Just next to a 4-foot-high white ceramic heart festooned with figures of brightly colored hummingbirds, sombrero-wearing field workers and a young woman weaving textiles, the door of El Buho is shaded by a big laurel tree. Unless you are searching for the specialty tequila shop, you could skip by the unimposing storefront window in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, filled with Calaveras, or sugar skulls and skeletons, from Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday. But step inside and a long row of floor-to-ceiling shelves stretching out toward the rear of the store holds a nearly encyclopedic collection of tequila brands. El Buho is proof positive of the proliferation of fine tequilas and the booming market in Mexico, the U.S. and around the world.
The shelves contain Galindo, Cascahuín, Siete Leguas, El Tequileño, Volans, G4, Arette, Tequila Ocho, Maestro Dobel, Casa Noble, Viva México, Tapatio, El Tesoro de Don Felipe, Reserva de la Familia, Casa Dragones and dozens more, some (but not all) available in the United States. Bottle prices range from a low of $12 to $15 to nearly $1,700 for a bottle of El Tequileno Extra Añejo in a crystal decanter. If you can’t find a tequila here, there’s a reason: Owner Emilio Ferreira Ruiz, a man beaming with smiles and stories, personally curates every bottle. Ferreira, whose family has operated the shop since 1979, has expanded it three times as tequila brands propagated decade by decade. In a country dominated by big retail chains, this small independent store is an anomaly but one that flourishes due to its fine tequila focus.
Ferreira once thought about having every tequila ever produced on his shelves. That was an easy proposition at the beginning of the store’s existence in 1979, when there were only a few national brands, such as Jose Cuervo, Herradura, Sauza, Orendain and Centenario. “Now, there are more than 2,000 registered brands,” Ferreira says. Where any well-known, big-volume brand is not on the shelves, it’s more likely due to the big liquor store chains being able to undercut his pricing rather than any issue of quality, he says.
“Sometimes people ask me why I don’t have all the brands here. I ask them, ‘Are you going to buy them or not? Or are you only going to buy the good ones to drink?’ There are a few I wouldn’t recommend … Most good ones are here, anyway,” he says.
Tequila, Mexico’s national spirit, is in the midst of a boom. Led by its popularity in the United States, the blue agave spirit has increased in sales and dollar volume exponentially worldwide in the past 10 years, mostly in the United States. Between 2013 and 2023, sales of tequila in the U.S. nearly tripled from $3.7 billion to $10.8 billion for all tequilas, including the mixto category, which can include up to 49 percent non-agave liquids.
“If anyone tells you that they saw this boom coming, they are wrong,” says Ramón González Figueroa, the director general of the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT). González, who has headed the CRT since its inception in 1994, adds, “In 1994, we were producing 80 million liters (21,000,000 gallons), and this past year it was 651 million liters (171,976,000 gallons). No one—businessman, analyst, financier, economist—would have ever imagined that we would go from exporting to 30 countries to 129.”
For a spirit produced from a plant (technically an agavoideae, not a cactus) that takes at least five and up to eight years to mature, the long maturation time complicates balancing the industry’s agave needs. In the early years of the boom, using 2017 more or less as a midpoint, there were about 300,000 acres planted with 300 million agave plants; in 2023 that number was 1.019 million acres planted and more than 1.6 billion plants in the ground, every one counted by the CRT’s drone, satellite or on-the-ground monitoring systems to ensure only those plants are used in tequila production. But with demand so high, from 2022 to 2023, agave prices soared to nearly 35 pesos a kilo (nearly 50 cents a pound), up from the traditional range of eight to 12 pesos a kilo. Prices have already dropped back to normal levels in 2024. In the market, the official number of registered brands with the CRT is now 2,601, up from just fewer than 1,500 in 2017, and today there are 200 distilleries, more than 50 new since 2017.
González also welcomes the wave of innovation in tequila. He says cristalinos, which are añejo tequilas filtered through carbon to remove color, revealed serious consumer interest in new products. Although introduced more than 10 years ago, cristalinos have not been approved as a separate new category of tequila. “It is añejo without color,” he says, deflecting the question about why it hasn’t been granted its own status.
Even with that answer, González’s focus on precise definitions reflects the CRT’s strict regulation of the tequila industry. Inspectors visit every distillery daily to take samples of the day’s production, matching the batches to a specific chemical analysis of fields where the agave was sourced and what is being bottled. Later, the CRT buys bottles around the world to be sure the samples match the spirit in the bottle. This oversight ensures that tequila drinkers are getting a legal product using only blue agave and the few permitted additives.
González believes the rigorous controls plus the wave of innovations ensure a positive future for tequila. For instance, he welcomes new cask finishes in the three aged categories—reposados, añejos and extra añejos—which all spend time in wooden oak barrels. As tequila makers experiment with wood barrels from an array of spirit and wine products, they are creating a new rainbow of flavors.
