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InvestBev: ‘No bad year for Bourbon’
By Georgie CollinsBrian Rosen, founder and chairman of private equity firm InvestBev, discusses the spirits sectors he believes demonstrate the most resilience in times of economic hardship, and explains why the US will never have another Prohibition.

Chicago-based Rosen has the spirits industry in his blood. “My family was given the very first liquor license ever handed out in Chicago after Prohibition in 1933,” he says. “We turned that license, over the course of 40 years, into the largest independent liquor retailer in America. It was called Sam’s Liquors.”
The retailer went on to win numerous awards, including Liquor Store Retailer of the Year, and became the first website to sell booze, as well as the first liquor store to have a glassware, cigar, and cheese shop all in the same store, “kind of like a Harrods model, but better, and all booze,” he explains.
“I grew up in that business. When I was in my 30s, I sold that business to private equity. From there, I went on to Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) in New York and created for them the adult beverage practice, which is now a US$700 million billable-hour business.”

From there, Rosen says, he moved back to Chicago and founded a company called BevStrat, which became the largest sales company in the US for beverages, before selling that to private equity in 2019.
Prior to that, however, is when he founded private equity firm InvestBev, which now manages “about US$250m AUM (assets under management), with another US$100m in private credit”, while also owning “at least US$100m of raw whiskey distillate” making it “the largest adult beverage private equity firm in America. I created that business in 2015, and so that, I guess, would put me in the expert category,” he confirms.
Not fair trade
At the top of our conversation, which takes place just before the US election in November 2024, Rosen speaks of the issues the alcohol beverage industry is currently facing, specifically in his home country, where direct-to-consumer shipping is a constant battle for US brands.
“The US is like 50 different countries, and all these [distributors] want to get their own share of tax dollars and to the detriment of the consumer – the consumer is invariably hurt by it all. It’s not fair trade. The US is run by distributors. I travel all over the globe, and the US puts itself out there as this progressive leader of capitalism. And the reality is, yes, it is, if you’re willing to hurt someone else in the process.”
He notes that, for example, Tito’s Handmade Vodka “doesn’t make a new drinker. It steals share from another brands. And so the more the distributor network pushes Tito’s into bars and restaurants and homes, the less space there is in the wallet and in the back bar for [for example] Brian’s vodka. Brian’s vodka could be better, but if distributors don’t get behind it, it’s never going to make it. The only person that gets rich in the liquor business here is the distributor. That’s it. Everyone else struggles – 5% of the brands account for 95% of the SKU velocity.”
Whether this will change under the incoming Trump administration, Rosen is not optimistic, and since our conversation, Donald Trump has said he will impose 25% tariffs on all goods imported into the US from Canada and Mexico, causing an additional headache for the US spirits industry – specifically America’s second biggest-selling spirit, Tequila. It is also estimated that it could result in US$5 billion in lost tax revenue.
Recession resilience
While the future of the global economy remains uncertain, as it still battles against the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, wars, and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, Rosen shares how the US’s ‘national’ spirit, Bourbon, bears resilience in times of economic uncertainty.
“It’s important to know that recession-proof is different than recession-resistant or recession-resilient,” he explains. “Bourbon itself is not recession-proof. What is recession-proof is we invest to the tune of well over US$100m into barrels of Bourbon.

