The Curious Bartender's Agave Safari E-Book

Tristan Stephenson

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 624

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

DISCOVER the HERITAGE of AGAVE-BASED SPIRITS in the first all-new book in five years by Tristan Stephenson, master mixologist, spirit entrepreneur and AWARD-WINNING BESTSELLING author of the Curious Bartender series of books. This book is an account of Tristan's remarkable JOURNEY through SIX MEXICAN STATES and into the heartlands of AGAVE SPIRIT production to discover the spirit of Mexico in every sense. It is a physical, geographical journey, but also a historical, cultural and spiritual one. Along the way Tristan explores different producers, tell their stories and shares their philosophies, as well as the story of Mexican spirit: its food, cocktails, music, geography and politics. By the end he has provided the reader with a strong taste of what makes this country so special and what makes agave spirits one of the most exciting of all the world's spirit categories today. Also included are perfected recipes for Tristan's pick of the finest agave spirit drinks there are, including the legendary Margarita, Paloma and Batida as well as modern classics Tommy's Margarita and Tinglet.

Leseprobe

BARTENDER’S

AGAVE SAFARI

BARTENDER’S

AGAVE SAFARI

DISCOVERING AND APPRECIATING MEXICO’S TEQUILAS, MEZCALS & MORE

TRISTAN STEPHENSON

Designer: Geoff Borin

Editor: Nathan Joyce

Editorial director: Julia Charles

Head of production: Patricia Harrington

Creative director: Leslie Harrington

Indexer: Hilary Bird

Photographer: Addie Chinn

Published in 2025 by

Ryland Peters & Small

20–21 Jockey’s Fields

London WC1R 4BW

and

1452 Davis Bugg Road

Warrenton, NC 27589

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text copyright © Tristan Stephenson 2025

Design and commissioned photography

© Ryland Peters & Small 2025

All photography by Addie Chinn with the exception of page 7 (Adobe: asantosg); pages 8, 34, 78, 108, 148, 164, 188 (Adobe: orxcan); spine, endpapers and page 222 (Adobe: channarongsds)

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-78879-679-8

E-ISBN: 978-1-78879-698-9

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

US Library of Congress CIP data has been applied for.

Printed in China

CONTENTS

Introduction

THE TEQUILA VALLEY

LOS ALTOS

BACK TO THE TEQUILA VALLEY

RAICILLA COUNTRY

SOUTHERN JALISCO

MICHOACÁN

OAXACA

DRINKS

Epilogue

Index

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

The passenger footwell of our trusty VW Jetta has in it two legs (mine), a laptop and a few books, a collection of empty beer bottles, plus half a dozen bottles of partially consumed mezcal, tequila and raicilla. There are many more bottles clinking together in the boot and more that didn’t make it this far. Over the past few weeks we have travelled through six Mexican states, discovering the spirit of Mexico in every sense of the term. Addie is in the back, camera in each hand as usual. He gasps at something beautiful out of the window – an impressive giant cardon cactus on this occasion – and the camera shutter clicks. Addie remarks for the thousandth time that there won’t be enough pages in this book to fit all of his photos.

In the driver’s seat is Pancho, whose ringing falsetto impressively matches Javier Solís’ “Esclave y Amo” even as we suddenly swerve to avoid a pot hole in the road. Pancho is ostensibly our driver and translator, but to describe him that way would dramatically undersell his capability and character. Yes, he’s the tequila industry’s go-to guy for taxis and interpretation, but, with 16 years’ experience of shuttling tequila nerds across Mexico, he has also built a vast knowledge of agave spirits matched only by his passion for sharing it. He also happens to own the best agave spirits bar in Guadalajara: Farmacia Rita Pérez.

Then there is me. Over the past 20 years, I have travelled to 100 countries and over 500 distilleries, seeking out spirit makers and attempting to understand how they make alcohol and why they make it. One thing that I have consistently found is that spirits have a deep connection to the environmental and cultural history of a place. The nature of a spirit captures the history and politics of a region in its methods of production as well as its legislative control. It speaks of tradition handed down between generations, of community and survival. Our spirits inspire songs and stories, mark rites of passage and toasts to the dead, not to mention the fact that they capture the flavours of the plants with which we share the land.

In this last week I sampled a mezcal made by a teenager in rural Michoacán. He’s the sixth generation of his family to produce agave spirits. The drink had been distilled from wild agave harvested on nearby mountain slopes along with the body of a coyote.

The week before that we shared a meal with four generations of the same family who were making the agave spirit raicilla on a small ranch in the mountains of western Jalisco. Numerous types of agave were growing all around us. The children played around the fermentation vats while the mothers made salsa and cooked tortillas on an open fire and the men packed a paste of agave fibres around the edge of a tiny copper still to seal it shut. All while the sweet, vegetal smell of cooked agave filled the air and the pungent, green, smack of raicilla coated our mouths. A few days before that we experienced a drug-like “high” from mezcal that cannot legally be called a mezcal made on the foothills of the Colima volcano, which may be where agave spirits first originated.

We have shared beers and mezcal with jimadores (agave farmers) cutting razor-sharp agaves on dusty hills in Michoacán, and sipped $300 (£230) tequilas with the grandest families in Jalisco, the culturally rich and economically vital Mexican state which, besides being the home of tequila, is also the birthplace of mariachi music. We have mixed mezcal and tequila in every conceivable way, visited and tasted hundreds of products ranging from those produced by multinational-owned mega-distilleries to the painstakingly small outputs from some of the most humble and hard-to-get-to distilleries in the world. We have witnessed a culture built around agave spirits and a respect for a plant that may be unparalleled in its depth and significance. Hardly surprising, as the indigenous Nahuatl of western Mexico literally worshipped the agave, in the form of the 100-breasted god Mayahuel. It’s a bold statement, but I do not think anywhere in the world has a deeper connection with their native spirit than Mexico.

You’re reading this book so you probably already have a good idea of what tequila and mezcal taste like. Hopefully you have already overcome the challenging circumstances of first contact that many of us experience, which tends to take place in a dingy nightclub or at the back of your friend’s parents liquor cabinet, always with a bad-quality product and usually followed by sickness and a hangover. Hopefully you have enjoyed your first sip of authentically produced tequila or mezcal that opens up a new world of flavour for exploration.

For me that happened many years ago, but my journey through Mexico has challenged my preconceptions and broadened my appreciation much further than I thought possible. The diversity of agaves, production styles, culture and scale mean that the agave spirits’ category is impossibly big to explore in its entirety and that new interpretations or revivals of old practices are occurring constantly.

