Mexican Craft Beer On The Rise

Mexican beers like Corona and Modelo are immensely popular on both sides of the border, but craft breweries are on the rise in Mexico especially in upscale urban regions.

“The consensus is that the first craft beer brewer [in Mexico] was Gustavo Rodríguez in Mexico City,” beer sommelier and beer historian Guillermo Ysusi told Mexico News Daily. “Rodríguez discovered US microbrews visiting Texas in 1993, purchasing a beer-making kit in 1995. Five years later, he opened Cosaco, which has been going strong ever since.”

The late 1990s and early 2000s gave birth to craft breweries like Beer Factory in Mexico City, Sierra Madre Brewing in Monterrey and Minerva in Guadalajara, but now it’s the Baha, California craft breweries, places like Tecate Brewery and BAJER Brewing, that everybody’s talking about.

And it’s not surprising that Baha’s proximity to Southern California’s vibrant craft beer scene is one of the reasons for their cross-border buzz.

“The US is the reference point for quality for Mexican craft beers and there is significant cultural and professional exchange among brewers on both sides of the border,” Ariette Armella of the Mexican Association of Craft Beer Brewers (Acermex) explained. Working with US craft beer advocates the Brewers Association, Acermex created the Together We Brew program specifically to enable this.

In spite of its growing popularity craft beer remains very niche in Mexico and just as in the US, mass market global brewers still dominate. That’s an especially advantageous situation for drinks giant, Constellation Brands, which bought the US rights to Mexican megabrands Corona, Modelo, Victoria, and Pacifico as part of a $4.8 billion deal back in 2013.

Since that deal in 2013, Constellation has watched as “sales of brews from south of the border surged 44 percent, even as domestic beer sales slow the Victor, New York-based company’s beer brands now “account for about 1 in 11 brews sold in the US.”

Modelo, which is brewed by Constellation and distributed, by the Victor, NY drinks company in the US, generated $3.9 billion in sales in 2021, making it the biggest imported brand in the country, according to Statista

Modelo “achieved double digit growth” in the latest quarter, Bill Newlands, chief executive of Constellation, told analysts and on an October 5 quarterly call and its currently the #1 bestselling beer in the US.

Although Mexico City is currently the largest beer market for independent brewers, Baja California produces the most craft beer. And about half of craft beer production is in the north.

Baja California leads with 18% of Mexico’s total craft beer production, followed by Nuevo León (13.8%).

In the center of the country, most beer is produced in Jalisco (17%) and Mexico City (10.6%).

“It’s safe to say that Mexican craft beer has now gone way past novelty,” Leigh Thelmadatter reports, “and become a world worth exploring for beer lovers.”

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