U.S. Giant MGP Sales Plummet
Published November 4, 2025 by John Fegan
MGP is one of the largest whiskey-making facilities in the United States, a place where industrial distillation has reached a scale that could only have been conceived by humans who felt copper, steam, and optimism should all exist in equal and incompatible quantities. They make whiskey for themselves, whisky for other brands and on optimistic days for people who havn’t even born yet. Whiskey comes out by the tanker-load, as do financial reports full of numbers that sound optimistic until you read them.
The latest report arrived with the forced cheer of a bartender announcing last call. Consolidated sales were down 19 percent to 130.9 million dollars. Gross profit dropped 25 percent. Net income fell 35 percent, which is the sort of number that makes executives say things like “strategic headwinds” instead of “oh no” while checking the help wanted ads.
Even EBITDA dropped 29 percent, which is impressive considering EBITDA is the number calculated after politely escorting anything inconvenient out the back door. If you had visited the distillery that day, you might have seen someone standing between two stills, staring at a printout and insisting that, from a certain angle, the downward trend could be interpreted as dynamic curvature.
The Problem With Brown Spirits
The company blamed the downturn on a decrease in “brown goods,” which is the industry’s delicately evasive way of saying “whiskey” in front of investors who have started looking at the exits. The market, they explained, has “cooled.” This means customers already have enough whiskey to last them through several winters, three existential crises, and at least one family reunion. The great pandemic boom, once a golden age of staying home and drinking responsibly alone, has matured into something more practical and warehouse-shaped.
Breakdown by Segment
Branded Spirits
Down 3 percent to 60.7 million dollars, although their premium labels managed a small victory, largely thanks to Penelope Bourbon, an acquisition that continues to act like the one horse in the race that actually remembers there is a finish line.
Distilling Solutions
Down 43 percent as several major clients decided they had enough whiskey stacked in warehouses to survive both a mild apocalypse and another 4 years of the covid pandemic. When the warehouses start echoing, accountants begin to pray.
Ingredient Solutions
Up 9 percent, because even in an uncaring universe, someone still needs wheat starch and protein. This is the dependable side of the business, the one quietly getting on with things while the rest are having an existential crisis about barrels and margins.
The Official Spin
Julie Francis, the company’s president and CEO, announced that the results demonstrated “resilience” and “continued delivery against key initiatives,” which, translated from Corporate into Human, means “it could be worse, please don’t sell everything before lunch.”
She went on to say that the decline in whiskey sales was “slightly better than anticipated,” which is a phrase that no one, anywhere, has ever written in a poem, a love letter, or a motivational poster.
A Small Shiny Thing
MGP did, however, have one splendid thing to announce, a tiny burst of excellence in an otherwise indifferent universe. Remus Gatsby Reserve, a fifteen-year-old high-rye bourbon bottled at cask strength, is back. It is rare, wonderful, and entirely irrelevant to the company’s financial reality, but it is also very good whiskey, and in the vast cold emptiness of quarterly reporting, that is as close to meaning as anyone ever gets.
What Happens Next
The whiskey market is slowing, stock is piling up, contracts are thinning out, and the prophets of perpetual profit have started replacing the word “growth” with phrases like “temporary plateau” and “strategic recalibration.” Yet MGP keeps the stills warm, the bottles moving, and the labels polished. They are still making bourbon impressive enough to convince everyone that this is not a fall but merely the sort of pause where the orchestra takes a deep breath before the next act.
There will, inevitably, be another quarter, another report, and another attempt to persuade reality that the straight, horizontal lines on the chart are simply gathering their strength for a thrilling new trajectory.
Until then, the stills stay hot, the warehouses stay full, and EBITDA remains in the corner pretending nothing is wrong.