This book is a journey through some of the heartlands of agave spirits production. It is a physical, geographical journey, but also a historical, cultural and spiritual one. On the way we will explore different producers, and their stories and philosophies, as well as the story of Mexican spirit: its food, cocktails, music, geography and politics. By the end I hope to have provided you with a strong taste of what makes this country so special and what makes agave spirits one of the most exciting of all the world’s spirits. Above all I hope that it makes you curious to embark on your own journey through the flavour of Mexico.

THE TEQUILA VALLEY

On the approach to the town of Tequila, the landscape transforms into vast fields of blue agave plants, stretching out like a spiky sea under the warm Mexican sun. The town itself exudes a charming, rustic vibe, with cobbled streets and colonial buildings painted in vibrant colours. The air is often filled with the sweet, treacle aroma of cooking agave such is the number of distilleries in the area. This means that the drive into Tequila is not just scenic, but a gateway to a rich, cultural heritage centered around Mexico’s most famous spirit.

JOSE CUERVO

La Primera

Tequila is one of countless regional agave spirits produced in Mexico that have in the past been known collectively as vino de mezcal or mezcals. Vino de mezcal from in and around the town of Tequila began to prosper and garner recognition around the mid-19th century through a combination of factors, including a ready supply of fermentable material (agaves), wealthy land owners looking to capitalise on local demand for alcohol, and a favourable trading network to transport it into the US. In time, vino de mezcal de Tequila was shortened, first to mezcal de Tequila and eventually to just “tequila”.

On my first trip to Jalisco 15 years ago, I was hosted by Jose Cuervo as part of a small crew of bartenders from the UK. We spent the better part of a week in Guadalajara (the Jaliscan capital), the town of Tequila itself and other parts of the Tequila-Amatitán Valley. Located an hour west of Guadalajara, the valley is the historical birthplace of tequila, and it gets its name from the Volcán de Tequila, a 2,920m (9,500ft) dormant volcano, named for the Hispanicised tequitlan, which means “place of work” in the Nahua language. To the north of the volcano, we find the three main hubs of tequila production in the area: Tequila, Amatitán and El Arenal.

Santiago de Tequila (as Tequila town was originally known) was founded in 1530 by Franciscan friars in an attempt to culturally assimilate the indigenous populace. The locals fiercely resisted Spanish encroachment, engaging in guerrilla warfare and using their knowledge of the rugged volcano and canyons as natural fortifications. Resistance was futile, however, and many were forced into encomiendas (a system of forced labour) or repartimientos (distributions of indigenous workers to Spanish landowners). The indigenous populations were slowly subjugated but their knowledge and cultural recognition of the agave was never lost.

During our stay we learned that tequila is made from the blue Weber agave, a variety native to Mexico that belongs to one of almost 300 identified agave species. Contrary to popular opinion, agaves are succulents, not cactuses. Comprising a rosette of barbed, fibrous, spear-like leaves known as pencas, the blue Weber agave takes five to seven years to reach full maturity, by which point it is around two metres (6ft) high and about the same in width. Proper maturation is usually indicated by the sudden protrusion of a quiote – a central stem that extends upwards of four metres. This stem, which looks like a supersized asparagus (agave is a relative of asparagus) quickly flowers for pollination, produces some seeds, and then the whole plant dies. One of the jobs of the agave farmer, or jimador, is to capón (castrate) the quiote before it flowers. This redirects the energy the plant had intended to use for reproduction to amass in the base of the plant. The jimador then cuts away the outer leaves and roots, leaving behind a large egg-shaped mass called a piña, named for its visual similarity to a pineapple. The piña is the heart of the agave plant and the basic material from which all agave spirits, including tequila, are made.

The rest of the process is fairly straightforward in its premise but, as we will see, can be achieved in a multitude of ways, each of which affects the outcome and thus the taste and quality of the spirit. Generally speaking though, the piña is cooked to convert its starches into sugars and then milled or mashed up to release its juices. These juices are fermented to create a kind of agave wine called mosto, which is then distilled through a process of evaporation followed by concentration to make a spirit. This spirit is put in oak barrels and aged for two to 12 months and bottled as reposado (rested) or for one to three years when it becomes añejo (aged). For more than three years, it’s extra-añejo. Un-aged tequila is a blanco, and if you blend blanco with an aged tequila it’s known as joven (young). All tequila must be bottled between 35 and 55% ABV for the Mexican market and over 40% for the US market.

We drive deeper into the belly of Tequila and our passage slows. The streets are alive with barrel-shaped tequila tour buses, taco stands, hat sellers and, of course, tequila bars. What was 150 years ago a quiet rural village with a handful of vino de mezcal producers has become something of a tequila theme park. The tequila market is growing at around 5% a year, fuelled by the revival of cocktail culture, celebrity endorsements and brand ownership, a rising number of super-premium tequilas, and increased interest in authentically produced spirits and in Mexican culture.

The tequila market is expected to grow from roughly $12bn (£9bn) in 2024 to $19bn (£14.5bn) by 2032. Mexico and the US are responsible for around 95% of the global market, with the US spending $7bn (£5.5bn) on it in 2024. Tequila and agave spirits are set to become the biggest spirit category in the US, having eclipsed American whiskey in 2022 and very likely toppling vodka – America’s favourite spirit for over half a century – by the time you read this.

To that end, the small town of Tequila earned the title of a pueblo mágico or “magic city” by the Mexican government, denoting its importance for tourism-related development. Partnering with the National Geographic Society and Mondo Cuervo, the government plans to turn Tequila into a cutting-edge, interactive tourist hotspot.

To our left we pass the office of the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT). Established in 1994, the CRT is a private non-profit company certified by the Mexican government to oversee the production, labelling and marketing of tequila in accordance with the Norma Oficial Mexicana (NOM), which lays out the rules as to how products should be made.

The NOM states that tequila must be made from a minimum of 51% blue agave with the remaining balance coming from non-agave sources such as cane sugar or molasses. To be called 100% blue agave tequila, it must be made from 100% blue agave with no other sugars added during fermentation. Additives such as colourings, sweeteners and glycerin (used to improve texture) are permitted up to 1% of the total volume. In addition to the NOM, there is the Denominación de Origen (DO), which sets out where tequila can be made, currently including 181 municipalities across five Mexican states comprising all of Jalisco and certain municipalities in the states of Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit and Tamaulipas. We’ll delve deeper into these often controversial economic, political and geocultural topics later in our journey.

