Sazerac has acquired Dirty Shirley, the ready-to-drink (RTD) vodka-spiked take on the classic Shirley Temple, the company announced Thursday.
“We are excited to make the Dirty Shirley brand a part of the Sazerac family,” said Jake Wenz, CEO of Sazerac in a press release. “The brand has carved a unique space in the RTD category with their bold cocktails and distinct personality, and we’re looking forward to continuing to build on the solid foundational work done by the brand to-date.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition puts a cherry on top of the growing Texas base for Sazerac, arriving roughly two years after the company invested in other Texas-based facilities and products, such as BuzzBallz and three RTDs released in partnership with a Texas distributor. Sazerac acquired Southern Champion – including brands BuzzBallz, Biggies, Uptown Cocktails, Sip Sip Hooray, and Texas Craft, among others – in March 2024. That deal was followed by the purchase of Texas-based Western Son Vodka, adding additional production capacity and capabilities to the Sazerac network.
Now, the spirits giant brings another distinctive RTD brand into its portfolio. Adam Kost, founder of Dirty Shirley, has been following the lead of The Finnish Long Drink or Lone River Ranch Water, RTDs that have found success becoming the call brand through building their respective stories around very specific cocktails that haven’t yet hit the mainstream.
For Kost, the exit caps a journey that started with a different bet. Dirty Shirley falls under Goodwell Brands, an RTD venture that Kost kicked off with cocktail seltzer Country Luau after 20 years in the beverage industry at AB Inbev’s ZX-Ventures, Heineken USA and Waterloo Sparkling Water. He released a Dirty Shirley flavor under that brand in late 2022 – and watched it resonate with consumers in a way his other SKUs hadn’t.
“We got a lot of consumer insights in those first few months and realized it had to be its own thing,” Kost told BevNET in 2023. “It can’t get held back by the positioning and the marketing associated with Country Luau.”
He spun Dirty Shirley out as a standalone brand, targeting women ages 21 to 45 – or, as he put it, “anyone who has had a Shirley Temple.” Kost found that many of his female consumers were searching for a “mid-point” of sweetness and flavor, not a seltzer and not a full-blown classic cocktail. The nostalgia of the drink also resonated with consumers.
Dubbed the “new espresso martini” in 2022, the cocktail seemed an antidote to wellness-minded lower calorie cocktails, and more a result of the spiking post-pandemic demand for indulgent, nostalgic flavors.
Kost further built out the brand when he launched two new flavors and jumped from Washington, Michigan, Tennessee, Texas, Illinois, Arkansas, and Colorado into several new states using a mix of distributors from across the Anheuser Busch and Molson Coors networks in 2023. He followed with 12 new markets via Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits (SGWS) in 2024.
“Sazerac is the perfect home for Dirty Shirley,” Kost said in a press release. “They have the scale, expertise, and vision to take the brand to the next level, and I have full confidence they will continue to build Dirty Shirley into an iconic name in the spirits industry.”