$225,000 tequila unveiled

With a eye on setting a world record, Tequila La Ley .925 unveiled the world's most expensive tequila yesterday. The steep price, however, is due to the etched bottle more than the tipple inside, which is dubbed "Pasion Azteca," and aged for six years.

Tequila Ley put its premium spirit into 33 solid platinum bottles. The price tag: $225,000.

Next up, bottles of crafted from gold and platinum, which sell for $150,000, and tequila in gold and silver decanters for a mere $25,000.

Tonala hot shop weathers slump, churns out bottles for tequila makers

Photograph by : Farid Sanchez

Hipolito Gutierrez’s sweltering-hot shop churns out thousands of bottles each day, mostly for clients in the rapidly growing tequila industry.

Story by : DAVID AGREN

A worker in Hipolito Gutierrez’s Tonala workshop pulled a glob of molten glass from a 1,000-degree oven, retrieving it with a long metal tube. He dipped the orange ball in water to cool it slightly before rolling the glass on a metal surface. As he puffed into the tube several times, the glass began expanding. After placing it in a simple cylindrical mold, the glass took the shape of an elegant bottle. The worker finally spun the glass between a pair of tongs, giving the bottle near-perfect dimensions. Being a hand-made object, each creation is always slightly different than the one crafted before it.

Gutierrez’s sweltering-hot shop churns out thousands of bottles each day, mostly for clients in the rapidly growing tequila industry. His bottles’ rustic appeal give high-end liquors a special cachet. But at the same time as Gutierrez’s enterprise has thrived and gained notoriety, the blown-glass industry as a whole has fallen on hard times as foreign competition keeps taking market share from Jalisco’s producers. The Guadalajara-area’s blown-glass industry has been famous for decades and many kitchen cupboards are stocked with the ubiquitous fat, but imperfect glasses with blue rims. Nowadays, approximately 20 factories make glassware, a far cry from the 120 in business a decade ago.

“All the people that focused their businesses on making glassware ... they’re disappearing,” Gutierrez said.

The prices for normal drinking glasses, Guiterrez said, have stagnated in recent years.

“The prices that I charge for glassware are the same as they were in 2001.”

During the past five years, most producers’ input costs have kept increasing, eroding thin profit margins.

Somewhat fortuitously, Guiterrez focused his efforts on making bottles and shot glasses for the tequila industry in the early 1990s. Tequila bottles account for 90 percent of his shop’s production.

“The vast majority manufactures glassware, jars and flower vases,” he said.

“I’m focusing on something different.”

Something different includes the world’s largest blown-glass bottle, a 32-liter monster produced in 1997. The bottle broke his previous world record, a 22-liter bottle he made in 1996. His first record-setting bottle was made from seven kilograms of glass.

“It took more than 30 attempts,” he said, pointing to a row of bottles, which ascended in size, the smallest one representing his first attempt. The 22-liter bottle required a month of experimenting. The large bottles are now on display at a museum in Tequila, Jalisco.

Gutierrez still makes fairly big bottles, mainly three-liter containers – what Canadians and Americans might refer to as Texas mickies. He also now produces bottles for a Cognac maker, placing a decorative cluster of glass grapes in the bottom of each one.

For the tequila industry, Gutierrez said using a rustic decanter is an obvious way to market premium products, which can sell for several hundred dollars.

“They could put (tequila) in any type of bottle, but when a good product is combined with hand-made blown glass ... the bottle sells it,” he explained.

“More than anything, it’s different.”

Some of Jalisco’s most famous distillers use his bottles, including Cazadores, Herradura and Cabo Wabo.

Their patronage keeps his shop busy. Gutierrez’s 12 employees melt three tons of glass each day. An average bottle takes about eight to 10 minutes to create.

Despite his affinity for making bottles, Gutierrez makes some glassware – mainly shot glasses, which are mostly sold in souvenir shops in tequila-producing towns.

Adding to Gutierrez’s business success, he’s managed to keep a lid on some of his expenses. He switched from using liquid-petroleum gas for ovens to natural gas – a combustible available via networks running through a few suburban neighborhoods, but not in the municipality of Guadalajara, where memories of the April 22, 1992 sewer line explosions still linger. The change saved him at least 30 percent, he estimated. As an added benefit, natural gas burns cleaner, which leads to a better quality product. To save money, some competitors now burn oil in their ovens, which leads to the production of an inferior product and contaminates the glass.

“The advantage I have is natural gas,” he explained.