The CRT office in Tequila is actually quite small, with the main office located in the urban sprawl of Guadalajara. I got the chance to have a quick look around on a previous trip, where I saw the four statues of the “Founding Families” of tequila in the office courtyard: Cuervo, Sauza, Peña (of the Herradura brand) and Orendain.

Cuervo is of course the most recognisable name in tequila history. The family story traces back to 1758 when José Antonio Cuervo Valdés acquired land in Tequila, complete with a distillery. He made vino de mezcal at this distillery for some years but his ambitions were thwarted in 1785 when King Charles III of Spain imposed a ban on alcohol production to boost revenue from wines and brandies imported from Spain. It’s possible, if not likely, that Cuervo kept producing spirit illegally, because when Charles IV lifted the ban in 1795, he immediately granted José Antonio’s son, José María Guadalupe de Cuervo y Montaño, a permit to cultivate and distil agave at the apparently ready-to-go Taberna de Cuervo.

When José Guadalupe died, the company passed to his children and then son-in-law, José Vicente Albino Rojas. Vicente changed the name of the distillery to La Rojeña (The Red Place) and spearheaded modernisation efforts, ramping up production in the process. By 1823 La Rojeña was turning over 400 barrels of vino mezcal de tequila a week. That’s 10,000 bottles, though bottles were not used until 1880 when, under the control of the seasoned distiller Jesus Flores, La Rojeña tequila became the first tequila to be packaged in glass.

Following Jesus Flores’ passing, his widow Ana González-Rubio inherited La Rojeña. In 1900 she married one of the distillery’s trusted administrators, José Cuervo Labastida, the great-grandson of the distillery’s founder. Shortly after, the company rebranded its tequila as the now-iconic Jose Cuervo. (Take note: if you want your spirit brand to go stratospheric be sure to give it a man’s name beginning with ‘J’. Johnnie Walker and Jack Daniel’s can testify to this.)

While many of their competitors went bust or fled the country during the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), Ana and José profited enormously, buying up huge swathes of land securing agave supply for decades to come. Later on in the 20th century, the company passed down through a further two generations, into the control of the Beckmann family who oversaw massive global expansion. Since 2007 Jose Cuervo has traded as a public company but the Beckmanns remain the largest shareholders, and are among the richest families in Mexico.

Today, Jose Cuervo stands as the oldest continuously operating tequila company with verifiable records and is the biggest tequila brand in the world. In 2023, the company sold 9.2 million cases of tequila – just under 20% of the entire category and roughly the same as the next three biggest brands (Patrón, Don Julio and Casamigos) put together. The fifth-biggest brand, 1800, is also a Jose Cuervo brand, as is another of the top-ten sellers, Centenario.

As we continue our drive into Tequila, we near the end of the road. Spanish cedars with their trunks painted white traverse the street and lush potted plants adorn the pavements. Seemingly everyone is wearing a sombrero as the sun beats down on the cobbled street. Dead ahead of us is Jose Cuervo’s mustard-coloured fortress, La Rojeña, taking up a massive block of land on the western edge of the town. Big as it may be, it is entirely proportionate to the brand’s economic and touristic clout in the region. With its ornate stone paving, manicured gardens and bronze statues of its founders, La Rojeña is one of the most beautiful distilleries in Mexico. But visitors may get the sense that they are missing something. That “something” is Jose Cuervo’s closed-gated Los Camichines distillery, 100km (60 miles) away to the east of Guadalajara. That’s the real Cuervo workhorse, and the largest distillery in Mexico. There’s another distillery in pipeline too, to help process the 15 million agave plants that they own across something like 400 sq. km (150 sq. miles) of land.

Jose Cuervo has produced some great tequilas over the years, with its Reserva De La Familia Extra Añejo blend remaining one of the finest looking and tasting aged tequilas on the market in my opinion. But the vast majority of the portfolio is produced at a scale that sacrifices authenticity and quality. And that doesn’t even begin to get into the murky waters of agriculture, sustainability and transparency – but brace yourself, because we will get there. First though, it’s time for a drink.

Heading south through Tequila town on Calle Hidalgo we pull up outside one of the most famous tequila bars in the world: La Capilla. Capilla is Spanish for “chapel”, which is fitting as this bar commands a near holy reverence among tequila pilgrims. There’s scaffolding on the walls and two artists are standing high above the doors, working on a huge mural depicting the smiling face of the bar’s late owner, Don Javier Delgado, who died in 2020.

Javier was born in Tequila and born into tequila, being surrounded by it from an early age. When Javier was still quite young, his father acquired a billiards hall in Tequila town and Javier worked behind the bar, cleaning glasses and wiping tables. Though the exact opening date of the billiards hall isn’t clear, it’s said that Javier spent at least 70 of his 96 years behind the bar, if not more.

Following his father’s passing, Javier didn’t have enough money to keep the billiards hall going, so it closed down and Javier transformed his father’s old house at 33 Calle Hidalgo into a humble cantina bar, which he named affectionately La Capilla. Javier was a religious man and La Capilla’s name reflected that. But for tequila lovers, it took on a different meaning. La Capilla, with its simple yet inviting ambience, was Javier’s sanctuary. Decorated with mismatched furniture, sporting trophies, a modest selection of tequilas, one risqué 1970s glamour poster and, in later years, a gallery of framed photographs of the bar industry’s fallen friends, it was a haven for locals and visitors alike. In 2011, it was rightfully crowned the 16th best bar in the world – a testament to Don Javier’s enduring legacy.

I was fortunate enough to visit La Capilla a couple of times while Don Javier was alive. On the first occasion our group spent around two hours drinking tequila and talking to the locals, culminating in a chilli-eating contest with Javier’s friends who were sat at the bar. That ended with me hiccuping/convulsing outside on the street, but not before I paid our tab and requested a receipt for our drinks from Javier. As far as I’m aware, La Capilla didn’t have a till system back then and therefore no way of producing receipts, so Javier, apparently having never been asked for one before, hand-wrote our check on a piece of A4 paper. It read “16 batangas, 5 coronas: 600 pesos”. I still have that piece of paper and it’s a treasured possession.

