least 15% growth in 2024, or else be a top 10 brand with at least 5% growth in 2024 and 15% growth since 2021. The minimum volume requirement for spirits and imported wines is 200,000 9-liter cases, while domestic wines and RTDs must meet a threshold of 250,000 cases.
The Hot Brand spirits roster totals 11 large and dynamic brands this year. Six of the 11 winners come from Tequila, one of the categories showing strong resilience amid the tough market conditions. Outside of Tequila, vodkas and whiskies each notched two Hot Brand winners, and a lone liqueur rounds out the list.
These 11 spirits brands combined for depletions of 11.2 million cases in 2024, on growth of 33%. Spirits Hot Brands above 900,000 cases include Don Julio, Lunazul, Espolòn, Teremana, and Cazadores.
The spirits- and wine-based RTD segment saw 17 brands meet Hot Brand criteria. As a group, the Hot Brand RTDs totaled 55 million cases last year, up from 40 million the year prior and more than fourfold from only 13.6 million cases as recently as 2021, according to Impact Databank. Seven of the brands more than doubled their volume year over year.
RTD Hot Brands above 1.5 million cases include High Noon, Beatbox, Surfside, Cutwater, Carbliss, Nütrl, The Finnish Long Drink, and Buzzballz Chillers.
The full Hot Brands list, along with comprehensive data and analysis, appears in Impact’s March 1&15 issue. Click here to subscribe.
