American whiskey gets plenty of attention, but the global sales figures still manage to surprise people. Bourbon and Tennessee whiskey sell in enormous quantities around the world, and a handful of brands account for a huge share of that volume. The biggest of them sold more than 16 million cases in a single year.
The annual Brand Champions report published by The Spirits Business is where this figure comes from, and it ranks the world’s best-selling spirits brands by nine-liter case sales. The 2026 edition covers the 2025 calendar year, and it shows a category under real pressure. Most of the big American whiskey brands sold less in 2025 than they did the year before.
There are a few reasons for the slowdown. Tariffs and trade disputes hit exports hard, Canada pulled American spirits from many of its shelves, and distillers are sitting on a lot of stock after years of rapid expansion. Kentucky warehouses held a record 16.1 million aging barrels of bourbon in late 2025. At the same time, drinkers in plenty of markets are simply buying a little less.
Even so, these are still some of the largest whiskey brands on the planet, and the list has its surprises. A couple of brands grew while the giants slipped, and the gap between the top two and everyone else is striking. Ranked by 2025 sales volume, these are the ten American whiskeys dominating shelves around the world.
10. Wild Turkey
Wild Turkey sits at the foot of the list with 1.7 million nine-liter cases sold in 2025, a drop of 2.9% on the year before. The brand is owned by the Campari Group and made in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, where the distilling has long been guided by master distillers and industry veterans, Jimmy and Eddie Russell.
The flagship is Wild Turkey 101, a Kentucky straight bourbon bottled at 50.5% ABV. It uses a high-rye mash bill and is aged for six to eight years, which gives it more backbone than a lot of standard bourbons. There is also a gentler 81-proof version.
The sales figure here includes Wild Turkey American Honey, a honey-flavored bourbon liqueur that the Russells first developed back in the 1970s.
Expect bold flavors from the 101: vanilla, caramel, baking spice, dried fruit, and a good push of oak. The high proof carries well over ice. American Honey is a softer, sweeter drink, full of honey and caramel, and works best chilled.
A bottle of Wild Turkey 101 is usually priced around $25 to $30 in the US and roughly £25 to £30 in the UK.
9. Woodford Reserve
Woodford Reserve sold 1.8 million nine-liter cases in 2025, down just 0.6% on the previous year, which counts as a steady result in a difficult market. The brand belongs to Brown-Forman and is made at the Woodford Reserve Distillery in Versailles, Kentucky, a site with stone buildings and a distilling history going back to the early nineteenth century.
The core bottling is Woodford Reserve Distiller’s Select, a Kentucky straight bourbon at 45.2% ABV. It is based on a high-rye mash bill of 72% corn, 18% rye, and 10% malted barley, and the distillery is unusual in blending whiskey from both pot stills and column stills. The result is a richer, fuller style than most bourbons at this price.
The flavor is full of honey, cocoa, dried fruit, toasted oak, and a fair amount of rye spice. There is a long, warming finish to round it off. It works neat, but it also holds up well in an Old Fashioned, and has become a bartender staple.
Expect to pay around $30 to $40 in the US and roughly £25 to £40 in the UK.
8. Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey
Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey sold 1.9 million nine-liter cases in 2025, a fall of 3.6% on the year before. It is made by Brown-Forman in Lynchburg, Tennessee, at the same distillery as the regular Jack Daniel’s, and it was the bottling that opened up the brand’s flavored range when it arrived in 2011.
The drink is a whiskey liqueur that blends Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 Tennessee whiskey with a honey liqueur, and it is bottled at 35% ABV, which makes it noticeably softer and sweeter than the standard Old No.7. The success of this one is a big part of why so many distillers followed with honey-flavored expressions of their own.
The flavor is built around honey (of course), with vanilla and a little of the familiar Jack character underneath.
A bottle costs around $18 to $25 in the US and roughly £19 to £25 in the UK.
