Survey Finds Brand Familiarity Outweighs Additive-Free Claims for U.S. Tequila Buyers

Brand recognition matters more to U.S. tequila buyers than additive-free claims when they choose a bottle, according to a national survey released Wednesday by The Tequila Report, a digital publication that covers the tequila industry.

The 41-page study, called “Tequila’s 10% Problem,” surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults age 21 and older who said they drink tequila at least once a month. It was conducted in August and weighted to the 2020 U.S. Census on age, region, gender and ethnicity. The report was sponsored by PKGD Group and paired the survey with retail scan data through Aug. 29.

Among 12 purchase factors tested, 72% of respondents said familiarity with a brand matters some or a lot when they buy tequila for themselves. Price ranked second at 64%. Positive online information followed at 56%, and additive-free claims were close behind at 55%. The report also found that 75% of respondents had heard of additive-free tequila.

Dave Wiley, research director at The Tequila Report, said the findings suggest that smaller tequila brands face a visibility problem as much as a product problem. “Craft tequila does not need more brands explaining why they are better,” Wiley said in the report release. “It needs more drinkers to be able to name the one they want next.”

The report uses the phrase “10% problem” to describe what it sees as a gap between growth and market share in craft tequila. It classifies 181 brands as craft, based on three criteria: they do not use industrial diffusers, they say their tequila is made without additives, and they sell fewer than 200,000 nine-liter cases a year in retail scan data. According to the report’s analysis, those brands increased dollar sales by 18.6% in the 52 weeks ending Aug. 29, while all other tequila brands posted a 5.4% decline. Even with that growth, craft tequila accounted for just 9.7% of retail scan dollars.

Jay Baer, editor and co-founder of The Tequila Report, said the study was designed to explain why buyers still choose bigger brands. “There’s plenty of data on what sells,” Baer said in the release. “We wanted to understand why people buy.”

The survey suggests that many drinkers stay price-conscious, especially for blanco tequila. Among respondents who buy blanco, 82% said they typically spend $50 or less for a 750ml bottle, and the median reported spend was $40. Nearly half said they had bought a bottle that cost $100 or more at some point, but only about 1 in 10 said that is what they typically spend on any tequila.

The data also point to limits in the higher-end parts of the category. Nineteen percent of respondents said they do not buy añejo tequila, and 25% said they do not buy extra añejo.

Recommendations from people appear to carry more weight than traditional paid advertising. Friends and family were the most commonly cited influence on bottle choice, named by 47% of respondents. Bartenders and servers were next at 32%, ahead of retail employees at 17%. Both hospitality and retail workers ranked above every paid advertising channel tested in the study. The report also found that 59% of respondents had researched a tequila online before making a purchase.

Celebrity ownership produced a sharp age divide. Overall, 64% of respondents said celebrity ownership does not matter at all when they buy tequila, while 20% said it matters some or a lot. Among drinkers under 40, about 31% said celebrity ownership matters. Among respondents age 60 and older, that figure fell to 5%.

The survey also found signs of stronger tequila consumption among regular drinkers even as broader alcohol use in the United States remains soft. Thirty-five percent of respondents said they are drinking more tequila than they did a year earlier, while 9% said they are drinking less. Among adults ages 21 to 29, 53% said they are drinking more tequila than a year ago.

The report set that finding against a recent Gallup poll showing that 54% of U.S. adults said they drink alcohol in 2026, matching the record low Gallup reported in 2025.

Tequila drinking occasions were spread across cocktails, shots and neat pours. Sixty-four percent of respondents said they often or almost always drink tequila in cocktails such as margaritas. Sixty-one% said they often or almost always take tequila as a shot, and 40% said they often or almost always drink it neat. Among respondents ages 21 to 29, 73% said they regularly take shots. Women were more likely than men to report drinking tequila in cocktails, 72% compared with 57%. Men were more likely to say they drink it neat, 47% compared with 32%.

Among respondents who said they are drinking less tequila, cannabis emerged as a larger substitute than other alcohol categories. Eighteen percent said they were using cannabis instead. That compared with 11% who said they were switching to other spirits, beer or wine, and 6% who said they were moving to hard seltzer or canned cocktails.

“For decades, tequila competed primarily with the bottle next to it on the shelf,” Baer said in the release. “Now it is also competing with entirely different ways people relax and socialize.”

The report’s retail analysis found that consumers bought a record 290.5 million bottles of tequila in the 52 weeks ending Aug. 29, an increase of 5.9% from the prior year. But dollar sales fell 3.5% to $5.29 billion, suggesting buyers traded down or shifted toward lower-priced products. Average spending per bottle dropped from $21.37 to $18.21 over two years, according to the analysis. Reposado was the only tequila expression that posted dollar-sales growth, rising 2.1%.

The Tequila Report said the new study is not directly comparable to its 2025 research because that earlier project surveyed tequila enthusiasts rather than the broader public of monthly drinkers. The publication, founded by Baer and Maddie Jager, said its newsletter reaches more than 67,000 subscribers twice a week and that it plans to host a craft tequila conference in Las Vegas on Feb. 21-23, 2027.