1530. It was the year a few intrepid Spaniards discovered Mexican natives drinking a brew made from the heart of an agave. Given their need for portability (all that conquistadoring took mobility), those Spaniards decided to try distilling the brew. Veló! Tequila was born!
In the last few years, tequila costs have soared until they now hover in the Scotch Whisky category. Why has the price skyrocketed? There was only one way to find the answer. Road trip.
Getting to the tequila area requires 20 pleasant hours of driving or an arduous flight through Dallas or Houston that includes two hours on a commuter plane with surly flight attendants. Given the choice, I’d drive. The Mexican toll highways (called Quotas) are among the best and safest highways in the world, with virtually no traffic and miles and miles of gorgeous scenery. Spend your first night in Saltillo – we like Hotel El Morillo – and the second night you’ll be drinking fresh tequila. Or you can fly the unfriendly skies. Once there, the easiest choice is to stay in Guadalajara, only 45 minutes from the agave fields. More intrepid souls in search of bargain accommodations or more auténtico locales can ask at the various distilleries in Tequila and Arandas for good recommendations. A few weeks ago, I flew down to spend a couple of days with the folks from Sauza. We started talking to the growers, and the first thing that I learned was that the growing period for an agave would make a vineyard owner cry. From the day the agave is born until they can cut it down is a minimum of six years, often closer to eight, and then the fields must rest for a year or two. And you can’t go back year after year, reharvesting; you kill an agave at harvest. In an operation like Sauza’s, that means that their 30,000 acres are producing only one crop every 10 years.
I also had the chance to watch the jimadors, the men who work the fields, gracefully shaving the heart out of those blue agaves. Standing next to a 6-foot-tall agave, they take a razor-sharp blade called a coa and cut the agave down to a shape resembling a pineapple, albeit one the size and weight of a 20-gallon beer keg. Their skill level is astonishing. They have to avoid the razor-sharp tips of the agave while keeping their balance standing on a field of slimy discarded leaves, all the while steering clear of one another’s coas. They do this work 10 hours a day, in the 90-degree sun, and, amazingly, they knock out an agave every 45 seconds. (I had the chance to try my amateur hand and finished off half of one agave in five minutes, after having tripped and fallen, dulling a coa, and gouging myself.) The jimadors are some of the highest-paid agricultural workers in Mexico, making a strong middle-class income, but they earn every peso.
My final hint as to the cost came from understanding the role of the Mexican government. They make two important distinctions. The first has to do with the amount of agave used (it will be 51% if the label doesn’t stipulate, 100% only if it says so). The more agave, the better the taste, the more expensive the brew, and the fewer headaches. The second distinction has to do with the age and how the tequila was stored. There are three stages: Silver or blanco can be bottled directly from the still; reposado must be aged between two and 12 months in oak; and añejo must be aged for one year or longer in oak. Gold tequila, which is a marketing ploy, simply adds food coloring to the silver tequila. Some very fine tequilas, Sauza Commemorativo for one, are 51% agave. But the export push is on for the 100% tequilas.
I tell you this because our neighbors to the south look at our never-ending rush for increasingly expensive tequilas with both a sense of pride and a little concern over our sanity. After all, the current favorite way to drink tequila in Mexico isn’t in snifters or in margaritas. It’s a Paloma: two jiggers of reposado tequila to one can of Squirt. No kidding.
There’s the sad truth about why tequila now costs so much. In Mexico, they’re mixing it with grapefruit-flavored soft drinks, and in the U.S., we’re mixing it with terrible lime-flavored bar mixes. There is only a limited number of agaves to go around, so those of us who want the good stuff have to be willing to pay.
Which brings up the last point. I had the opportunity to taste a lot of different tequilas in every possible price range while I was down there. The classics still fare well, like El Tesoro and Herradura. The biggest surprise, and my favorite discovery of the trip, was Sauza’s Tres Generaciones Plata, a blanco tequila with the most seductively sweet agave aroma. At around $50 a bottle, I won’t mix it with anything but fond memories.
This article appears in July 8 • 2005.
