recorded June 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixU47ByjoS0

Welcome to Tequilacation where we Deep dive into all things tequila while we imbibe a little bit of the sweet juice itself I'm Stephanie Acker and I'm joined today with Chris Quintanilla who is the CEO of Azulejos tequila welcome Chris yeah hey how are you doing good and Salud yes cheers don't we have such a tough job I mean somebody has to do it it's a great day for tequila though it is so Chris thanks so much for joining us again I know you've been on a couple of other episodes with us as we get that duplication started I'm really excited about it and it's so great for you to spend this time with us I know you've been in the tequila world for a long time you were in the distribution side of the business now of course you're inside um the azalejos business which is your family business it's the 90s correct correct okay so you know a little you know all things tequila right so in our first episode we talked about the history of tequila which is really fascinating why you would call it a tequila like what you know the different types of tequila um then we just finished an episode recently where you actually taught us how to drink tequila which is fantastic if you haven't watched that guys definitely go back and watch that it's really fascinating to learn about the different glasses that are going to give you the best experience the what to kind of expect by the different Tequilas what to look for when you're shopping for a tequila you even gave us a recipe for a drink which was great a 64 calorie drink a Tequila drink which is like perfect for the summer so thank you but today we want to talk a little bit about like how tequila is actually produced which is fascinating because it's a lot more complex than I knew um and it really does I think go into the whole story of why tequila is such a refined drink you know and the history around it and why it's so different and why it's not you know the tequila that you maybe think of when you think of back in your frat days with a terrible hangover like good tequila is is a really refined I think I honestly it's probably it's my I'm a bourbon and a tequila Drinker my two favorite Liquors um so let's so tell me a little bit about that like what what do we need to know about how tequila is produced yeah well you know tequilas are distilled Spirit made from Agave it's actually one of the most difficult spirits to make um the production is very complex the the farming of the Agave takes a long time and um yeah so I'm gonna go into all the details all the steps kind of give you an idea of what it takes to to get the the tequila to your glass right and it takes so long it takes so long I had no idea so um tequila is made from the Blue Agave it's called Blue Weber agave tequilana so this is an Agave native to the Jalisco region of Mexico the gobbies are grown at about a mile high in the in the plains and it's in a kind of a a soil that's kind of has Sandy um volcanic semi uh semi-arid so kind of in a desert like area so being natural to that area um before the Spanish came over it was made into puke when the Spanish came over ran out of Brandy brought their Stills they decided to to make tequila out of the the Poke that was a fermented wine made from uh from these agates right so you gotta have your drink I mean you know I understand yeah you run out of Brandy so what are you going to distill next so so the garbage is a very particular plant um you can make Mescal from any type of agave there's dozens and dozens of different types of Agaves or particular has to be blue agave and actually a lot of people think that Agave is is a type of cactus actually believe it or not uh it's more it's more related to the lily family um so than the cactus and actually an Agave at the end of its life makes a giant flower and blooms uh once in its lifetime and actually bats are the ones who pollinate Agave so so it's a very very unique plant and uh oh I had no idea I didn't realize that Agave bloomed yes yes it's a beautiful flower actually um you know the Agave is harvested before it blooms in order to make tequila but um but it is a very very unique plant then and it's actually a flower really so so what is an Agave it's a giant aloe vera plant does this picture maybe probably eight feet wide update feed wide with some very long sharp spines um one Agave can be eight feet wide yes yes and it can we probably with the spines and everything up to probably 200 pounds so so it's it's it's a good sized plant now they're actually bigger guys from Moscow but but it's a good size plant um so so from that Agave it takes seven to ten years to fully mature fully grow and um it what it does is over the time it's very slow growing but it's collecting as many sugars as it can in its core in order to first of all survive the desert any kind of droughts so on and so forth and um and events is collecting all that to us to have that bloom once in its life the it develops the stock is you know 10 plus feet high when it blooms and uh so it's it's a matching throughout its lifetime all these nutrients and sugars in the core so so now you're thinking about the the the farmers and they have to plant their Agave fields and and guess five ten years out how much Agave is going to be necessary how much to plan out and uh you know you're going to spend all the money harvesting and planting and all the labor and you're not going to see a Reaper word till seven ten years from now you know 20 years not a long growing cycle so so first of all that makes it very complex um there have been times I mentioned this earlier is that there is too much agave and and after seven ten years it starts to to go bad and if there's not enough demand then they have to cut their Gabby fields and plant corns but on the other end there's more often as a shortage of agave it's Tequilas booming not only in the Mexico and the us across the