All tequila begins as a blanco, a clear white liquid coming out of the still after a second distillation at 55 percent alcohol before being diluted down to 38 percent to 40 percent. What happens next defines the spirit in the bottle. Although most blancos don’t see wood, the law allows them to rest in wooden barrels for up to two months; if not bottled by then, the liquid can only rest in stainless tanks until final bottling. A reposado can age in wooden oak barrels, new or generally used casks from the Bourbon industry, depending on the distillery’s taste profile, for up to 364 days. An añejo will rest in wood for up to three years, and anything beyond that time frame becomes an extra añejo. But in the past 20 years, brand owners and distillers have begun to stretch the definition of oak barrels by creating cask finishes using old barrels from rum, Scotch, Sherry, Port, even white wines.
One of the first specialty cask finishes was Gran Patrón Burdeos, which first came out in 2007. “We start with a large wooden barrel for 13 to 14 months, then we switch to French oak, and then for the last five or six months, we switch to used barrels from Château Margaux,” says master distiller David Rodriguez. “It gives us a flavor of Cognac in the end and that dark color in the bottle.” He talked about an extra añejo Patrón Piedra, which is a 100 percent tahona (traditional mill) crushed tequila, but with a final finish in new American oak barrels—it has more of a whiskey taste, he says.
“The law says we mature tequila in barrels of oak, nothing else. We know of a Brazilian wood, for instance, that imparts a lot of vanilla, but it’s not oak. We can’t use it,” says Rodriguez. He explains that most of the barrels come from the Bourbon industry, which has to use new barrels to age their spirit. “But then, we can use oak barrels from practically any source.”
Rodriguez described the excitement of his predecessor, master distiller Francisco Alcaraz, who was the distiller at Siete Leguas, one of Mexico’s oldest and most venerated tequilas, just down the road from where Patrón built its new hacienda and distillery: “He was so excited about a big old Armagnac barrel. But when we tried the tequila, it was no, no, no. This doesn’t work.” Then he described a Sherry cask experiment: “We put the blanco in and tasted it every two months. At two years we said, no, it’s still not there, and then suddenly at two and a half years all the flavors came together. Two and half years in Sherry casks. That was its moment.”
If Patrón led the way, the race is now on to deliver new cask finishes. Maestro Dobel, a Cuervo product, just released three finishes in used barrels from Armagnac, Sauternes and Amarone. Tequila Komos has two cask finishes, one from red wine barrels and one from white wine barrels and Sherry casks. Don Julio has a double cask finish in Lagavulin whisky barrels and a rosado aged in used Port casks. Tequila Ocho, an innovative brand that releases vintage-dated tequila from 12 different single estates, has released two tequilas aged in rum casks, Plantation and a Jamaican rum. And El Mayor also released an extra añejo rum-cask finish.
“What’s the goal?” asks Patrón’s Rodriguez. “Expand your portfolio of products, but the most important thing is to keep the brand’s mark and style. Innovation is good for the consumer, but we want the taste of tequila to remain in the forefront.”
There’s little doubt that the entrance of celebrities into the tequila market has sparked some of the spirit’s growth in recent years. For instance, when global drinks giant Diageo paid George Clooney and his other investors $1 billion for Casamigos in June 2017, it was selling around 170,000 cases a year; in 2023, the estimated volume is 2.3 million cases. While Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo was the first, launched in 1996, George Clooney’s big score convinced other celebrities to dive in. Michael Jordan (Cincoro), Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (Teremana), Kendall Jenner (818), George Strait (Codigo 1530), LeBron James (Lobos 1707), Kevin Hart (Gran Coramino), Nick Jonas (Villa One), Sean Combs (DeLeón) and Eva Longoria (Casa del Sol) all sell tequilas today.
Mark Wahlberg joined forces with Mexican golfer Abraham Ancer and Mexican businessman Aron Marquez to relaunch Flecha Azul last year with new packaging and new goals. While many celebrity tequilas get lost in their distilleries’ long list of brands produced there, Flecha Azul is made at the nearly 100-year-old Orendain facility and is one of few products made there that is not part of the family’s core portfolio. Orendain also remains one of the oldest distilleries in Mexico still family owned. Some of the distilleries producing multiple brands (one has 198 listed in current production) and many of the celebrity brands produced in similar facilities are dominated by modern processes—autoclaves, diffusers and column stills. Orendain’s core brands stick to traditional stone ovens, mechanical crushers and copper pot stills or stainless stills with copper coils, which is how Flecha Azul is produced.
“Aron and Abraham were involved from the beginning of the project,” says Juan Casados Arregoitia, the director general of Orendain. “We tasted all our tequilas, revising, adjusting, changing barrels, until they were convinced about our tequilas.” He said that since Wahlberg joined the team, he has been extremely active in helping promote the brand. “He was in Las Vegas a few weeks ago doing a promotion at a liquor store, and they had to shut down because the line to see him and taste the tequila was so long.”
