The Billion-Dollar Tequila That Was Never Supposed to Be a Business

George Clooney and his friend Rande Gerber (married to Cindy Crawford) had a simple problem: they couldn't find a tequila they actually liked. So they started making their own.

For two years, Casamigos — "house of friends" — existed only as bottles passed around at dinner parties and pool gatherings. There was no business plan, no investors, no marketing budget. Just two guys in a garage perfecting a recipe.

Then their distillery called. They were ordering 1,000 bottles a year and told Clooney and Gerber they either needed to get a proper license or stop production entirely. Reluctantly, they formed a company.

In 2017, four years after officially launching, Diageo — the world's largest spirits company — bought Casamigos for $1 billion, with an additional $700 million tied to performance milestones. It was one of the largest spirits acquisitions in history, for a brand that was never supposed to exist.

The money changed Clooney's generosity, not his personality. In 2013, before the Casamigos sale, he had invited 14 of his closest friends to dinner. He handed each of them a black suitcase. Inside each was $1 million in $20 bills — a total of $14 million. These were the people who had lent him money, given him a couch to sleep on, or helped him when he was a struggling actor with nothing.

He paid the gift taxes himself so his friends kept every cent. And he drove the cash across Los Angeles in a beat-up van with "Florist" written on the side, because carrying $14 million in suitcases apparently requires some discretion.

Correction (March 22, 2026): An earlier version of this fact implied the suitcase gifts came after the Casamigos sale. The $14 million in gifts was given in September 2013, likely from Gravity film earnings. The Casamigos sale to Diageo was in 2017. These were separate events. The article above has always reflected the correct timeline.