Gambrinus Founder, Philanthropist Carlos Alvarez Has Died

Beer industry veteran Carlos Alvarez, who founded the Gambrinus Company and was the first to import Corona Extra to the U.S., died this week. Beer Business Daily first reported the news this morning, citing an internal message at the brewery, and other outlets, including the San Antonio Express-News, followed.

Alvarez was a second-generation beer industry employee, as his father founded a Corona distributor in his home city of Acapulco, Mexico, according to his bio in the Texas Business Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 2010. Alvarez left his father’s company to work in exporting at Grupo Modelo.

“In 1981, he took Corona Extra to the United States and with no marketing budget and sold the first Corona cases in Austin, Texas, where hand-selling got the beer its initial distribution in bars and restaurants,” Alvarez’s Hall of Fame bio reads. “From these grassroots efforts, Corona captured the consumers’ imagination and experienced unprecedented growth becoming the number-one imported beer in the U.S. in 1997.”

Alvarez founded Gambrinus in 1986 to import Corona and other Grupo Modelo brands. Three years later, the company acquired Spoetzl Brewery, the maker of Shiner Bock and then the oldest independent brewery in Texas, according to the Hall of Fame.

Gambrinus sold the Modelo portfolio in the eastern half of the U.S. for 20 years, until Grupo Modelo forced Gambrinus to sell the rights to its brands in arbitration in 2006, according to an archived story from Modern Brewery Age. Later that year, Constellation Brands, which sold the Mexican imports in the western half of the country, acquired the rights to sell Modelo products nationwide, which paved the way for the company to eventually own the brands in the U.S. under a licensing agreement with Anheuser-Busch InBev.

At the time, Spoetzl “was at risk of going out of business” and “hanging by a thread,” but under Alvarez’s investment and guidance the company grew to be the country’s fifth largest craft brewer by volume in 2022, the most recent year for which Brewers Association (BA) data is available.

The Gambrinus umbrella grew to include Berkeley, California-based Trumer; Portland, Oregon-based BridgePort; and Pete’s Wicked Ales. However, a changing craft industry forced the closure of the latter two in 2019 and 2011, respectively.

In 2022, Gambrinus’ brands (Shiner and Trumer) produced 492,320 barrels of beer, and accounted for 2.03% of all BA-defined independent craft beer, according to the trade group.

Alvarez and his wife Malú Alvarez donated $20 million to the business school of the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), which rechristened it as the Alvarez College of Business, the university’s first named college.

Alvarez was a prolific advisor and board member. He was named a public director of National Public Radio in 2019, and also served on the board of Davidson College, and the World Affairs Council’s national board and San Antonio board.

In 2011, Alvarez received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which the Ellis Island Honors Society confers upon leaders who have “made freedom, liberty and compassion a part of their life’s work.”