How “Good” Tequila is made.
We want to start this post off by saying that we are Tequila enthusiasts and by no means experts. Throug tasting and trying delicious spirits, we write this post in order to assist fellow enthusiasts along their premium agave spirit journey. As we mentioned in one of our earlier posts, Tequila is solely produced in Mexico, and the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT), or Tequila Regulatory Council has many laws that govern all of the agave actors in play, from growers, distillers, government bodies to the brands themselves.
The CRT procedures allow for tolerances within the process of creating tequila products, and these allowances will dictate the quality of the finished product. For example, a product only needs to be a total of 51% Agave content in order to be considered a tequila, the rest can be made up of whatever, including corn, cane sugar etc.
Tequila production is a slow and meticulous endeavor and there are a multitude of steps that go into creating quality products. We have identified these three points of production that really make or break a tequila and in the future we will discuss these steps in greater detail. The steps are the cooking of the harvested agave, the extraction of the agave sugars and the harvested agave itself.
Once Agave hearts have been harvested, the cooking process is vital for converting starches into fermentable sugars. Traditional cooking methods were done in brick ovens called Hornos. New innovative methods include steam or pressure cooking which is more efficient but loses some of the notes provided by the brick ovens.
After the cooking step, the sugars need to be extracted from the heart of the Agave. We will be diving into this topic in great depth in the future as the process of extraction will determine the actual agave content of the final product. The traditional method is still the best, a large volcanic rock roller mill called a Tahona is used to crush the agave hearts to extract the sugars. More industrial sized roller mills have been created which also do a relatively good job compared to the traditional methods. Brands also use something called Diffusion, which is a type of chemical extraction to remove the sugars from the agave, this process is by far the most inferior and is the reason why the “100% Agave” label doesn’t mean what it used to.
The final point we would like to mention is the agave itself. Blue Weber Agave takes between 7-10 years to fully mature and have a substantial amount of sugar content in order to create premium tequilas. With the increasing popularity of Tequila, Agave producers are having a hard time keeping up and short cuts have been made to accommodate demand. Diffusion is a solution for this supply issue as younger agave can be harvested and diffused to still create, in our opinion, very average tequila.
Now all this information is not very helpful as most tequila bottles will not tell you how they are made on their labels, but that is where we come in! We will be posting content on our IG and in future blog posts about the tequila selection here in New Zealand, and if you can’t wait for that, feel free to send us an email with any tequila questions and Jimmy will be happy to oblige.
