A new report from The Tequila Report, built on Nielsen data for the year to August 29, 2026, shows US off-trade tequila value fell 3.5% to $5.29 billion while volume rose 5.9% to 290.5 million units. The split inside those numbers is sharp. A group of 181 craft brands, defined as self-declared additive-free and selling under 200,000 nine-litre cases a year, grew 18.6% and now hold 9.7% of retail scan dollars. Conventional brands fell 5.4%, Casamigos dropped 21% to $305 million, and reposado was the only type to grow dollar sales, up 2.1%.
I read this as a category sorting itself out, not shrinking. People are buying more bottles, and the average bottle price has slipped from $21.37 to $18.21 over two years. At the same time, craft brands averaging close to $44 a bottle added about $167 million in sales over that period. The pressure sits on the big conventional names, and on celebrity labels in particular: only three of the 10 biggest grew.
There is a catch in the consumer survey. 86% of drinkers still named one of the same five mass brands as their dream bottle, and craft names barely registered. So the growth is real, but awareness has not caught up. The shoppers driving craft are a minority who already know what to look for.
That gap is the problem MezcalSearch is built to work on. Someone who wants a self-declared additive-free reposado or a bottle from a smaller producer rarely finds it from the shelf alone. The brands winning now are the ones people can discover, compare and trust. Helping more drinkers move past the same five names to the bottle they would actually prefer is where I expect much of the next growth in agave spirits to come from.