How Tequila is Made — The Entire Process, Start to Finish
During my college drinking years in the mid-1970s, Jimmy Buffet led me and many others down a dark path with grade-lowering favorites like “God’s Own Drunk” and the anthem, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and…” By the time he released his smash hit song “Margaritaville” in 1977, I had dropped out of school and was living with my parents.
I eventually graduated, and though my mom and dad still harbor some ill will towards Mr. Buffet, there is no question that he helped raise the margarita–and its main ingredient, tequila — to superstar status in the U.S. But where, exactly, does tequila come from?
Without sugar cane, rum wouldn’t exist, and without potatoes, neither would vodka. For tequila and other types of mescals — as well as the fermented drink, pulque — a plant called the agave is the indispensable ingredient. There are nearly 160 different species of agaves shared between the United States and Mexico. On the U.S. side, they are commonly called century plants because they seem to take a human lifetime, or more, to finally flower. South of the border, the wait doesn’t seem quite as long, so they are simply called maguey.
What makes the agave particularly unique is that when it finally decides to flower — which is usually in 8 to 20 years, rather than 100 — it only flowers once, and then the plant dies. Because it has nothing to lose, the plant furiously drains the carbohydrates from its leaves and roots and concentrates them in the heart of the plant just before it flowers. This powerhouse of stored sugars will fuel the growth of an inflorescence (flowering stalk) that can reach thirty feet in height and six inches in diameter in a few of the largest Mexican species.
Harnessing this fateful, botanical crescendo — nipping it in the bud, really — is what makes the production of tequila, as well as other lesser known products of the agave, possible.
Ever since the Spanish brought distillation to Mexico in the 1500s, the most important use of the agave has been in the production of the distilled alcoholic beverage mescal, known by different names when made from different species of agave in different parts of Mexico. In Sonora, it is called bacanora, and if it’s grown in Oaxaca, it is generally just called mescal.
Within a legally defined area in the highlands of central Mexico, however, a very special kind of mescal — one made from just one species of agave that is different than all the rest — is a $750,000,000 a year industry. It’s called tequila.
The rules of the Appellation of Origin Tequila in Mexico legally define the word tequila in a similar way as wines are regulated in France. Tequila must be produced from Agave tequilana F.A.C. Weber, aka blue agave or maguey azul (often jumbling the botanical name in legalize as tequilana Weber blue variety), and from plants grown only within the Mexican state of Jalisco or in certain municipalities of the nearby states of Nayarit, Tamaulipas, Guanajuato, and Michoacán. The most well-known distilleries are located in eastern Jalisco, and, not surprisingly, around the town of Tequila.
By Mexican law (the Official Mexican Standard, NOM), non-100% (mixto) tequila can be fermented with as much as 49% sugars from sources other than the blue agave (such as cane sugar) but not from any other species of agave. It can also be bottled outside of the area in which the blue agave is grown. This would include such mass marketed brands as Jose Cuervo.
The purest and most sought after tequila is made from 100% blue agave and each bottle must be labeled as such by law, including the words Hecho in Mexico. It must also be bottled at the distillery controlled by the company and must be fermented from sugars derived exclusively from the blue agave. Top shelf brands will always be labeled: “100% blue agave,” or “100% de agave.” If it doesn’t say 100% on the outside, it’s not 100% on the inside.
The most important step in the making of tequila begins in the fields. Jimadores are highly skilled agave farmers who determine when subtle morphological changes signal that an individual blue agave plant is about to flower, usually when the plant is 8–12 years old. At just the right time, the bud of the flowering stalk (quiote) is removed, effectively castrating the plant. This diverts the carbohydrates that would have gone to the inflorescence, and concentrates them in the stem for several months until harvest.
The harvest (jima) begins when the jimador chooses an individual agave of the proper maturity and begins to cut away the long spear-like leaves (pencas) using a coa, a long handled knife with a rounded, ultra-sharp cutting blade. He hammers a bar into the base to lever the plant out of the ground, then uses the coa to finish the job, cutting the remaining leaves clean and flush against the fat stem. What remains looks much like a 50–100 pound pineapple — the piña — which is then loaded onto a truck and delivered to the distillery.
Once the piñas leave the fields, each distillery has its own methods of making its trademark brand of tequila.
When the piñas reach the distillery floor, they are hacked into halves or quarters and either loaded into traditional ovens (hornos) to be steam baked for 48 hours, or pressure cooked in stainless steel autoclaves for 12- 18 hours. The cooking process converts the heavy starches within the piñas into fermentable sugars, and the color of the flesh changes from potato white to a carmelly brown.
The next step is to shred the baked piñas to extract the sweet agave juice.
Most modern day distilleries use steel knives and revolving drums to shred the baked piñas into their composite fibers, then use water to help dissolve the sugars and presses to extract the juice. But others, such as the Patrón distillery, have returned to the use of the tahona, a vertical stone wheel, often weighing several tons that travels around a center pivot inside a round stone pit, pulled by mules or horses (like a pony ride at the county fair), crushing the piñas inside as it moves. This was the standard method of crushing and extracting the juices of the piñas for several centuries, and it has made a comeback for producing special batches of tequilas by top-shelf distillers.
The extracted juice, now called the must (mosto), is fermented in large stainless steel or wooden vats to produce a liquid that is approximately 5% alcohol. Each distillery has its own formula for the strains of yeasts, additives, temperatures, and length of time for the fermentation process. For tequilas that are not destined to be made from 100% blue agave, this is the stage when other sugars are added to the fermentation vat. The must is fermented for three to ten days, and the resultant liquid is ready for distillation.
Distillation is generally a two-stage process, with two separate distillations inside large stainless steel vessels to produce the end product. The first distillation produces ordinario with a 25% alcohol content, and the second yields finished tequila at approximately 55% alcohol. Before bottling, it is diluted to a standard 40% (80 proof) alcoholic content.
White/silver tequila (blanco or plata) is straight from the still and bottled immediately. Young/gold tequila (joven or oro) is made from a blend of silver and any of the aged tequilas. Aged (reposado) is aged in oak casks for a minimum of two months. Extra-aged (añejo) is aged in white oak casks for at least one year. Ulltra-aged (extra añejo) is aged at least three years in oak casks. Tequila mellowing or softening (the addition of caramel color, natural oak extract, glycerin, or sugar syrup) is permitted, though this is rarely done with high quality 100% agave tequilas.
Despite this incredible journey of the agave from field to bottle, I’ve never developed a connoisseur’s taste for tequila. But I do enjoy an occasional glass of good wine, and when I do, I sometimes lean back in my chair, and wonder whatever happened to the Coral Reefer Band.
