Drifter Spirits

A growing portfolio of craft spirits brands

Last Funded October 2020

$270,305

raised from 308 investors

Highlights

1
Strong executive team with experience in brand management at Red Bull, and legal at Goldman Sachs.
2
Advisory board and investors include SVPs at Pernod Ricard, William Grant; President of Red Bull NA.
3
2019 Revenue of $1.3m. Lifetime revenue of $4.3m and 2013-2019 10x growth in revenue.
4
Internationally recognized products: Avuá Cachaca won Double Gold / Best in Category at SF Spirit.

Our Team

We went to Brazil in 2011, and fell in love with cachaca, its native spirit. We launched Avua Cachaca, and quickly grew it to the category leader. But then we realized that the strong route to market could be leveraged for other spirits brands too. We successfully launched Svol Aquavit in 2019, and will be rolling out a third brand Gagliardo soon!

Drifter Spirits is a unique route to market for craft spirits

Drifter is a portfolio of global spirits for the modern bar.

We scour the world for historically relevant, uniquely crafted products for the modern bar.  We use our strength in the on premise channel and key relationships with major national distributors and key bars, restaurant and hotels to build an efficient route to market.

In the rapidly growing craft spirit space we serve as the sales and marketing agency and route to market for Avuá Cachaça (our lead brand that has over $1.3MM in sales in 2019), Svol Aquavit (launch in June 2019 to much fanfare and over $150k in revenue in 2019) and this summer Gagliardo Bitter Radicale (a 5th generation Italian producer).  

What is Avuá Cachaça?

Cachaça has been Brazil's beloved spirit for over 500 years and is the third most consumed alcoholic spirit in the world. Avuá Cachaça is single-sourced and pot distilled at a 3 generation farm about 4 hours from Rio, and comes in both 84 proof unaged Prata and the unique South American indigenous Amburana wood aged expression. 

Our mission is to challenge the perception of the cachaça category as a one-trick caipirinha pony to an artisanal product that expresses the 500 years of traditional production in Brasil.  The brand has $1,369,000 in rolling Total Sales March 1, 2019 to March 1, 2020.

What is Svol Aquavit?

Svol is taking a thoughtful gin-inspired approach to a centuries-old Scandinavian spirit.  We worked with Gunnar Gislasson chef/owner of Dill in Iceland and Jonas Andersen of Agern & Great Northern Food Hall on botanicals, souring and blending. Allen Katz and the NY Distilling team is our production partner with their great expertise in botanical distillation. We are excited to share with you our first two marks inspired by the traditions of Denmark and Sweden. 

Svol sold $153,000 in revenues in only a half year of launch (contributing $38k to Drifter in sales margin) - ahead of initial sales for Avuá in a category that bartenders are rapidly growing more interested in.  Our aim is to be the leader in the category as it grows in the US and Europe with great cocktail placements in key bars, restaurants and hotels around the world.  

What is Gagliardo Bitter Radicale?

The Gagliardo range will launch this summer with a liqueur range from a 5th Generation grappa distiller who re-discovered old family recipes. The range includes:

• A Campari fighter in the Bitter Radicale with a long and strong bitter taste and aftertaste using the least sugar quantity as possible.

• Italian Orange liqueur is the only of its kind in the market

• Fernet Radicale which is a lighter more round version of the style

Planned launch in Q3 of 2020 in key markets in the US – already approved by our two biggest distributors for launch.

Drifter will grow our portfolio significantly over the next 5 years.

We will be growing our portfolio to 8-10 solid brands over the next 5 years that will generate an estimated $10MM in revenue and deliver $2MM in net income, of which a large portion will be released as dividends.  We will enter other categories such as tequila, gin, and vermouth over time with the right partners and our consistent on premise, brand building focused approach.  


Downloads

Overview