Exclusive: Purple Brands Acquires Dave Phinney’s Savage & Cooke Distillery

Sonoma County-based wine and spirits marketer Purple Brands, with annual volume of 400,000 cases, has acquired Dave Phinney’s Savage & Cooke distillery on California’s Mare Island, SND has learned. Purple, founded by industry veteran Derek Benham, plans to use the distillery to expand production of its Redwood Empire whiskey brand, which has risen to 55,000 cases in the U.S. and is growing at about 30% annually. Terms weren’t disclosed.

“We’d been working with Dave and Savage & Cooke for years, producing some additional products to support our inventory,” Purple Brands CEO Aaron Webb told SND. “It includes several thousand barrels of inventory, which we need for our Redwood Empire brand. Out of the gate, we’ll be able to make between 2,500-3,000 barrels at Savage & Cooke, and we can expand that with additional fermentation capacity to as much as 7,000-9,000 barrels down the road.”

The deal includes the distillery on Mare Island, as well as the Savage & Cooke whiskey brand, which is currently around 5,000 cases. The distillery houses a tasting room, restaurant, and private event space, which Purple aims to leverage to introduce more consumers to Redwood Empire.

Redwood Empire is known for Pipe Dream Bourbon and Emerald Giant Rye (both $35 a 750-ml.), and also includes a number of limited releases such as Grizzly Beast and Rocket Top Bottled-in-Bond whiskies, Screaming Titan Wheated Bourbon, and a Haystack Needle grain-to-glass barrel program. Most recently, the brand debuted a higher-proof Pipe Dream 101 ($55), which has been well received.

“We launched Redwood Empire during Covid, and our strategy initially was to do it in the on-premise,” Webb noted. “Then of course the world changed and we shifted the launch of Redwood into the chains and into off-premise, and we’ve had a lot of success there. In 2025, we are going to put an enormous focus towards on-premise efforts to really shift back into that environment with the brand too.”

Elsewhere in the Purple portfolio, the Raeburn wine brand is continuing to see strong growth, projected to approach 250,000 cases this year on an 11% increase. “The Chardonnay is a more mature SKU, and we also have a Pinot Noir from Raeburn that’s very successful,” said Webb. “A year and a half ago we also launched a Sonoma County Cab ($25). That product is on fire, still growing over 20% and gaining ground quickly.”—Daniel Marsteller

Tagged : Purple Wine + Spirits, Raeburn, Redwood Empire, Savage & Cooke

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