Who owns VICTORIA BEER?

VICTORIA BEER is owned by

CONSTELLATION BRANDS

Inside of the United States

Not to be confused with Victoria (Nicaragua), Victoria Malaga

First Brewed

1906

Origin

Estado de México, Mexico

Website

Victoria beer is a popular brand of Mexican beer that was created in 1906 by the Compañía Cervecera de Toluca y México, S.A., based in Toluca, Estado de México. The brewery was started in 1865 by Agustin Marendaz, originally as a brewing supply shop. Marendaz was a Swiss immigrant who had been trained in the art of brewing. Soon it began making its own beer, and in 1875 it was purchased by Santiago Graf, also a Swiss immigrant.

The brewery had a full portfolio of German style beers by the 1890s, catering to the large population of German immigrants in the area. In 1906 it launched Victoria as a German style pilsner, and the beer quickly became the most popular in the brewery’s portfolio.

In 1935, Compañía Cervecera de Toluca y México was purchased by Cervecería Modelo, what later became known as Grupo Modelo. On the day of the purchase, Martín Oyamburu Arce, Modelo’s president at the time, purchased advertisements in every newspaper in Mexico that read, “Victory is ours.” That phrase later became the slogan for the Victoria brand.

Grupo Modelo spent much of the twentieth century acquiring other Mexican breweries, and quickly became the largest brewery in the country. The company went public in 1994, placing 13% of its shares on the Mexican stock exchange. In 2013, Grupo Modelo was purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev, a Belgian-Brazilian multinational beverage and brewing company. However, due to anti-trust concerns raised by the US Justice Department, AB InBev was prohibited from selling the beer and several other Grupo Modelo products in the United States. As a result, the rights to sell Victoria in the United States were sold to Constellation Brands, which is now Anheuser-Busch InBev’s largest competitor in the American market.