Another advantage is his reputation, which he gained while working in both his own workshop, which opened 12 years ago, and with five brothers in a family business before that. Gutierrez’s father helped pioneer the blown-glass industry in Jalisco, back when “there were only two factories.” Gutierrez’s two teenage daughters, though, aspire to other things, even though he said his blown-glass workshop has “a bright future.”

From the Guadalajara Reporter

Tequila goes upscale with premium brands

New trend finds partygoers switching from body shots to sipping cocktails

Jose Hermosillo, owner of Casa Noble Tequila, pours shots of añejo tequila into snifter glasses sitting on a bar at his company’s 24-hecatre compound in Tequila, Mexico. But no one dares throw back the triple-distilled spirit quickly – a 750 millilitre bottle sells for $80. Smooth and complex, with an interesting nose and an almost buttery texture, it comes in a hand-painted porcelain bottle adorned with 18-karat gold detailing.

Once a beverage associated with Mexican holidays, booze-fuelled debauchery and nasty hangovers, Mexico’s best-known export has increasingly moved upscale, finding a spot on the top shelves of liquor cabinets and commanding steep prices from discerning connoisseurs, who often sip ultra premium tequilas like they would a fine scotch whisky or bourbon.

Casa Noble now exports all over the world, finding enthusiasts in countries as diverse as Australia, Japan, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Russia, where Hermosillo says young people, flush with cash and an appetite for something other than vodka, are fuelling a premium tequila boom. The demand, however, is especially strong in Canada and the United States.

While industry giants like Jose Cuervo and Sauza have long distilled premium products, their best reservas and reposados received little fanfare until recently, joining a slew of export-only tequilas from craft distillers. The enormous popularity of premium tequila has even drawn celebrities into the business. Van Halen front man Sammy Hagar launched the Cabo Wabo brand, and actor Dan Aykroyd scooped up the Canadian rights to Patron Tequila.

Knock-offs have arrived on store shelves, too. A Southern California company now distils a tequila-like beverage from U.S.-grown agaves, initially selling it under the name "Temequila" – a word play on the town where the beverage is bottled.

"Tequila is taking advantage of the trend in the spirits industry that people want to drink better liquor," says David Ozgo, an economist with the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

Drinking better often means paying more, but consumers seem more than willing to spend big on tequila. Growth in the top end of the tequila market is expected to outpace sales for regular tequilas for the rest of the decade – consumption jumped by a staggering 29 per cent in 2004.

Several factors, both intentional and serendipitous, have propelled premium tequila’s popularity. According to Bertha Becerra, spokeswoman for the Guadalajara-based Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT), manufacturers began distilling better beverages, investing in new technologies and improving production techniques. Firms also marketed their products more effectively, leveraging tequila’s appellation of origin distinction, which imbues it with a certain cachet – similar to luxury drinks like cognac and champagne (by law, tequila must be made from blue agave plants grown in Jalisco, and designated municipalities in Guanajuato, Michoacan, Nayarit and Tamaulipas states).

With the prices of mid-range tequilas falling due to a surplus of agave plants – tequila’s principal ingredient – Mexico’s famed firewater is favourably competing against longtime cocktail standbys like rum and vodka.

To conquer new markets, the CRT recently authorized the production of flavoured tequilas, and created a new category for extra-aged tequila. Before the rule changes, añejo tequila only needed to rest for one year. Relatively young tequilas were lumped in with beverages spending nearly five years in a barrel.

Small but important details differentiate premium tequilas from their mass-market counterparts. Many premium distillers, like Casa Noble, grow their own agaves without the use of chemicals, steam roast the agave hearts in stone ovens and naturally ferment the agave juice.

During the distillation, Casa Noble discards the "heads and tails" – the first and last parts of the batch. The practice, along with triple distilling, supposedly reduces the levels of hangover-inducing methanol and other unpleasant elements. The final product rests in barrels made from new wood for just under five years (many distillers use old whisky barrels for aging tequila).

While some whiskies spend more than 20 years in a barrel, Hermosillo says five years is ample time.

"After a certain period of time, you lose a lot of the properties of the agaves… and the properties of the barrel take over."

Ultimately, Hermosillo says, "If you combine all these complexities, you’ll get a great spirit – not just a great tequila."

And, while premium tequila would make a great margarita, save it for sipping. "It’s not for mixing," he says.

