Tequila can only be produced in five Mexican states: Jalisco (the main production area), Nayarit, Michoacán, Guanajuato, and Tamaulipas.
A jimador is a skilled trained harvester of the ripe agave plants. They use savagely sharp ‘coas’ for a rapidly stripping the leaves (pencas) to expose the centre of the plant, the pina. Its impossibly exhausting work, made to look effortless in what is usually sweltering heat.
The spirit was there before Tequila Town. Sort of. In total, there are around 20 distilleries in Tequila, so its often asked which came first: the town or the spirit? In a roundabout way, it was the spirit, although nameless at that point, that existed first. The small town of Tequila was settled in the 1530s and, as the production of the still unnamed spirit started to centre around the valley, it eventually picked up the name of the town.
The valley of Tequila is UNESCO heritage listed
Mexicans enjoy fermented agave before its been distilled into tequila known as pulque. Consumed in traditional pulquerias, the locals enjoy this beverage in a range of flavours including pineapple, lime, vanilla, and guava. It’s fleshy, milky and slightly fizzy, and something of an acquired taste.
Just like in Scotland, Mexico has its highlands and lowlands. But Mexico’s lowlands are already high, at 1,200 to 1,600 metres, and the highlands are even higher, at 2,000 metres. Agave is grown in Tequila Valley (lowland) is typically smaller with slightly less sugar content than that which is grown in the red soil of the highlands
There are 3 different set of processes used to make tequila
Traditional: using a masonry oven called an ‘horno’ to cook the pinas, then shredding with a Tahona stone wheel, fermentation in an open tank with fibres and distillation in copper pots stills.
Modern: cooking the pinas in an autoclave (basically a huge steam pressure cooker) then shredding with a roller mill, fermentation in stainless steel vats and distillation in stainless steel stills
Industrial: using a diffusor to extract starch from the raw agave and distillation in column stills.
To be labeled ‘Tequila’ a bottle only needs to be 51% agave with the balance being fermented from sugar
According to International Wine & Spirit Research (IWSR), there is a dramatic surge in America for premium spirits and 100% agave tequila (distilled from 100% agave) has become the fastest growing category within tequila in both the UK and the US
The world’s top 3 largest markets for tequila are Mexico, the US as a whole and California individually.