“Whoever owns the base spirit, owns the future product. So we, InvestBev, play a really critical role in this transaction.”
Rosen explains that distilleries are the ones that make Bourbon and then need to sell it. “They’re not in the storage business. They’re not in the insurance business. They’re not in the ‘going to look for a buyer’ business.” Similarly, he says, future Bourbon brands “are not in the ‘I’m going to give you US$5m and wait three years to use it business’, instead they’re going to buy it at three-years-old and turn it into a brand.
“So you’ve got the distillery who makes it and needs to sell it because that’s part of their business model, and the brand who needs it for finished goods but doesn’t want to put their money to no work three years prior. Here we come in the middle. And from a resilience standpoint, you’ve got things going for you that other commodities or other investments don’t have.
“One is if I buy all 2020 Bourbon – and let’s say for conversation’s sake there’s a barrel made every day for 365 days a year – inherently, if I buy that, I’ve bought the year’s worth of supply; it’s going to begin ageing in the barrel. So it starts to increase in value two ways: One is I take in the supply up, and no one else can use it, so there’s no 2020 Bourbon left, which means there’s going to be a shortage in 2023; another scenario is every day it sits in a barrel, it becomes older than the barrel made the next day and has more value. Anything older is worth more than younger. Irish whiskey, Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Bourbon – it’s no different,” he says.
“So when we are looking for stable investments, the Bourbon trade has all of the attributes of what stability is. It’s a hard asset – it’s physical. I can touch it. I can feel it. I can go test it.”
‘Worth more, not less’
Another thing he notes that is “really important” from an investment standpoint, is that “there is no bad year” for Bourbon. “There are bad years in Burgundy. There are bad years in Bordeaux. There’s no bad year in Bourbon at all. Bourbon doesn’t go bad. It doesn’t get spoiled. It just doesn’t happen.”
Finally, he says, there is the ability to increase the value of Bourbon by simply doing nothing with it. “If you don’t chop a tree down, the very next year what do you get? You get more tree. That same tree is worth more money. In Bourbon, if I don’t bottle it, and I wait a year because the market is soft, what do I get next year? More-aged Bourbon. It’s worth more, not less. It becomes more rare and more aged.”
However, Rosen stresses that it is only Bourbon in the cask that is the investable asset for him. “It doesn’t mean anything to me when it’s in a grain form, or corn form, or wheat form, or rye form, it’s got to be in a barrel, and it’s got to be ageing. That’s the asset, and that is very resilient against the economy. It does not matter to this barrel of Bourbon who the president is, what the interest rate is, what the GDP is, what my mortgage looks like. None of that matters. This thing inherently becomes more valuable every day it’s in a barrel, because one more day it ages is another day that it becomes rarer.

“So if you look at all these things in a vacuum, those are the pillars of what investing is: A hard asset that gets better with age, has an element of scarcity, and always has a future buyer.”
As such, Rosen confirms this rule applies to all aged spirits, including Tequila, rum, Irish whiskey, Scotch, and American single malt, “because you have the element that the ageing creates an arbitrage – and the ageing is the key. Vodka you can make in your bathtub in a week, right? Same with gin. There’s nothing to it. So, because there’s nothing to it, anyone can do it, and because anyone can do it, there’s no value in it.”
With all of this said, is there a risk that Bourbon will fall out of favour with consumers? Rosen’s short answer is “no”.
“There’s ebbs and flows in anything. There is this movement towards non-alc, right? That’s real. Those kind of things happen. But at the end of the day, the pie is still a pie, and the consumer shifts around it. The Bourbon drinker is not a new drinker, it’s someone who drinks Scotch, Bourbon, Irish whiskey, and blends, right? So they just move around the circle, and for maybe six months they’re going non-alc – that’s very possible – but from a resiliency standpoint, they’re still drinking.”
Global softening
Rosen claims that there are more people turning 21-years-old – the legal drinking age in the US – now than any other time in recent history, and it is feeding an “aspirational society” that lives through social media, specifically Instagram and TikTok. Because of this, he says, “the kids want to put good stuff in their body – high-end, expensive stuff. The whole market is moving towards premiumisation.”

While some reports have suggested that the premiumisation trend is showing signs of slowing, Rosen says that despite global softening, the move is still in play, just with less people playing in the market. “What people don’t talk about is the rich are still rich. Softening affects the fake rich, people that got rich on credit cards and got rich on lines of credit and got rich because of a moment in time, or because of their OnlyFans account. You know, the real rich are still rich, and the principles that drive them are still in play.”
Rosen shares that the beverage business as a whole, and adult beverage specifically, has “gone up and to the right” every year since Prohibition ended. “There’s been plateaus, but in general, it’s going up, because everything we do is as social animals, right? Every time we get together, it’s for a pint, every time we get together to celebrate, to talk, to mourn, just to get together, it’s for a drink, and that inherently doesn’t change and will not change. And even if they’re getting together for a non-alcoholic drink, they’re still in the pie.”
This is one of the reasons, Rosen notes, that the US will never see another Prohibition. “If you think about it from the US perspective, and we’ll use Covid as a baseline, the whole country was locked down hard – red states, blue states, all states locked down hard. And there were four businesses that were deemed essential for public safety: hospitals, gas stations, grocery stores, and liquor stores. Those are the four businesses that were deemed essential businesses by the US government.
“If you think about it, how could Prohibition ever even be a thing? There would be rioting. People demanded their liquor stores to be open and were willing to get Covid, pre-vaccine, to get a bottle of Jameson. There will never be a Prohibition again.”
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