On this visit, it’s early in the day and the bar is quiet as we take our seats around a flimsy white plastic picnic table and order three Batangas. La Capilla became famous in part as the home of this cocktail, a simple mixture of tequila, coke and fresh lime stirred with a knife and served with a salt rim. Don Javier is credited with inventing the Batanga, though Mexicans have been enjoying tequila and coke with a splash of lime for longer even than Javier was around. Pancho tells us that another, even simpler, way of mixing coke and tequila is La Coquitas, where you buy a bottle of coke, take a swig and then top the bottle up with tequila.

Sugared, caffeinated, a little hydrated, and very much adulterated, we pay our bill and leave La Capilla. The car had turned into an oven while we cooled down, but fortunately our next stop is just a short walk to the home of Tequila Arette.

ARETTE

la Familia

A couple of blocks’ walk from La Capilla is El Llano distillery, where Tequila Arette is made. El Llano inhabits a beauty of a building, modelled in the colonial style and painted in sage-green and white with coordinating telegraph poles, and green wooden gates big enough to fit a truck full of agave through. It is owned, as it always has been, by the Orendain family, who are counted as one of the four Founding Families of tequila that I mentioned in the last chapter. Today, the Orendains stand as the only 100% independent, family-owned tequila makers of those original four.

The Orendain tequila history goes back to 1900 when Don Eduardo Orendain combined two smaller distilleries, El Llanito and La Conceptcion, into a new operation called El Llano. His tequila sold well, and in 1926 he expanded his operation, renovating a run-down distillery called La Mexicana on the western edge of town. In time most of the production moved there and it’s still operational today, as Destilería Orendain, producing a bunch of brands including Batanga, Flecha Azul and Gran Orendain. El Llano closed its doors in the 1960s and remained silent for some 25 years until the next generation, Jaime and Eduardo Orendain, took it over and launched Tequila Arette in 1987.

In the early years the brand was very small – built almost exclusively to supply a single Hong Kong importer. After a couple of years that relationship fizzled out, so the brothers started selling Tequila Arette in Mexico. It was around that time, in the early 1990s, that the Arette brand was shifting from producing mixto tequila (where sugar is added to the agave juice before fermentation) to making 100% agave tequila. The distillery continued to produce mixto tequila until 1999, making bulk tequila for US brands as well as supplying Jose Cuervo, Sauza, and Jaime’s father and grandfather at the Destilería Orendain. The new millennium marked a new start for the brothers, as from then on they produced only 100% agave with a renewed focus on their own brands. The Arette family is now headed by Jaime and Eduardo, as well as Eduardo’s son, Eduardo Jr.

Don Jaime Orendain appears, as if by magic, as we walk through the distillery gate. He is of middle age and has a quick smile and mischievous spirit. Pancho explains that we’re interested in learning more about the Orendain family history but Jaime pulls him in for a tight embrace and corrects him, “It’s the Arette family!”

Arette is the brand of tequila made at this distillery not a family name, but Jaime explains that everyone who works on the brand is part of Arette family, and as we tour the operation it is clear to see that he means it. He knows the first name of every employee and chats easily with them as we wander through the bottling room. This is the only part of the distillery in operation right now as production has been paused for essential maintenance.

“It takes 20 litres of water to produce one litre of tequila,” says Jaime.

The water used in tequila production is drawn from wells that tap into underground aquifers. These aquifers are replenished by rainfall and river systems originating from the nearby Tequila volcano. The volcanic soil in the region is rich in minerals, which contributes to the unique flavour profile of Tequila’s spirit. This explains why there are so many old tequila brands packed together in this town as close as bottles on a backbar, “Sauza is behind me,” says Jaime. “Cuervo this side, D’Reyes that side, Fortaleza is two blocks from here, Tequileño is a block that way, Don Fulano another block.”

Jaime explains that all of the agaves used to make Arette are owned by the family and grown in fields in the Tequila Valley across 500 acres (200 hectares) of land. Agaves mature at slightly different speeds even if they are planted together and there can be a big variance in size between two mature plants. Maturity is important as the quantity of starches in the agave increases over time along with flavour-giving compounds that will bring complexity to the product. Being selective in harvesting, as we will see, is common among producers who strive to make a quality product. However, some of the big brands have got into the habit of harvesting entire fields irrespective of maturity for speed and efficiency and to make way for the next crop.

The piñas of the agave are sometimes halved or quartered in the fields to make them a more manageable size for transportation. But sometimes they arrive at the distillery whole, and can weigh in excess of 70kg (150lbs). Larger piñas are broken down with an axe into smaller pieces before cooking so that everything in the oven is roughly the same size and therefore cooks uniformly.

There are three main ways to cook agave in tequila production. Ranging from traditional to modern they are: by brick oven, by autoclave, and by diffuser. El Llano uses both of the first two. The third (diffuser) is a modern innovation that is both highly efficient and highly controversial – we’ll visit them later on in our journey.

Brick ovens are about the size of a small garage and made from brick or stone. In the case of the one here, at El Llano, it was built using a combination of bricks and volcanic rocks all sealed together with a cement made from agave fibres. The agave piñas are loaded in by hand, the steel door is shut, and steam is pumped into the oven for a day or two. Once the steam is turned off, a further day of cooling is allowed, then the doors are opened and the cooked agave revealed.

Cooking the agave makes the water inside the plant heat up and breaks down the fibrous structure that holds the plant together – just like cooking any other vegetable. So it goes that the volume of agave inside the brick oven shrinks as the cook progresses and the water boils out of the plant. The weight of the softening agave plants also squeeze juices out of the ones in the base of the oven. Pipes in the base allow these juices to run off during the cook. The first of these juices are known as miels amargas (“bitter honeys”) and are usually discarded – they are the first dirty, sappy extracts, which are deemed counter-beneficial to the flavour of tequila. Then come the miels dulces (“sweet honeys”), which are rich in sugars with no off notes. These are collected, soon to be mixed back into the milled agave at the point of fermentation.

The other common method, an autoclave, is a cylindrical steel oven that looks a bit like the fuselage of an aircraft, with doors at each end. Autoclaves are typically bigger than brick ovens but come in a variety of sizes. The cooking process uses steam (like the brick oven) but an autoclave can operate under pressure (like a pressure cooker) typically ranging from 1.2 to 1.5 atmospheres. This pressure range raises the boiling point of water inside the autoclave up to about 120°C (248°F), which doesn’t sound like much, but it can cut the cooking time down to as little as eight hours or less.

The bottling line at Arette is a slick operation, and it’s all done by hand (and with hair nets on).

