From Beam Suntory’s portfolio to a Minnesota family company.

Kamora is a coffee liqueur. English Wikipedia, citing the brand’s website, describes it as a liqueur made with coffee from Mexico and bottled at 20% alcohol by volume (40 proof). For years it sat in the portfolio of Beam Suntory.

That changed in 2021. The Spirits Business reported on 2 November 2021 that Beam Suntory had agreed to sell Kamora, together with the brandy and liqueur brand Leroux, to the Phillips Distilling Company of Minnesota for an undisclosed sum, with the deal expected to close by the end of that year. Greg Hughes, then Beam Suntory’s president for North America, said Phillips was “the right home to support these brands in the future.” Andy England, Phillips’ chief executive, said: “Acquiring Leroux and Kamora is a natural fit for what we do best.” English Wikipedia records the brand as sold to Phillips in 2021, and Phillips Distilling has owned Kamora since that deal.

The buyer has a long history of its own. English Wikipedia says the business was founded in 1912 by Ed Phillips as Ed Phillips & Sons in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and later moved to Minneapolis. Ed Phillips sold the company to the conglomerate Alco Standard in 1971, the encyclopedia says, and after a buyout in the mid-1980s it was renamed Phillips Distilling. It is privately held by the Phillips family and based in Princeton, Minnesota; Dean Phillips, the encyclopedia notes, was its president and chief executive from 2000 to 2012.

Mexican coffee, a Minnesota bottling line and a liqueur built around a party.

Kamora’s own website leans on Mexico for its story. It says the liqueur is “inspired by centuries of rich, invigorating Mexican flavors” and describes the coffee liqueur as “the real taste of Mexican coffee,” full-flavoured and dark-roasted. The small print is more specific about where the bottle comes from: the site’s footer says Kamora Coffee Liqueur is produced and bottled by Ed Phillips & Sons Co. in Princeton, Minnesota — Ed Phillips & Sons being the original name of the company that became Phillips Distilling.

Alongside the coffee liqueur, the website now lists Kamora Dulce de Leche, a creamy, caramel-flavoured liqueur that the company says is made with real tequila and bottled at 17% alcohol by volume. The two are presented together in cocktail recipes, including a Caramel Espresso Martini that uses both, and the site promotes a Tequila Espresso Martini that pairs the coffee liqueur with tequila. Other recipes carry names in the same spirit — a layered shot called the Mind Eraser, a tequila-and-espresso shot called Wake the Dead and a bourbon drink called the Kamora Revolver — and a simple serve on the site mixes one part tequila with one part Kamora.

The tone of the brand is festive rather than formal. The homepage opens with a run of short lines — the liqueur is “created according to a tradition of undeniable quality,” “proud to carry on a legacy of festivity and warmth” and “ready to electrify the nights and days ahead.” The website then invites drinkers to “meet the spirit of celebration,” calls its store locator “Where’s the fiesta?” and frames each recipe as a reason to shake things up.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all coffee or cream liqueurs: Mr Black, Carolans, Saint Brendan’s, Kamora, Caffè Borghetti, Dooley’s and Coole Swan. Some are sweetened spirits flavoured with coffee; others blend dairy cream with a spirit such as Irish whiskey. Brands like these sit at many different points in the trade, from small independent companies to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and the same bottle can turn up on a supermarket shelf, in an airport shop or behind a cocktail bar.

A liqueur brand’s identity is usually carried less by the liquid than by a bottle, a label and the story it tells, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or licensed its name to others. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who created it, who owns it now, and where it is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its liqueur is made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A redesign by Cue and a new owner’s portfolio.

The packaging was rethought by the agency Cue. The Dieline reported on 19 January 2024 that the redesign gave Kamora a high-energy look inspired by ancient Mayan tradition, with vibrant red hues paired with rich coffee tones, gold patterning inspired by the sun and a bold wordmark. The aim, the magazine said, was to invigorate the brand and appeal to younger drinkers; the agency described its response this way: “We responded by creating a new, high-energy expression designed to compete with its main competitor, Kahlúa.”

Under Phillips, Kamora sits in a portfolio of flavoured spirits and cordials. When the deal was announced, Andy England said that “the consumption of cordials and liqueurs in the United States continues to grow steadily,” The Spirits Business reported, and the magazine noted that Phillips had unveiled a vodka designed to be stored in the freezer only a few months earlier, in August 2021. The Spirits Business noted in its 2021 report that Phillips also owned UV Vodka, Prairie Organic Spirits and the liqueurs Sour Puss and Butter Ripple, and that the company says it introduced Peppermint Schnapps in the 1930s and Root Beer Schnapps to the United States in 1984. The Kamora website now carries a Phillips Distilling Company copyright line, and its recipes also call for Revel Stoke whisky, another brand English Wikipedia lists in the Phillips portfolio.

For a design guide, Kamora shows how a coffee liqueur can use colour, a sun motif and a heavy wordmark to stand out on a crowded shelf; compare Kahlúa, the Veracruz coffee liqueur it was redesigned to compete with, and UV Vodka, its Phillips stablemate. For this guide we use fiesta red, dark roast and sun gold with a heavy sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Kamora’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.