Sazerac, the New Orleans-headquartered spirits company behind Buffalo Trace bourbon and Fireball whisky, completed its acquisition of British vodka brand Au Vodka on Monday. The deal, according to a source familiar with the matter, was valued at more than £300 million, or roughly $405 million.
The acquisition closed following an initial binding agreement signed in mid-August, according to New Orleans CityBusiness. Sazerac formally announced the completed purchase in a statement carried by PR Newswire, calling the purchase part of its accelerating global growth. The transaction gives Sazerac, a company that traces its roots to the 1850s and now owns more than 500 brands, a firmer foothold in the UK's booming convenience-cocktail market.
A Brand Built on Viral Marketing and a Famous Kick
Au Vodka was co-founded in Swansea, Wales in 2015 by Jackson Quinn and Charlie Morgan. Morgan gained an odd kind of fame back in 2013 as a 17-year-old Swansea City ballboy who was kicked by Chelsea footballer Eden Hazard during a League Cup match, according to The Independent. The founders launched the brand before securing investment from DJ Charlie Sloth in 2017, the outlet reports.
The company's growth since then has been dramatic. In the fiscal year ending April 2025, Au Vodka generated £82.8 million (about $108 million) in revenue, a 27.3% year-over-year jump, along with a pre-tax profit of £5 million, per the same report. That growth was fueled largely by viral social media marketing and ready-to-drink sales formats aimed at younger drinkers.
Au Vodka's American Foothold
The brand isn't new to U.S. shelves. Au Vodka launched stateside in August 2022, selling 50,000 bottles in its first week and setting up online distribution across 35 states, according to Food Dive. It later expanded into physical retail stores across eight states, giving Sazerac an existing American footprint to scale up rather than build from scratch.
In the UK, the acquisition hands Sazerac control of the country's second-largest ready-to-drink cocktail brand. Combined with Sazerac's BuzzBallz brand, that gives the company roughly 20% of the UK's ready-to-drink market by value, according to The Grocer. BuzzBallz already held the top spot in that category before the Au Vodka deal closed.
Part of a Bigger Buying Spree
The Au Vodka purchase comes amid Sazerac's 2026 expansion efforts, including its purchase of Dirty Shirley and acquisition of a stake in Sipmargs, according to Food Dive. Sazerac acquired Texas-based BuzzBallz, expanding its ready-to-drink lineup among younger consumers, according to a report referenced by Overproof. BuzzBallz was launched in 2009 by Merrilee Kick and had become one of the fastest-growing ready-to-drink brands in North America.
Sazerac also acquired Svedka Vodka, the fourth-largest vodka brand by volume in the U.S., according to S&P Global Ratings. The firm was seeking a seven-year $1 billion term loan facility to refinance revolving-facility borrowings, the ratings agency reported. On the production side, Sazerac picked up the 210-acre Garrard County Distilling facility in Lancaster, Kentucky for $20 million at a June 2026 auction after the plant entered receivership, finalizing that deal in August, according to The Spirits Business. Sazerac has said the added capacity was needed because its existing Kentucky distilleries could not keep pace with demand.
The Jack Daniel's Deal That Got Away
Not every swing has connected. Sazerac, owned by the Goldring family, offered $32 per share to acquire Jack Daniel's parent company Brown-Forman in 2026, a bid that valued Brown-Forman at about $15 billion. Brown-Forman formally rejected the unsolicited offer amid opposition from family shareholders, according to Food Dive. Sazerac's approach to Brown-Forman preceded that rebuff.
The failed mega-deal underscores just how aggressively Sazerac has been pursuing growth on multiple fronts at once this year — chasing both a $15 billion whiskey giant and hundreds-of-millions-dollar viral cocktail brands simultaneously. That dual-track strategy reflects a broader industry shift: market analysis firm IWSR reported that the global ready-to-drink category surpassed traditional vodka in total global market value for the first time in 2025, a trend detailed by GrowSights. Ready-to-drink products have seen rapid growth.
How Sazerac folds Au Vodka's social-first, influencer-heavy marketing model into its much larger global distribution network remains to be seen, as does how the company manages its debt load from this string of acquisitions. For now, the deal cements Sazerac's place among the dominant forces in both traditional bourbon and the fast-growing world of canned and bottled cocktails.