Two cooking methods at Destilería El Llano: the green autoclave and the brick oven behind it. Both turn starches into sugar but each has a subtly different effect on the final spirit.

As well as being faster, autoclaves are cheaper to operate, easier to install and simpler to repair. It’s for these reasons that they’ve become synonymous with higher volume distilleries. But it’s important to stress that autoclave tequila does not automatically mean poor-quality tequila, just as brick-oven cooking shouldn’t be assumed to create great tequila. An autoclave is better viewed through a lens of flexibility: indeed it is entirely possible to run an autoclave at low pressure and come very close to imitating the conditions in a brick oven.

“We cook in the autoclave for 18 hours,” says Jaime. “We could go faster, but if we go faster... the flavours change.” At very high temperatures (and fast cooks) an autoclave can burn the outer skin of the agave and produce some off notes in the finished product.

Here at El Llano, Jaime uses both brick ovens and autoclaves, and they mark the beginning of the delineation between the two ranges of Arette products: Classic (a blend of autoclave and brick oven) and Artesanal (brick oven only).

Each range is also treated slightly differently in the fermentation stage, where the classic is fermented in 18,000-litre (4,750-gallon) stainless-steel fermenters, and Artesanal is fermented in 16,000-litre (4,350-gallon) concrete fermenters. Both of these materials are inert and do not directly impact the flavour of the ferment. But concrete has better insulating properties and thus creates a more stable fermentation environment that warms and cools more gently. This, in turn, produces a different array of flavourful compounds. Then, in distillation, those compounds can be boiled off and selected as the spirit runs off the still.

Classic and Artesanal are distilled using the same equipment but a far smaller “heart cut” – the part of the spirit that is collected for bottling – is taken for the Artesanal line. “It’s less volume, but a more concentrated flavour,” says Jaime.

For aged tequila, Arette stores most of its casks in a large warehouse a few blocks away, but around 1,000 barrels are held in a building directly across the road from the distillery. Jaime leads us over the road and unlocks the door. As we step inside it’s like entering a mausoleum. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the dimness of the light after the brightness of the sun-drenched street, and it’s at least 10 degrees cooler in here too. Looking left and right, the long hallway contains stacks of barrels behind huge iron gates that keep them secure. The smell is musty and slightly fruity.

Jaime explains that the Classic and Artesanal ranges also get treated differently in cask, with the Artesanal tending to be nearer the maximum age for reposado and añejo and Classic being a bit younger. Nearly all of the barrels here are ex-bourbon but there are other types being used for experiments and special releases, including some ex-wine casks.

Once outside again, which feels like when you exit a cinema during the daytime, we head next door through an unexceptional looking entrance on the corner of the block. Jaime leads us in to reveal a small tasting room styled like a colonial-era bar with wood panels, a ceiling fan and soft lighting. He takes his position behind the bar and pours us some tequila: Arette Artesanal Blanco (40%). It’s incredibly fresh in the glass; crisp, light and citrusy. These flavours carry through into the taste, along with a slight salinity and grapefruit zest. There’s just a touch of bitterness on the finish with a restrained spice and heat.

My glass is empty so Jaime pours some Arette Artesanal Reposado (40% ABV). It’s pale straw in colour. There’s a slight mushroom note on the aroma, along with ginger and brown sugar. On the taste there’s a slight tightness from the oak. Subtle vanilla and butterscotch form the finish. Next is the Artesanal Añejo (40% ABV). The vegetal agave note of the blanco has returned a little here, alongside wood and bung-cloth aromas. On the taste there’s (bell) pepper, chocolate and coffee.

Jaime Orendain is like a preacher, baptising true believers with delicious tequila and delivering sermons from the scripture of tequila history.

Arette Gran Clase Extra Añejo is one of the best extra añejo tequilas on the market, and tastes all the better when served directly by Jaime Orendain.

“My brother and I are horse lovers,” says Jaime. “I get on a horse nearly every day. In fact I rode a horse before I could walk.” He points to the bottle of Arette in front of him and the horse’s head on the label. “This is Arette,” he says. Then he tells us one of the most incredible rags to riches stories I have ever heard.

Lieutenant-Colonel Humberto Mariles was a prizewinning equestrian and perhaps the most ambitious Mexican athlete of his generation. He first met the horse called Arete (one “t”) in January 1948 when he was invited by the French Club in Mexico City to inspect a 10-year-old castrated one-eyed stallion that the club wanted to sell. In his younger years Arete had a fall that damaged his eye and took a chunk out of his right ear (his name means “earring”). The club president, also an equestrian, knew that despite his injuries, Arete was a skilled jumper, so he asked Mariles to ride him for a trial. Mariles was astounded by Arete and later recalled that after just two minutes on its back, the horse was the smoothest and most obedient he had ever ridden.

However, when Mariles told the nation that he would take Arete to the 1948 Olympic Games, Miguel Alemán Valdés, the Mexican president, stepped in citing reservations about a one-eyed horse’s capability in competition and so its potential to embarrass Mexico. Undeterred, Mariles stole a convoy of army trucks and crossed the border into Texas with Arete and the rest of his entourage before catching a ship to Europe. When the president found out, he was furious and issued an arrest warrant for Mariles. He charged the Mexican ambassador to Italy with the unenviable task of capturing both a senior soldier and prize-winning horse and detaining them. Arete and Mariles arrived in Italy and managed not only to evade the ambassador but also to enter and win a clutch of tournaments. Next it was on to the Olympic Games in London where, in the final run of the day, Mariles and Arete emerged triumphant, clinching two gold medals in equestrian jumping. The pair bagged another bronze medal in eventing and in the wake of their success, the Mexican president phoned Mariles, congratulated him and promoted him to General. To this day, Mariles (and Arete) remain the only Mexicans to win two Olympic golds.

Jaime pours another tequila, this time the Gran Clase Extra Añejo (40% ABV), which is a $250 (£190) bottle in the US. We toast Arete, “Salut!” The aroma is very potent, with strong caramels, sweet agave nectar, banana and barbecued pineapple. The extra maturation has somehow returned a great deal of the agave character. It’s incredible. The taste is round and polished, buttery and delicious – it’s Olympic medal-winning quality!

Jaime sips his tequila. Addie and I sip ours. Then a shadow passes over Jaime’s face. “The story of General Mariles does not have a happy ending,” he says.