world there's more and more demand and a guy that can only be planted in the tequila region which is the state of Jalisco in kind of South South West Mexico and kind of some of the surrounding states which so that's something that I know for because I've heard this is a challenge with where for tequila makers and that's something the azaleos is struggling with right now right because your demand is growing and I know obviously you've got the handmade bottles I'm of course but are you guys also seeing like some of that that shrinking ability to get agave uh yes I mean there there is uh there is a has been a shortage on Agave for for many years and um what happens it leads to some people taking shortcuts where instead of waiting I got if the fully mature seven years they may be harvesting them at four or five years three years even and then they're going to be a lot smaller and uh not as high quality so the difficulty is finding the right quality Agave from the right areas uh with all the right you know grow correctly with the right nutrients with the right amount of sugars to make the highest quality tequila so so then that's very important you know the raw material needs to be really good so after the whole growing cycle um on top of that well there's a lot of funguses bacteria that attack uh these Agaves um there's called the agave Weevil a little bug that uh creates infestations and I mean it could spread very fast and devastate whole regions of agave so really imagine you're a farmer and on year five you get a an infestation of the of the weevils or fungus you can lose your whole crop and that can be devastating to generations of your family so so like blight for corn or something like that yeah absolutely right and uh on top of that you always have to keep the gather clean from Weeds um sometimes the garbage fruit offshoots they come little pups the little miniature Agave off suits from The Roots so you have to actually take those off with something elsewhere if not actually the little pup grows and actually kills the mother plant as it grows in expands because it has spines right so okay and it picks up the nutrients so you have to harvest those the move them elsewhere plant them elsewhere so it's a lot of Maintenance and uh very difficult uh product to produce uh crop so that being said um oh also any kind of freeze would will kill the entire regions of agave really so so this seems like a really stressful like product actually to to farm yeah right there is so much timing that you have to have involved you know you're you're essentially pre-planting before you know demand obviously there's all the upkeep and everything I mean there's just a I can't think of another crop that has that level of requirement to it yes and it's a testament to all the the the the workers and the and the the farmers in Mexico and all the everything they have to deal with um you know floods freezes it just it just um you know there's some big flooding a couple years ago so it's difficult and uh you know they're they're they continue to do really out of passion um you know other Pride for tequila right some of the hardest working people I've ever seen in my life so so yeah just a testament to them into the industry um so okay so so then harvesting agave so there comes a a Harvester he has a specific knife call the KOA kinda it's like let's say a hoe with a sharp edge and you cut up all the all the spines and you can leave the heart of the Agave so figure an aloe vera plant you cut off all the spines and it kind of at the end looks like a pineapple it's just around the heart of the Agave the core okay I think I've seen the picture of that yeah like an asparagus to a core right this the heart and um these weigh up to 800 pounds sometimes and uh but the heart is it's real like a pineapple it's full of juice and full of sweetness but I actually have tried to lift one and they're pretty heavy you got it what's your best lift with your knees because those are yeah 80 to 100 pounds I mean that's intense yeah so uh so you know they harvest them on the field then they truck them down to The Distillery so once they get to The Distillery the first step is you need to cook the Agave you you know you want to cook it to get the the juices the agave nectar out of the Agave so also figure an onion right you put an onion in an oven and it's gonna caramelize caramelizes yeah you know the juices will come out so then when you press it you're able to collect the the sweet juices right so so same thing with the with the gather there's a couple methods of there's three four different methods of cooking the Agave but the most traditional is to use a brick oven so you're putting all these Agaves in the oven they're going to get caramelized and you're going to have a really nice soft uh you know imagine an onion or pineapple that you can squeeze out the juices um there's also Auto Parts huh that's got to be a massive oven yeah yeah they're they're pretty you know the size of a house maybe depending on the Steeler either there's some that are just like a couple rooms um another way of cooking is these Auto claims which are giant pressure cookers so you put the agave these pressure cookers and uh they use Steam and high pressure and once you're done you get a very uniformly cooked uh um Agave so so either way you cook them sometimes you can blend the different types of cooking now you send it to a mill really to squeeze out the Agave juice into uh and this Milling process is just kind of goes through a bunch of rollers there's also a tahuna which kind of it's It's a volcanic rock that goes in circles um that that you can also squeeze out the juice as The Rock goes over the the crust Agaves um great traditional method um there used to be where we're like a horse or a mule would go around the circle ah yeah yeah okay yeah that's called it the whole night gosh it must have taken forever imagine how long that would have taken