The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails Definition of The Seagram Company Ltd.

The Seagram Company Ltd. was one of the most dominant names in the spirits business in the twentieth century. It was led by the Bronfman family, who started out as tobacco farmers in Russia but emigrated to Canada in the late nineteenth century, where they became involved in the mail-order whisky trade. In the early 1920s, led by Samuel (1889–1971), the family established a distillery at LaSalle, in suburban Montreal. On the basis of that, they were able to elicit a $2.5 million investment in their Distillers Corporation Limited from Scotland’s mighty DCL (Distillers Company Limited; it is unlikely that the similarity in names was coincidental). See Distillers Company Ltd (DCL). That enabled them to buy out another Canadian distillery, owned by Joseph E. Seagram & Sons. Seagram (1841–1920) had made a success of his VO brand, but the business struggled after his death. As “Distillers Corporation-Seagrams Ltd.” the Bronfmans’ growing firm was initially very successful, with $2.2 million in profits in 1929 (it would change its name again in 1975, to Seagram Company Limited). Reports suggest those profits had a lot to do with Prohibition in the United States; the Bronfmans certainly had no problem selling to bootleggers. “Of course we knew where it went,” he would tell a later interviewer.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, the company was also in a good position because Sam Bronfman had stockpiled a considerable amount of aged whisky. Since DCL didn’t want to enter the United States market and Seagram did, the Bronfmans were able to buy their partner out and gain complete autonomy. Using that aged whisky, Seagram focused on high-quality blends in the Canadian style, although some of them were made at new distilleries in the United States. Among the brands that the company launched and promoted under its umbrella were Seagram’s 7 Crown, an American blend that used aged neutral spirit contrary to American practice, and the Canadian blend Crown Royal (introduced in 1939). See Crown Royal.

The 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s saw the company grow rapidly until it had thirty-nine distilleries in fifteen countries, including thirteen in the United States and seven in Canada. The company’s dozens and dozens of brands included Captain Morgan rum, Chivas Regal scotch whisky, and Sandeman ports and sherries. See Chivas Regal. It also owned eighteen wineries and an oil company in Texas. Thanks to an aggressive education and quality-control program, many of the company’s brands were among the most respected of their kind (as early as 1940, Seagram had published a company-wide distillers’ manual for its production staff, showcasing state-of-the-art techniques and even over-the-horizon ones such as the use of aspergillus fungus as a fermentation starter). See Aspergillus oryzae.

Eventually, the company became known for far more than spirits—besides wine and oil, it also invested heavily in chemicals, owning 25 percent of DuPont, and the entertainment business. By then, of course, Samuel Bronfman was long gone, and other members of the Bronfman family were in charge, chiefly his grandson Edgar Bronfman Jr. It was his decision to acquire an 80 percent share in MCA Inc., now Universal Studios Inc. It proved to be a notoriously bad one, and in 2000 Seagram, whose spirits business still made it the world’s third-largest liquor company, was forced to sell to the French conglomerate Vivendi SA, for $42 billion. In turn, Vivendi sold off Seagram’s spirits brands to Diageo PLC and Pernod-Ricard SA, two other industry heavyweights. See Diageo and Pernod-Ricard. Seagram’s history was effectively over, a turn of events that Samuel Bronfman’s son, Charles, who rose through the ranks to become Seagram co-chairman, later regretted. “It was a family tragedy,” he told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper in 2013.

The Seagram Company Ltd.

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