On 14th August 1964, Mariles was driving home from a party in Mexico City when he was forced off the road. At the next traffic light, Mariles pulled out a pistol and shot the other driver. He was handed a 25-year prison sentence but released after five with a presidential pardon. His troubles persisted however, and in 1972 he faced arrest in Paris for drug smuggling and ultimately died in prison before trial – some say under suspicious circumstances.

Rather then end on a sour note, Jaime pops the cap off a bottle of Arette Fuerte Artesanal 101 Blanco (50.5% ABV), which lightens up the mood no end. The aroma is brine, minerality, cinnamon, black pepper, citrus, herbs (thyme, sage) and a little ethanol. The taste is intense cooked agave, pepper, earthiness, citrus (particularly orange peel), baking spices, herbs (rosemary, mint), pineapple, and jalapeño heat.

With an almost equestrian spring in our step we leave the bar and bid Jaime farewell. We don’t have far to go...

FORTALEZA

El Renacimiento

Directly next-door to El Llano is the white-washed complex of properties that make up the Sauza distillery, Known as La Perseverancia (The Perserverance), this sprawling facility occupies both sides and ends of the street and is spread across many buildings, some of which are connected by overhead pipes. Indeed, on a casual stroll down Francisco Javier Sauza Street, you could easily believe you have stumbled into the distillery itself, as huge trucks move in and around the gated complex and high-vis, hard-hatted, clipboard-wielding distillery workers pass between the buildings.

There’s a good reason Sauza owns a big chunk of Tequila town. For nearly all of the latter half of the 20th century, Sauza was the biggest tequila brand in the world – bigger even than Jose Cuervo with which Sauza has been locked in a fierce rivalry for some 150 years.

The story begins with Cenobio Sauza, who came to work in Tequila at the young age of 16. For a while he worked as an administrator for Cuervo, but being both smart and fiercely ambitious, he saved enough money to buy his own operation. In 1873 he remodelled the La Antigua Cruz distillery in Tequila and renamed it La Perseverancia. That same year he exported 13 barrels and six demijohns across the border to El Paso, Texas. This marks the first documented occasion that tequila was exported to the US.

Sauza was an innovator in a time when industrial innovation came thick and fast and new technologies were sprouting up. When he began using steam boilers instead of wood-fired stills to cook agave, and stainless-steel tanks to ferment the mixture, it must have appeared to his contemporaries that a man from the future had arrived in Tequila. He would later be the first to install modern column-stills, to make production more efficient. He also championed the use of blue agave, which may have been valued for its flavour but was also prized for its high sugar content (which meant more alcohol) and relatively fast maturation time of just five to seven years. Sauza was a smart and ruthless man. Legend has it that during the Mexican Revolution, when bandits threatened to raid his distillery, Don Cenobio cunningly painted the word “agua” on his barrels of tequila, fooling the assailants into sparing his precious liquor.

This was at the dawn of a significant period of growth for the nascent tequila industry and it coincided with rising quantities of mineral exports travelling from Mexico to the US. As trains laden with precious metals trundled northwards, they carried an increasingly precious liquid cargo: bottles of agave spirit. The town of Tequila became a crucial stopover in this burgeoning trade network.

American consumers, particularly in the frontier states, developed a taste for this exotic Mexican liquor. Its popularity was bolstered by romantic – albeit often inaccurate – tales of its origins. The expansion of rail networks, notably E. H. Harriman’s Southern Pacific line, facilitated tequila’s spread across the west of the US on the eve of the Mexican Revolution.

Political turmoil on both sides of the border created a ready market for strong drink. To soldiers, adventurers and fortune-seekers, tequila was not a sacred indigenous elixir, but rather a powerful intoxicant with aristocratic associations thanks to the involvement of the powerful Cuervo and Sauza families. By the turn of the century, Mexican distilleries produced a staggering 10 million litres a year, much of it for export. This massive output meant over 70 million agave plants were processed each year.

The Sauza legacy continued to flourish under Don Cenobio’s son, Eladio Sauza. Known for his charismatic charm and entrepreneurial spirit, Eladio expanded the family business, acquiring more agave fields and further modernising production techniques. Eladio hated the Cuervos even more than his father and as folklore recounts, was involved in a fatal altercation where he shot a member of the Cuervo family dead on the streets of Tequila back in the year 1900.

Sipping tequila in the caves at Destilería La Fortaleza with Guillermo Sauza is both memorable and, depending on the amount of tequila consumed, hard to remember in its entirety.

When Eladio Sauza’s son, Javier, went to university in Chicago and clandestinely wed a beautiful Cuervo relative with fiery red hair, Eladio exiled his son from the family enterprise, condemning him to a life as a tour guide in Mexico City and a succession of menial jobs. It wasn’t until shortly before his father’s demise in 1946 that Javier was allowed to return to the family business.

It’s lucky he did.

Once in charge, Javier set out to make the brand global and elevate tequila’s reputation in Mexico. He was a great marketeer, recognising the value in linking tequila to Mexican culture and music. In the 1950s, he launched “Noches Tapatías”, a musical variety show that featured singers from the ranchera and mariachi genres, along with no small amount of Sauza product placement. It ran for 20 years and was one of the biggest TV shows in the country along with being a game-changer for tequila in Mexico, promoting consumption as part of a popular culture that made Mexicans feel proud of the Jalisco drink. Thus, Javier became something of an ambassador for Mexican culture, travelling to Europe and Asia and extolling the culture and flavours of Mexico.

Javier also fiercely defended against copycats, especially those from Japan, which he encountered on a sales trip there. This was likely one of the contributing factors that drove him to push for the original tequila DO (Designated Origin), which was established in 1974.

Among his many achievements he launched the first reposado tequila (before the term was legally recognised) called Hornitos in 1950, which was also Sauza’s first 100% agave bottling. On the centenary of the brand’s founding, in 1973, he launched Tres Generaciones, as a tribute to his father and grandfather. Most of their product line was mixto however, sitting at a 70%-agave to 30%-sugar ratio at the time.

Then, in 1976, Don Javier shocked many by selling a large share of Sauza’s distillery and 700 sq. km (270 sq. miles) of land to the Spanish sherry and brandy house Pedro Domecq. By 1988 Pedro Domecq had acquired all of the brand and the subsequent devaluation of the Mexican peso dealt a severe blow to the family’s earnings. To add insult to injury, over time the Sauza brand slipped into foreign ownership, ultimately landing in the hands of Suntory who are, ironically, a Japanese conglomerate. Nowadays Sauza ranks around fifth or sixth in the top-selling tequila stakes and remains the second-best-known family name in tequila production.

