Jim Beam Consolidates It’s Place As America’s Top Selling Whiskey

By Richard Thomas

A shift of tectonic proportions has taken place in American Whiskey these last couple of years, but to judge from the trade headlines one would assume that nothing had actually happened. Since long before I started writing about whiskey, there have been three stable-as-granite facts about the whiskey business: 1) Johnnie Walker was the world’s top selling whisky; 2) Jack Daniel’s was America’s best selling whiskey, and second only to Walker; and 3) Jim Beam was the top bourbon, coming in third behind Daniel’s for American whiskey overall. Starting in 2022 and confirmed in 2023, those three points are no longer all that stable, as Jim Beam has overtaken Jack Daniel’s as America’s number one whiskey company.

As reported by The Spirits Business and based on data from The Brand Champions, Jim Beam sold 16.6 million cases in 2022 against Jack Daniel’s 14.6 million cases. Beam then grew as Daniel’s shrank in 2023, selling 17 million against 14.3 million respectively. The last year Daniel’s retained its long-held top spot was 2021, with 12.3 million against Beam’s 10.7 million. That year was also when Daniel’s was named the world’s most valuable spirits brand. Although Daniel’s sales slump has attracted some commentary in the business news, that coverage was in the context of the news causing Brown-Forman stocks to slide in value. Strangely, that Beam upset a company that had been a category leader for literal decades passed by with hardly a murmur.

The Glenlivet vs. The Glenfiddich
The lack of comment on what could be an era-defining shift is in stark contrast to the most recent, preceding example, when The Glenlivet briefly overtook The Glenfiddich as the world’s top selling single malt. At a time when The Glenlivet discontinued their entry-level 12 Year Old single malt in favor of a no age statement version, the brand overcame the well-established category leader The Glenfiddich, the brand that pioneered the modern concept of the single malt whisky back in the 1960s. The lead proved to be short-lived, however, as Glenfiddich was back in the top spot after just a couple of years.

Why This Matters
That development was observed by the spirits press, even though the sales gap between the two brands had been narrow and the changing positions proved to be fleeting. Based on the numbers alone, Jim Beam’s place as America’s top whiskey and the world’s number two whiskey seems to be a durable one. The sales gap between Beam and Daniel’s is so large that you could stuff all of the business Maker’s Mark does in a year into it.

Jack Daniel’s seized its place as America’s best selling whiskey during the Great Whiskey Bust of the 1970s, because at a time when every other whiskey brand in America was experiencing a painful decline in sales, Jack Daniel’s was still growing. Sales of Lynchburg whiskey tripled between 1973 and 1986. That was based on the two pillars of Mr. Jack’s Whiskey being a cultural icon entirely separate from spirits, with a fandom entirely separate from the fickle tastes of casual drinkers; and an internationally diversified portfolio of sales. The Kentucky majors would not truly follow suit on the international diversification until the 2010s, the same period that whiskey fandom around the world began to truly come into its own. And, it should be noted, whiskey enthusiasts scoffed at Jack Daniel’s for most of that time.

Unlike counting destroyed tanks in Ukraine, however, what can be seen in the public domain is only a tiny part of the story of what is driving Jim Beam’s huge gains in sales these last few years. Similarly, figuring out what is behind the stagnation and slump of Jack Daniel’s sales is, based on the data available, like reading tea leaves. That still leaves us with two hard facts that should give any serious observer of the whiskey trade something to think and talk about: 1) for the first time in decades, Beam is bigger than Jack; and 2) that is not likely to change suddenly or soon.

P.S.

Another thing we can count on is Johnnie Walker. With sales of 22 million cases, no one is actually nipping at Mr. Walker’s heels.