While aficionados tend to prefer blanco tequilas, and imbibers of dark spirits usually gravitate towards añejos, the reposado category is often overlooked. But these light-to-medium aged tequilas offer incredible diversity. They often pair well with food, or serve as the perfect end of the night sipper. So, we gave 10 repos (both newer products and established ones) to members of our tasting panel in a blind taste test to gather their thoughts. We carefully selected products with a wide range of aromas and flavors, and of course, all needed to be additive free. As the high scores suggest, all ..read more

On the heels of Additive-Free Week, we can’t help but be bowled over by the success of our Confirmed Additive Free program. There are so many brands and advocates that have made this a real movement, and we are so grateful for your involvement. We always believed that this was a mission bigger than us – it’s about the producers who are committed to making tequila in a natural way, and the consumers who appreciate their efforts. It’s about being able to chose what you want to drink, based on transparent labeling. Over the last few months we’ve traveled across the U.S., giving tastings and trai ..read more

Update: This project continues! You can follow our progress in the “Lotecito Log“. In this strange pandemic year asking adults what they did during quarantine has become as common as asking kids what they did during summer vacation. While most of North America was in peak sourdough bread making, we decided to tackle a different kind of project. Since we live in the Mexican state of Jalisco, have tequila industry friends, and an endless curiosity about tequila production, we thought we’d try to make our own tiny batch of tequila, or “agave spirit”, by hand. (Disclaimer: Anything we make at home ..read more

How the tequila industry manages the unrealistic expectations put on a natural product Have you ever ordered your favorite tequila and thought, “this tastes a little different than the last time I tried it”? If so, that’s probably a good thing. Tequila, like wine, is a natural product that will vary from batch to batch depending on many factors, such as the agaves used, the time of year it’s produced, different barrels used for aging, and even slight changes in yeast or distillation cuts. But – understandably – the people who sell tequilas, and many consumers who are spending their hard-earned ..read more

Blind Taste Test Results Are In from 24 Tasting Panel Members This is a great time for blanco tequila lovers, with a number of excellent, additive-free choices in the market. Although we are lucky enough to try all the brands in our Additive-Free program, we noticed that some of our daily sippers are sometimes overlooked. So, we assembled kits of 10 quality blanco tequilas from our additive-free list, and asked 24 Tequila Matchmaker panel members to rate them blind. We wanted to see how some of the newer or lesser-known brands would measure up against an old favorite. We delivered 10 blind sa ..read more

Suave releases rare 5-year XA and blanco blends Among the five official categories of tequila, the “Joven or Oro” expression (as it is labeled in tequila regulations) is probably the most maligned. Blamed for many wild nights and wicked hangovers of youth, these tequilas have historically been cheaper products containing additives, such as extra sugar and caramel coloring. Single Barrel Joven (45G and 42S) from Suave Tequila But “young” and “gold” tequilas don’t have to signify a bad tequila experience. The category is defined as blanco, or unaged tequila, mixed with an aged tequila, such as ..read more

While the tequila category has seen explosive growth for the last couple of years, slowly but steadily a new trend is starting to form: the rise of the “agave spirit.” This has long been a blanket term for distillates made by cooking, crushing, fermenting, and distilling agaves, which includes both tequila and mezcal. But it is also a term that is starting to show up more frequently on bottles in the U.S. and Mexico, not only as descriptors of regional spirits (including raicilla and bacanora), but as a category all its own. “The initial growth of mezcal brought more interest in other agave s ..read more

Over the last year or so there have been some excellent blanco tequilas released into the market, so we thought it was high time to put together a blind tasting event to see how these newer products would measure against some popular contenders. We selected four new tequilas in our Confirmed Additive-Free program that we feel are of excellent quality and put them up against 2 well-known products to see how they would compare when tasted blind. In addition, we thought this blind tasting would be a great opportunity to test a couple of myths about tequila preferences. For instance, how much doe ..read more

High agave prices aren’t the only factor driving up the costs of making tequila. Producers are pointing to a number of mostly pandemic-related issues that are making everything from sourcing bottles, printing labels, and shipping products more difficult and costly. “Covid restrictions prevented many companies from operating for a period of time, and then many were granted (permission) to operate under certain restrictions, such as reduced staff and social distancing,” says Steffin Oghene, Vice President of Business Development at Tequila El Tequileño. This has had a knock-on effect, and many ..read more

The best way to learn is by doing, right? That’s the gist behind our “Lotecito” (small batch) destilado de agave project, which was born amid Covid quarantine but continues on to this day. As aficionados know, tequila is an incredibly complex spirit, with a myriad of production steps along the way. Each one is capable of altering the final product. So to solve the mystery of exactly how these changes create the aromas and flavors we commonly find in tequila, we purchased a tiny (20 liter) copper pot still and made our own small batch distillate, using cooked agave direct from the ovens of our ..read more