7. Bell Rock Whiskey
Of all the names on this list, Bell Rock is the one that takes some explaining. It is named after a lighthouse off the coast of Scotland, yet the whiskey is made in Florida, and the company behind it, Global Spirits, is a large drinks group of Ukrainian origin better known for Khortytsa, a best-selling vodka. A Ukrainian-owned, Florida-made whiskey with a Scottish landmark on the label is not something you come across often.
Sales jumped 209.5% in 2025 to reach 2 million nine-liter cases, putting a brand most whiskey drinkers have never heard of level with Bulleit and Seagram’s 7. it is reasonable to assume a good share of those sales comes from Eastern Europe, where the company has established distribution.
As for the whiskey itself, it is a blended American whiskey at 40% ABV, and reviews put it squarely at the budget end: butterscotch and vanilla up front, oak char, and a raw edge that gives away the price. There are flavored versions as well, among them apple and honey, cinnamon, and butterscotch.
A 700ml bottle goes for around $20 in the US, but you will struggle to find it in the UK at all.
6. Bulleit
Bulleit is one of the few brands here that grew, with sales up 2.6% in 2025 to reach 2 million nine-liter cases. The brand now sits in Diageo’s portfolio. However, Bulleit spent many years being produced at Four Roses Distillery when both brands were owned by Seagrams. When Diageo acquired Bulleit, they continued to source from Four Roses under contract for a while. Then, in the late 2010s, Diageo opened Bulleit Distilling Co., allowing production to move in-house.
The signature Bulleit Bourbon is built on a mash bill of around 68% corn, 28% rye, and 4% malted barley, which is a far higher rye content than most mainstream bourbons carry, and it shows up in the flavor. The whiskey is drier and spicier than the sweeter, corn-forward style a lot of drinkers expect, with notes of cherry, vanilla, toasted oak, and plenty of pepper and clove. It is bottled at 45% ABV in most markets.
A good part of Bulleit’s appeal is how well it works in cocktails, and bartenders have helped carry the brand for years. The recognizable apothecary-style bottle has not hurt either. Expect to pay around $25 to $30 in the US and roughly £27 to £32 in the UK.
5. Seagram’s 7
Seagram’s 7 held completely flat in 2025, selling 2 million nine-liter cases with no change on the year before. In a market where most of the big names slipped, staying level counts for something. The brand is owned by Diageo and blended at a facility in Connecticut.
This is a blended American whiskey which combines straight whiskey with lighter neutral grain spirit. The result is mild and easygoing if not a bit harsh thanks to the high percentage of neutral grain spirit (around 75%). It is bottled at 40% ABV. You will taste light caramel, vanilla, and a bit of soft grain, with a clean finish and not much weight.
Most people know it through the “7 and 7,” the long drink of Seagram’s 7 and 7UP that has been a bar staple for decades. It is built for mixing more than sipping, and it is priced to match, at around $13 to $25 in the US for a 750ml bottle. It is far less common in the UK, where it tends to turn up only as a specialty import. As such, bottles can cost around £40.
4. Maker’s Mark
Maker’s Mark came through 2025 in good shape, with sales down just 0.7% to 2.7 million nine-liter cases. After a steeper fall the year before, this is a decent result. The brand is owned by Suntory Global Spirits and made in Loretto, Kentucky, where the Samuels family started selling it in the late 1950s.
Maker’s is famous for its use of soft red winter wheat rather than rye in the mash bill, which makes for a softer, sweeter, rounder whiskey. The mash bill is 70% corn, 16% wheat, and 14% malted barley, and the bourbon is bottled at 45% ABV.
You get toffee, vanilla, caramel, and a little oak and baking spice, all of it gentle and smooth. The hand-dipped red wax over the top of every bottle is one of the most recognizable sights in American whiskey. Expect to pay around $20 to $38 in the US and roughly £25 to £35 in the UK.
Maker’s Mark is a dependable, affordable, and delicious bourbon. You cannot go wrong with it if you like wheated bourbons.
