Diageo’s North American Whiskey Buoyed By Crown Royal Blackberry

Diageo's North American whiskies faced a challenging market, but the success shown by the new Crown Royal Blackberry suggests innovation may be the key to success amongst global turmoil.
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Crown Royal and Bulleit were featured as two key North American brands in Diageo’s Interim Report and show contrasting results for the 6 months to December 2024.

Diageo have released their 2025 Interim Results and the data shows mixed results overall. Overall Diageo saw organic net sales grow by 1%, though reported net sales declined slightly by 0.6%. Within their whiskey portfolio their North American whiskies faced a challenging market, but the success shown by the new Crown Royal Blackberry suggests innovation may be the key to success amongst global turmoil.

Blackberry Canadian Whiskey Lead Whiskey Growth

Just to be clear, Diageo’s Interim Results 2025 report on their whiskies from the American continent together. The Canadian Crown Royal brand and Bulleit are pulled out as their two key brands and show contrasting results for the 6 months to December 2024.

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Crown Royal saw net sales grow by 3%. This strong performance was predominantly driven by Crown Royal Blackberry, which launched in the second half of fiscal 2024. The brand gained overall share in the spirits industry and saw volume growth of 5%.

In contrast Bulleit saw net sales decline by 9% and the brand lost share in both the US whiskey category and overall spirits industry. A volume decline of 8% was attributed to increased promotional competition in the US whiskey category.

Uncertain Macroeconomic Conditions

The Interim Results 2025 don’t provide extensive detail on other American whiskey brands—likely because they only make up 2% of Diageo’s portfolio—but the overall context suggests a challenging competitive environment in the US whiskey category. Across the larger portfolio innovation such as flavored variants has helped drive growth within specific brand initiatives where it occurred.

Guinness and Don Julio tequila have shown strong growth in their respective markets. However the general uncertainty in economic and geopolitical situations have meant Diageo have withdrawn their medium term organic net sales targets. The medium term 5-7% guidance will be replaced by shorter term targets to better adapt to the changeability of the global market at the moment.

Read about the results for Diageo’s scotch brands here. We will release a more in depth analysis on the results soon.

Hannah Thompson

Hannah Thompson is a whiskey investment educator who helps consumers understand everything they need to know to make an informed decision about whiskey investment. She has been working in the secondary whiskey market since 2019 and joined The Whiskey Wash team when Mark Littler took over as Editor in Chief. Working with Mark Littler Hannah has amassed a broad range of whiskey knowledge and specializes in helping consumers make education driven cask investments. Hannah has authored two published works of fiction and her background in research and creative writing lets her create interesting and informative articles to give people a solid understanding of the world of whiskey.

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