But the story of the Sauza family does not end there.

Having navigated our way out of the small industrial town that is La Perseverencia, we head back past El Llano and onwards to the south-western edge of town, where we arrive at Destilería La Fortaleza.

We find ourselves in the kitchen of the distillery talking with its founder, Guillermo Sauza – grandson of Javier Sauza – who, with the help of the brand’s long- serving ambassador, Stefano Villafranca, is trying to make us a drink while filling in the gaps in my knowledge of the Sauza family history.

“I remember coming here from when I was about six years old,” says Guillermo, his gravelly voice muffled as he roots around inside a low cupboard in search of coffee. “But we had another house and I don’t remember much about this factory – we were kids and we didn’t have much interest in it.”

When Javier sold the business in the 1970s, the family held on to some of their land and some property, totalling a modest 80 acres (32 hectares). This included an old distillery that Javier had acquired in the 1950s. At the time, he needed the additional output that the site offered but also had his eye on the hill in the middle of the land, where he could build a stately hacienda that would look out over the town of Tequila and finally cement his supremacy over the Cuervos. He named the hacienda La Fortaleza (The Fortitude) and operated the distillery as a kind of theme park celebrating the old-fashioned ways of making tequila: brick ovens, open-top wood fermenters and pot stills. The distillery closed in 1968 and all the land was turned over to dairy farming for the next 30 years.

Guillermo grew up believing he would one day become the fifth generation of the biggest tequila brand in the world, and was heartbroken when, at 20 years old, his grandfather sold it. At that time he was studying at San Diego State University, which gave him a degree and set him up for a career in consulting in the defence sector.

“I should have retired at 50,” he says. Fortunately for us the pull of Mexico and tequila was too strong for him to resist. Javier Sauza died in 1990, and the distillery and hacienda became available. It took Guillermo a decade to put together a plan and to raise the necessary funds he needed to get the distillery operational again. Contrary to what you might imagine, there wasn’t a huge chest of Sauza cash left lying around for him to plunder; he had only the property and his name, so the business was a startup like any other.

When he finally launched in the early 2000s, he named his brand Los Abuelos (“The Grandparents”) in tribute – or perhaps protest (!) – to his grandfather. The brand quickly garnered a reputation for its quality while raising the status of the 100% agave category. The Panamanian rum brand Rob Abuelo had something to say about the name however, which is why the Destilería La Fortaleza trades under the Fortaleza brand name everywhere except Mexico, where it’s still Los Abuelos.

Slowly and surely the business grew in size and reputation and, once it became profitable, Guillermo moved to Mexico permanently and now lives in the old hacienda on the hill that his grandfather built. Fortaleza is now one of the – if not the – most respected tequila brands and all its production is on careful allocation to importers around the world. The distillery literally can’t make enough of it.

With our coffee cups empty, we leave the office and all five of us squeeze into a golf buggy built to hold two, with Guillermo driving and an ever increasing number of dogs following behind us. As we have a designated driver, Stefano hands us a tequila each, their classic Fortaleza Blanco (40% ABV): The aroma is brine and lime. There’s also a touch of leather and a kind of smoked kippers funk. The taste is mineral and gritty; with salt and gentle nuttiness. Cleaner rather than dark. Fresh and vibrant.

Guillermo tells me that the distillery is pretty much the way that his grandfather left it, except for the garage he added to house all the motorbikes he and Stefano like to ride. The Fortaleza buildings are a vibrant pink colour, and as well as the distillery itself they include the office, bottling line, barrel storage and space for the 140 staff who work here to eat and rest. The vast majority of the property is given over to agave however, which constitutes about 12% of Fortaleza’s total requirement. There’s also a miniature replica of the Golden Gate Bridge, a lake, gardens where they grow courgettes (zucchini), melons, lychees and limes and hundreds of trees that have nearly all been planted by Guillermo himself, who I soon realise is intent on adding horticulturist to a resumé that already includes biker and tequilero.

Guillermo’s grand plan is to create a botanical garden of many different agave varieties and take visitors on tours around the garden in an electric bus. He stops the buggy on the southern end of the property, and the Volcán de Tequila looms large in the distance. Here we find the oldest agaves on the plantation, at around six or seven years of age. Some of them have begun their swansong, sending up enormous asparagus-like quiotes, which will soon flower if they’re left unchecked. While flowering is good for the pollinators, it’s bad news for tequila-makers because it steals the energy from the plant and reduces the yield.

The sprouting of the quiote is the signal that the agave is fully mature and ready to be harvested soon. Normally, the flower stalk is chopped down before the plant produces flowers.

Destilería La Fortaleza is among the most respected producers of tequila in the land, and it’s because it places the agave front and centre of everything it does – bottle caps and motorcycle jackets included.

“I’ll see if they can cut them tomorrow,” Guillermo tells us. “We will leave a few to flower here and there though.”

After quiote removal, the agave continues to ripen for several months as the energy intended for flowering and seed production concentrates in the piña. Then the pencas (leaves) begin to turn yellow and dry, signalling optimal ripeness. The pencas can then be trimmed by the jimador and the piña transported to the distillery when needed.

Guillermo starts the buggy up and we drive back towards the distillery to see the next stages of production. The distillery building is a stark contrast to the dry, bright heat outdoors. Here, the air is humid and the light much dimmer. There’s steam and noise and the smell of hot fruit and decay. All of the cooking here is done in two brick ovens. One oven has its door open and is about a quarter full of dark, roasted agave. It’s currently being emptied. The bricks themselves seem to reek of cooked vegetal matter. The other oven is about halfway through its 36-hour cook time with sweet-smelling steam blasting out of the small gaps in the sides of the steel door.

The cooked agaves must be unloaded by hand and then milled to extract the remainder of their juices and separate out the fibre of the plant. Over at Arette this was done using a roller mill – basically a sequence of conveyor belts that carry the agaves into series of cylindrical cutting blades. On the first cylinder the cut is very coarse, but each subsequent cylinder, or “stage”, produces a finer cut. Water is usually added through the process to help flush the sugars out of the agave fibre. These sweet juices fall through the perforated floor of the mill and are caught below and piped away for fermentation.

Arette had four stages to its mill, but some distilleries have up to seven and some have only one. In general, the more stages, the more efficiently and completely the sugar from the agave will be extracted. An extremely efficient mill might capture 99% of all the available sugars in the plant. However, efficiency can produce side effects. A very aggressive mill can also extract bitter flavours from deep within the fibre of the plant. So a compromise between taste and efficiency must be made.

