Brown-Forman: A Fortune 1000 Spirits Giant Rebuilds Its Digital Foundation

Brown-Forman is a publicly traded, family-controlled spirits and wine company headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. Founded in 1870, the company has been on the Fortune 1000 list of America's largest corporations for decades.

Brown-Forman sells more than 40 brands in over 170 countries, and its portfolio includes some of the most recognized names in spirits: Jack Daniel's, Woodford Reserve, Old Forester, Herradura, Korbel, and Chambord, among others. Each brand relies on a website built to perform under real-world pressure, especially in moments when the world is watching.

Pantheon hosts Brown-Forman's brand sites, including Jack Daniel's and Woodford Reserve, on a single platform for WordPress, Drupal, and Next.js.

The Challenge: Outgrowing a Self-Managed Hosting Setup

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For years, Brown-Forman's web team hosted many websites internally, managing the servers, tools, and security behind its growing lineup of WordPress and Drupal sites. Scott Riehl, Manager of Interactive Technology at Brown-Forman, watched that do-it-yourself setup evolve alongside the business, and for a while it kept pace.

But running everything in-house meant the team owned every patch, every tool update, and every security fix. As the sites grew more complex, that upkeep took more time and attention, and it was not the setup Riehl's team wanted to keep scaling. The team started looking for a cloud-hosting partner that could take on the operational and security work, freeing them to focus on the brands rather than the servers underneath them. 

Big events made the case especially clear. Woodford Reserve has sponsored the Kentucky Derby for years, and every Derby day sent a surge of traffic to the brand's site that tested the self-managed setup—one more sign that Brown-Forman needed one governed platform for moving fast while staying in control. Pantheon now keeps Woodford Reserve's site online through the Kentucky Derby traffic spike each year, so the team no longer watches the servers on the day that matters most.

The Solution: A Next.js Build for Jack Daniel’s

When Brown-Forman decided it was time to modernize, the company turned to Pantheon. The shift gave the team Pantheon's container-based hosting, which runs WordPress and Drupal and scales on its own when traffic climbs. This provided Riehl and his team with exactly the flexibility they needed as the technology behind managing websites kept evolving.

Pantheon has also opened the door to newer technology. JackDaniels.com now runs as a Next.js site powered by Pantheon, giving the brand a modern foundation for its campaigns. Watch the brand's story evolution in this video:

The Innovation: Freeing Brand Storytelling from Infrastructure Worries

Brown-Forman's story shows what happens when brand storytelling stands on infrastructure built to keep pace with it. Riehl put it simply: the moments that matter most, such as the Derby Day spikes and the campaign launches, are where infrastructure earns its keep.

With Pantheon supporting both its established WordPress and Drupal sites and newer builds like JackDaniels.com on Next.js, Brown-Forman keeps the platforms that have served its brands for years while stepping confidently into what comes next. The company can focus on delivering the brand experiences its customers expect, wherever and whenever they show up.