From FFWD (Calgary)

Tequila region wins UNESCO designation

Jalisco’s Agave Landscape, a 34,658-hectare zone stretching from the outskirts of Zapopan towards the Nayarit border, was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO on Wednesday. The zone includes the municipality of Tequila, where the fiery spirit of the same name originates, as well as the towns of Amatitan and El Arenal, the Tequila Volcano and the ruins at Guachimontones. The designation forces municipalities in the zone to adopt rigorous standards for sustainable development and to preserve key buildings and sites. (The UNESCO designation includes several old tequila-producing installations.) If new development in the area fails to live up to UNESCO standards, Jalisco’s Agave Landscape could just as easily lose its status as a World Heritage Site.

The designation, handed down at the 30th session of the World Heritage Committee in Vilnius, Lithuania, promises to open new doors particularly for the tourism industry in Tequila. Officials expect more investment in infrastructure, including a growth in hotels, restaurants, hostels, and handicraft businesses. The Tequila area’s new status as a World Heritage Site will also serve as a powerful marketing tool to draw tourists, said an official from the Jalisco Department of Tourism.

Mexico now boasts 26 World Heritage sites, putting it among the countries with the greatest number of such sites, including China, France, Italy and Greece among others.

From the Guadalajara Reporter

Desert-like Los Altos produces 'sweeter' tequila

Photograph by : D Agren

Frida Lagunas of Cazadores shows off some of her distilleries best stuff. Although not as famous as Tequila, Jalisco, the Los Altos municipality of Arandas is home to several famous tequila brands.

Story by : David Agren

Tequila put its namesake town on the map, but Mexico's famed firewater is also proudly produced northeast of Guadalajara in Los Altos, where the area's red soil, elevation and climate give beverages from the region special characteristics.

"When you try a tequila from here and one from Tequila, Jalisco ... there's a big difference," said Miguel Ramirez, operations manager for Tequila Cazadores, which is based in Arandas, a city of 70,000 located 120 kilometers northeast of Guadalajara.
Tequila owes many of its characteristics to the region the blue agave used to make it comes from.

"One of the differences here is that the soil where the agave is grown is red," Ramirez explained.

"It gives the agaves different nutrients."

Unlike the Tequila area, the temperature in the Los Altos region dips at night and some of its towns shiver through the winter. (The mercury in San Gaspar de los Reyes dropped to -14.5 degrees last January). Blue agave plants, which blanket the countryside, mature more slowly in Los Altos' cooler temperatures than in the Tequila area.

"The main difference between the (agave growing zones) is the climate," said Luis Alva Mu–oz, a technical advisor for Jalisco's Rural Development Secretariat (Seder).
"The Los Altos region is more desertlike. It's also colder, which causes the plants to grow to smaller sizes."

According to Alva, agaves grown in the Tequila area take seven years to mature. In comparison, agaves in Los Altos grow for eight to 10 years before being harvested.
As a result, agaves from Los Altos have a higher sugar content, which impacts the final products' flavors.

Bertha Becera, spokeswoman for the Guadalajara-based Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT) said beverages from the Tequila area tend to be "drier" while "tequilas from Los Altos are more aromatic with more sweet notes."

As for tequila from one zone being better than another, both Bercera and Alva said that depends on personal preferences.

Distillers in both regions use similar production techniques, but some outfits like Cazadores (hunters in Spanish) strive to produce a premium product. At its production plant, which is adorned with the head of 12-point buck deer, Cazadores produces 100-percent-agave tequilas. In the production process, the distiller naturally ferments its agave juice and ages its spirits in oak barrels made from new wood, instead of using old whisky barrels.

Much of Los Altos' tequila production centers on Arandas and Atotonilco, pueblos famous for milk, cheese and cajeta production, along with fiery spirits. Other famed brands from the region include Don Julio, Siete Leguas (named for Pancho Villa's horse) and Cabrito (little goat).

Production in Los Altos, however, lags behind that in the Tequila region, home to some of the industry's most legendary distilleries, including Jose Cuervo, Suaza and Casa Herradura.

"There are large installations here, but I don't think the volume produced is as large," Ramirez explained.

Due in part to the town's image as the birthplace of tequila and efforts by distillers to make it something other than a booze-cruise destination, tourism is increasing in the Tequila area. A train dubbed the Tequila Express chugs towards Amatitan, Jalisco every Saturday.

A journey through the rolling hills of Los Altos, though, warrants a visit too. Cazadores will welcome guests Monday through Saturday once maintenance at its Arandas facility is completed later this month.

From the Guadalajara Reporter, April 15, 2006