Among some tequila makers there are concerns about celebrities’ advance into the market. On one hand, they worry about cultural appropriation or foreigners taking advantage of a national icon like tequila without really understanding Mexican culture. There is also a concern that because of many celebrities’ high visibility and the mediocre quality of their tequilas, it may soften demand in the long run by harming the reputation of the spirit.
That concern isn’t really shared by the CRT. González says the volume of so-called celebrity tequilas is still quite small in terms of the overall tequila consumption outside Mexico. Nor does he see them as opportunists taking advantage because of a boom in the market. “No, it’s not cultural appropriation,” says González. “They are helping people understand the culture of Mexico. And if it means more people drinking tequila, then we are all for it.”
A More Sustainable Spirit
Behind the pink walls of Hacienda Patrón, a sprawling replica of a Spanish Colonial–style mansion housing the tequila distillery, barrel-aging rooms and offices, there is a 12-acre expanse of 30-foot-high poles topped by a tarp and side-netting. Inside the covered edifice, long rows of brown, crushed agave waste lie in 3-foot-high piles, a huge compost field waiting to be shipped off as organic fertilizer. This natural fertilizer is destined for farmers selling agave to Patrón under long-term contracts. As each round of milling, fermentation and distillation ends, the agave waste is transferred to the compost piles, a constant daily rotation throughout the year.
“We are producing 6,000 to 10,000 tons of compost a year to return to the fields,” says David Rodriguez, Patrón’s master distiller. “We incorporate the natural organic material from the production process back into the land to help the next generation of agaves.”
On one side of the facility, there is an open-air compost pile belonging to Siete Leguas, a distillery in nearby Atotonilco El Alto. Patrón is not the only distillery composting agave waste. Jose Cuervo, one of Mexico’s largest tequila producers, also has large composting programs that are used to provide fertilizers to fields that it owns.
“We have a treasure here in this country,” says Ramón González Figueroa, director general of the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT). “We are introducing programs that we would have never imagined before to help preserve it.” He described the CRT’s effort against deforestation, where in part the government and CRT have to educate farmers; González says their attitude had been, "'If it’s on my land, I can cut it down.' But you can’t.” He said that just in Jalisco, the largest of five states where blue agave can be planted for tequila, they stopped the deforestation of nearly 35,000 acres last year.
Education is also being used to make water use more sustainable, including how to treat residual wastewater produced during the fermentation and distillation process. González says, “We are trying to give our producers the tools to understand how to deal with this issue.” The message, he adds, is consistent: “This is our goose laying the golden egg. We have to take care of it.”
Patrón’s Rodriguez says the company’s projects include using natural gas. The alternative is still diesel fuel, so natural gas is a step in the right direction. Down the road, biofuel generators may provide some of the distillery's energy needs. He says the residual water is treated and then reused to clean the distillery. And he explains that the company is exploring ways to make its packaging more environmentally friendly, removing plastics wherever possible and recycling glass products.
“It is just a question for the industry to impose those standards on itself, to reduce our carbon footprint,” Rodriguez says. “It’s what we have to do, not just for Mexico and for ourselves but for future generations.”
Tequila from Field to Bottle
Tequila must be distilled from a single agave variety: Agave tequilana F.A.C. Weber var. azul, otherwise called blue agave, or agave azul in Spanish. The plant is not a cactus but is known as an agavoideae. For use in tequila, it may only be grown in five states: Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit and Tamaulipas. Jalisco produces nearly 75 percent of blue agave, and 99.4 percent of all tequila is distilled there.
Planting and Growing
Agave plants first reach maturity five to eight years after planting; most are harvested at seven to 11 years. Best practices use fertilizer based on recycled, composted agave waste from distilleries.
Harvesting
The harvester severs the plant from its roots and chops the leaves off, giving it a pineapplelike appearance, thus its name in Spanish: piña. The piña can weigh anywhere from 50 pounds to more than 200 pounds. Fifteen pounds of piña produce about 1 liter of tequila.
Cooking
The traditional cooking process takes place in a large stone-walled oven, but more modern producers use stainless steel autoclaves. In the stone ovens, the piñas are steam-cooked for 36 to 72 hours. In autoclaves, piñas are pressure-cooked for six to 12 hours. The goal is to hydrolyze the plant’s sugars without burning them, readying them for fermentation.
During cooking, juices flow out of the ovens; producers discard the first juices and ferment the rest. Some producers use a hot water and steam diffuser to extract agave juice from the raw, sliced piñas. The juice is then heated to hydrolyze the sugars. Though acid is often added as a catalyst, critics say this extracts too many bitter components.