At Fortaleza, the makers use a more traditional milling method, which had all but vanished from tequila 20 years ago but now is making a comeback.

A tahona is a traditional stone mill used in the production of tequila and mezcal. It is made of two parts: a round stone basin, which sometimes – like at Fortaleza – has guttering and pipes to collect the juice of the agaves; and a wide millstone made of tezontle (a type of volcanic rock) mounted on an axel connected to a turnstile in the middle of the basin. The stone is then rolled around in a circle over the cooked agaves to crush them and extract their juices. Heavy as it is, the stone at Fortaleza is powered by an engine but in other, even more traditional settings, the stone is pulled by a mule, donkey or ox.

As a technology, tahonas originated in the Middle East thousands of years ago and then made their way to Europe, probably during the Moorish conquest. There, they were used to crush olives, grapes, and sugar cane. So it follows that tahonas were introduced to Mexico after the Spanish conquest, where they were used to mill corn, cane, fruits and agaves, all of which had previously been tackled by hand – and still are in some places (as we shall see).

The tahona at Fortaleza can hold 3 tonnes of agave at a time and it’s an eight-hour shift to crush it all and extract the sweet juices. They do this in three shifts, 24 hours a day. Operating a tahona is not a case of starting the engine and putting your feet up for the rest of the day. It requires constant work and supervision from a seven-man team, the workers using forks to turn over the agave fibres and flush them with water, squeezing out as much sugar as they can. “As much as they can” is just over 70% of the available sugars according to Guillermo. This means at least 25% of the sugar – and therefore 25% of the potential alcohol – is being left behind. So what’s the point?

Besides the obvious artisanal nature of the process, which no doubt gets visitors excited, aficionados argue that there is a noticeable taste difference between tahona and roller mill. Some tequleros I spoke to mentioned the “minerals from the stone” imparting a “dusty” flavour into the spirit. Others suggest that the treatment of the agave fibres and the inefficiency of the extraction pays dividends in the flavour department. Additionally, using a tahona points to a commitment to quality and craft that one would assume extends to other areas of the operation. And at Fortaleza those assumptions would be well-founded.

Fermentation here is done across eight traditional, open-top pine vats and takes around three days to complete. Then it’s on to copper pot-stills, which are replicas of the original 100-year-old stills. All of the maturation for reposado and añejo expressions is on site too, totalling around 1,000 casks of maturing tequila.

“We do everything here except blow the glass,” says Stefano as we emerge back into the sunny courtyard. “You want to see where we make the bottle caps?”

We head up a wrought-iron spiral staircase into a series of rooms where six workers are making Fortaleza’s iconic agave piña stoppers entirely from scratch.

The shape of the piña is moulded from liquid resin and left to set for a day. Each one is hand-painted green and left to dry for another day. Then the green is sanded back to give the white “cut penca” effect, followed by a coat of varnish and another day of drying. Then the stopper is glued to the cork, which needs another day to dry. Finally someone cleans up the stopper with a knife, removing excess glue and checking overall quality. Every single stopper on every bottle of Fortaleza tequila is made this way and it takes almost a week from start to finish.

Back down the stairs we go towards our final stop: the all-important tasting room, which, at Fortaleza, is a tourist attraction in itself. Hidden in a small network of caves hewn into volcanic rock, these were once used to store barrels and farm equipment. Now they’ve been turned into a dimly lit bar and tasting room with a uniquely clandestine atmosphere (I’m told that the parties here are legendary).

Stefano pours us a flight of tequilas to taste starting with the Still Strength expression, which as the name suggests is undiluted with water and bottled at the strength it comes off the still. In spite of the dangerous-sounding name, this product is only 46% ABV – far lower than the average high-proof bottlings, which tend to sit in the mid-fifties. What this does mean however, is that when you buy Fortaleza Blanco the bottle has only had a small amount of water added to it to take it down to 40% ABV. The aroma is restrained on nose with that additional alcohol tightening things up a notch. The taste is grippy at first then loosening up into lime zest, alcohol spice and soft yellow fruits. There’s a hit of pineapple and a slight meatiness in the finish.

That low still strength also means that Guillermo needs to buy more barrels for his aged expressions as, put simply, there is more water in his tequila when it goes into the barrel than in a typical distillery. Cost-cutting doesn’t seem to be part of the remit of this place at any stage of production, though.

Tequila Fortaleza is still bottled as Los Abuelos for the Mexican market, which makes it a highly collectable bottle to pick up when you’re visiting Tequila town.

Speaking of barrels, next up is Fortaleza Reposado, aged for around seven months in ex-bourbon casks. It’s nutty and figgy and has a slight tomato leaf or hot greenhouse aroma. The taste is sweet agave nectar and fresh salsa.

Stefano heads off to Guillermo’s office to retrieve more bottles and returns with two expressions of their Winter Blend, which is released in limited numbers every September and compiled of their classic Reposado blended with tequilas aged in unique cask types.

We start with the 2022 Winter Blend, aged in Oloroso and Tokaji casks (43% ABV). Tropical and yellow fruit notes mingle with grape and honey. The agave is softened, complemented by warming yellow spices and sweet dried fruits (apricot and juicy mango) as well as soft tobacco. A delightful mustiness leads to a dry finish.

The five of us spend at least ten minutes analysing the liquid, chatting and pulling tasting notes out of the air. Finally, we taste the 2023 Winter Blend, aged in ex-Charanda and refill Oloroso casks (43.5% ABV). Aromas of vanilla ice cream, caramel and butterscotch greet the nose. The palate reveals more agave character, balanced sweetness, and notes of ginger and roasted fruits. It’s like an elevated blanco with added robustness and length from the barrel influence. Addie says it’s like honeysuckle.

“You don’t have to pick a favourite,” says Stefano. “That’s not the point.”

With no windows in the cave and no shortage of tequila, time passes by without our knowing. When we eventually stumble outside like newborn lambs, the evening is in full swing. Before we part company Guillermo takes us out of the front door of the distillery and shows us a vacant plot of land across the road. It’s part of the Sauza estate that thus far has remained untouched. This, he tells us, is where he plans to build his next distillery. He’s not giving much away but confirms that it will not be another Fortaleza.

“Something different,” he says, seeming to be lost in visualising whatever it is. “Something new.”

DON ABRAHAM

La Planta