Who owns PACIFICO?

PACIFICO is owned by

CONSTELLATION BRANDS

Inside of the United States

Not to be confused with Pacific Brewing, Pacific Brewing & Malting, Pacific Sparkling

First Brewed

1900

Origin

Sinaloa, Mexico

Website

Originally created in 1900, Cerveza Pacifico Clara (commonly known as Pacifico) is a Mexican beer brand that was founded in the city of Mazatlán, located on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It was established by Jorge Claussen, Germán Evers and Emilio Philipy, a group of German brewers who immigrated to Mexico decades prior. The men were drawn to the country as part of a wave of German immigration to Mexico during the reign of Maximilian I, an Austrian archduke who ruled from 1864 to 1867. The brewery was originally known as Cervercería del Pacifico.

The company was purchased by Grupo Modelo in 1954. Founded in 1925, Modelo also owned Compañía Cervecera de Toluca y México (now out of operation), and later that same year purchased La Estrella Brewery.

In the 1970s, the beer started to became popular in the United States after a group of surfers became enamored with the beer during their periodic trips to Baja California. They began bringing back cases of Pacifico Clara on their drives back over the border, which soon inspired Grupo Modelo to begin exporting the beer to the United States. Soon, the company embraced the surfer aesthetic, and took on the slogan, “Discovered in Baja, Imported by Surfers.”

In 2013, Grupo Modelo was purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev, a Belgian-Brazilian multinational beverage and brewing company, and the largest in the world. However, due to anti-trust concerns raised by the US Justice Department, rights to sell Modelo in the United States were sold to Constellation Brands. As a result, Constellation produces the beer in Mexico and imports it to the United States, while Anheuser-Busch InBev also produces it in Mexico for service to the rest of the world outside of the United States.