3. Evan Williams
Evan Williams Bourbon is named after a Welsh immigrant who is often credited with opening Kentucky’s first commercial distillery back in 1783, though the whiskey itself is very much a modern operation. Evan Williams is the flagship bourbon of Heaven Hill, the largest independent, family-owned producer in American whiskey, and it has long held a reputation as one of the best value bottles on the shelf. In 2025, it sold 2.9 million nine-liter cases, down 3.9% on the previous year.
Heaven Hill distills it in Louisville and ages it down the road in Bardstown, Kentucky. The standard Black Label is a Kentucky straight bourbon, bottled at 43% ABV and aged for somewhere between five and seven years. The mash bill follows Heaven Hill’s house recipe of 78% corn, 10% rye, and 12% malted barley.
For the money, it punches well above its weight. You get caramel, vanilla, dark fruit, and a touch of oak and baking spice, finishing smooth with a little dryness. None of it is complicated, but it is honest, well-made bourbon, and the price is the clincher: around $15 to $20 in the US and roughly £25 to £30 in the UK.
2. Jack Daniel’s
Few bottles are as recognizable as the square black-labeled Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7, and the sales back that up. In 2025, it sold 13.4 million nine-liter cases, second only to Jim Beam, though it was not immune to the wider downturn and fell 4.6% on the year before. The brand has belonged to Brown-Forman since 1956. Every drop is still made in Lynchburg, Tennessee, at a distillery that dates back to 1866.
Jack Daniel’s is a Tennessee whiskey, not a bourbon, as the brand will steadfastly tell you. This comes down to one extra step. Before the new spirit goes into the barrel, it is filtered slowly through about ten feet of sugar maple charcoal, a process known as charcoal mellowing or the Lincoln County Process. This strips out the harsh oils and bitter notes from the whiskey. Every Tennessee whiskey brand (apart from one, with a notable historical exemption) is required to charcoal-mellow its whiskey.
Jack Daniel’s flagship, Old No.7, is made from a mash of 80% corn, 8% rye, and 12% malted barley, then aged in new charred oak and bottled at 40% ABV.
The taste is smooth and a little sweet, with vanilla, caramel, toasted oak, and the banana note that regular drinkers know well. There is a light touch of charcoal smoke underneath. A bottle runs around $15 to $25 in the US and roughly £25 to £30 in the UK.
1. Jim Beam
At the top of the list, and by a wide margin, sits Jim Beam. It sold 16.7 million nine-liter cases in 2025. Even so, it could not escape the year’s pressures, and sales fell 4.6%. The brand is owned by Suntory Global Spirits and made in Clermont, Kentucky, and the Beam family has been distilling whiskey there in one form or another since 1795.
The standard White Label is a Kentucky straight bourbon, aged a minimum of four years and bottled at 40% ABV. It uses the classic Beam mash bill of roughly 75% corn, 13% rye, and 12% malted barley. The flavor is light and approachable, with vanilla, caramel, a little oak, and the slightly nutty character that Beam is known for. It is an easy, everyday bourbon, as happy in a cocktail as it is over ice.
The headwinds facing the category showed up plainly at the end of 2025, when the company said it would pause distilling at its main Clermont site for all of 2026 to carry out work on the facility, shifting production to its other Kentucky plant in the meantime. For the brand that defines big-volume bourbon, it was a telling moment.
A bottle costs around $16 to $19 in the US and roughly £16 to £25 in the UK, which keeps it among the most affordable whiskeys on this entire list.
American Whiskey at a Crossroads
The pattern across this list is hard to miss. Almost every one of the heritage bourbons sold less in 2025 than the year before, held back by tariffs, full warehouses, and drinkers easing off after a long stretch of growth. The brands that bucked the trend, Bulleit with its slight gain and Bell Rock with its enormous one, are the exceptions rather than the rule.
None of it changes the fact that these are still some of the biggest whiskey brands in the world, selling tens of millions of cases between them. The real question is what happens next, once the trade disputes settle and the surplus of aging stock starts to clear. Whether the big names can return to growth, or whether value and flavored bottles keep gaining ground, is what the next set of figures will tell us.
What do you make of the list? Let us know in the comments.
Read the full article at The Top 10 American Whiskeys That Dominate the Global Market