Extraction
In the traditional methods, after the piñas are cooled, they are shredded and then crushed to extract the must from the piña. Traditionally, the extraction process was done by a mule pulling a large stone wheel called a tahona, usually about 4 to 5 feet in circumference and weighing several tons, but there are mechanical tahonas in use today. Most tequila producers use modern mechanical crushers to remove the fibers and collect the juice; the fibers are washed during this process, and the producer sets the desired Brix, or sugar level, of the extracted juice by adding water, resulting in agua miel, or honey water.
Fermentation
The must is transferred to large vats. Tahona-crushed agave is usually fermented with the plant fibers. In the case of mechanical crushers, only the juice is pumped into the vats.
In the case of mixto, additional sugars (typically cane juice or corn-based sugars) can be added up to 49 percent of the total.
Fermentation vats can be wood or stainless steel and closed or open tanks. (In the case of tahona-based musts, the fibers form a thick natural cap; some producers punch down the cap periodically.) Closed steel fermentation tanks are usually temperature-controlled; most wooden vats are not because of the insulating effect of the wood.
A number of top-quality producers use natural wild yeasts present in the distilleries, similar to many traditional wineries. Others add propagated yeasts; one new brand is using yeasts from Champagne.
Fermentation lasts from five to 72 hours depending on the yeast, the temperature and the sugar level. At this stage, the fermented agua miel, or honey water, is called musto muerto and is usually 5 percent to 6 percent alcohol.
Distillation
By law, all tequila must be at least double distilled. Like any distillation process, the art is in discarding the proper amounts of the head (the first vapors coming out of the still) and tail (the end part of the vapors) of the run while preserving the heart, which has most of the key flavor elements. In tequila, most high-end distillers use copper or stainless steel alembic stills with copper tubing, but continuous column stills are also in use, especially for tequila mixto. The first distillation in tequila produces what is known as “ordinario," a clear liquid at 20 percent to 25 percent alcohol. The second distillation is known as rectification and averages 55 percent alcohol. The final product is then diluted with water to get to 38 percent to 40 percent alcohol. There are some new tequila products on the market in Mexico with higher alcohol contents, but tequila exported to the United States can be no less than 40 percent alcohol.
Aging
- Blanco (also called silver or plata) is typically bottled immediately, though in recent years some companies have aged blancos in wood up to the legal limit of 59 days.
- Reposado is aged for between 60 and 364 days in wooden barrels.
- Joven is a combination of blancos and reposados.
- Añejo must be barrel aged for at least one year and up to three. Used Bourbon barrels are common but new oak barrels from the United States, France and Hungary are also in use.
- Extra Añejo must be barrel aged more than three years. (This category was approved in 2006.)
Some producers blend categories, but any blend must bear the designation of the least-aged liquid in it.
There is a movement to certify longer aging periods, but to date, this has not been approved by the CRT. There is also another type of tequila, called cristalino, that has not been officially recognized by the CRT. It is an añejo tequila that has been filtered to strip out the color, making a clear product with some añejo characteristics.
By law, four additives—glycerin, oak extract, caramel coloring and sugar syrups—are allowed in tequila as long as they remain below 1 percent of total volume; most producers of high-end tequila insist that they do not use any additives.
How to Read a Tequila Label
Brand: This is in most cases distinct from the distiller.
Single Estate: As with wine, denotes spirit made from agave from a specific place which shows terroir character. Other meaningful designations of origin include the regions of Los Altos (Highlands) and Valle. Los Altos denotes that the agave came from the red clay soils there; the volcanic soils of the Lowlands are known as Valle.
100 Percent Agave: Or 100 percent puro agave or 100 percent agave azul or 100 percent Weber blue agave. The most important words to look for. If it does not say this, it is a mixto, meaning it contains as much as 49 percent spirit made from other sugars.
Hecho en Mexico: Agave spirits are made in other nations, including the U.S., but tequila has an AOC that includes the state of Jalisco and regions of neighboring states.
Style: Indicates how the tequila was produced and matured to a particular flavor profile (see "Aging," left). From youngest to oldest: blanco (or silver or white or plata); reposado; extra añejo. Less reliant on age, cristalino is matured then filtered to remove color and unwanted flavors. Joven (sometimes gold or oro) can be a mixto or 100 percent agave.
Distillery: This can be meaningful, but one distiller might be crafting very different recipes for different brands.
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): Tequila in the U.S. must be a minimum 40 percent.
NOM: The NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana) is a number that tells you which distillery produced the spirit, which is important because at least 2,600 brands are produced by only around 200 distillers. If you have a favorite brand, try to find other bottles with the same NOM (all easily searched online) to see if they match in quality.
Other Information
Some give estate name, harvest vintage, bottle number and altitude, which generally speaking indicates greater care, and if you do some research you can better predict what the contents will taste like.