back in the day yes and actually a lot of mascal is still made with the hona and there's still some tequila distilleries that have that uh method it's very inefficient it's kind of almost for show but it but it's very cool how this it has been done that for 400 years right so Tequila's been around for for just that long so the 1600s so it's um so once once we have the the juices after the impressed then then you have the Agave juice right so so picture like for grapes you crush the grapes and you have grapes this is going to be sweet it's going to be and you've probably heard of agave nectar uh it's a sweetener yes yes that's that's what that is that juice right so um so that you're gonna add yeast in these fermentation things and what the yeast does it converts the sugar molecules into alcohol molecules okay you add this yeast and uh it does its process it warms up and uh you leave it in there um three four days and this uh this sugar now you get a mixture of maybe five seven percent alcohol um in these large stainless steel tanks usually um that was previously a sweet juice now it's a alcoholic almost like a wine or a beer you want to call it okay Spanish is called so this um and same exact same process with wine you you add yeast you know these grapes they they become become alcohol after the yeast so so when you have this this most though seven percent alcohol now the next step is you're going to distill it so what does that mean is you take it took can I actually stop your first step of course just to kind of make sure I understand so you've got the seven years of grow in the Agave yes then now you're gonna cook it You're Gonna Bake It You're Gonna Bake it and that's like just a couple hours or um let's see a day or two yeah okay a day or two then you're gonna add the yeast and that's gonna do another three to four days well yeah you you first have to Mill it and press out all the juices okay then put it in with the yeast and now you're going to go to the next step so we're already talking seven years plus yes at least a good week at this point yeah right now you're at agave wine still so it's not really quite quite peculiar yet right okay so you get this uh wine most though it's called and you put it into the in a still so what does it still do it's gonna boil this mixture and the first thing to evaporate through the coils you see on a still um I think I have a little still bottle up there but um oh yeah yeah show us can we see it um sure one second now this is your new bottle coming out later this year this could be called Grand Islanders 2023 towards the holidays but uh it's going to be a leader of extra on Yahoo rights but um actually it's a great prop I wasn't expecting to use this yeah so we're boiling it through the bottom right and the first thing to evaporate is going to be the the the alcohol so that five percent alcohol so it's gonna go up and these uh this coil is going to cool it down it's going to collect in another another container so since it's mostly purely I'll call this evaporating at first you're going to come out from from five seven percent alcohol to twice and you end up about 55 alcohol so ah it's gonna be extremely strong product then you cut it down to about 40 alcohol and the majority of tequila out of the markers would be 40 alcohol which is pretty in line with most whiskeys and rums and bread right next so so kind of that's the process to get to the silver Blanco tequila that's unaged because I think a lot of people would find this fascinating is so if it's 40 alcohol that's going to be 80 proof yes correct so just double it when people are asking about it and that's that's the number you get um okay so it comes out at 110 proof out of the still then you cut it down to about 80 proof so okay okay yes and there's also the the quality of the water needs to be correct um you know the amount of the time you're fermenting it you know the type of cooking where the garbage are from and I didn't really touch on that so I'm sorry going a little bit back but the two predominant areas for growing Agave is going to be the highlands of Jalisco and the lowlands of Jalisco the highlands have this really really Red Dirt um it's kind of called the land of the red dirt and it's going to produce some bigger and sweeter Agaves up there you have a lot of sugar in them and they're going to be very robust okay uh the town of tequila is actually in the valley of tequila which there's a volcano and uh right there in tequila and it's it's a really nice value of the volcanic soil so a ton of minerals from the volcanic and so you're going to get a lot of great minerality and great complexity from the lowlands so even the type of agave is going to give you different types of tequila yes you're going to get them everything mineral flavor from the lowlands and the sweeter from the highlands so what we actually do in our little is we we blend it to about 50 50. so you're kind of getting the whole spectrum of the region gotcha okay so it's another interesting piece um a piece to it um so then once you get your Blanco tequila you're gonna You're Gonna Want to age it to become a Reposado so it's usually going to go into the barrels American Oak barrels and then you want to really it's not of the really the amount of time for ripple solder you want to put it in the barrel and really once it's the colors right the aroma is right that's when you you uh you take it out of the barrel so again her size could be two months to to one year um usually around six months four to six months is usually when you're gonna stop aging Reposado then in a vehicle is more than a year a lot of them also is essentially so that's because that's not age typically if it is it's just like for a day or two right so the Bronco Utah taught us in a different episode is essentially what everything up to this process gives us the blanco yes that's right and then now when you age it that's where it's going to start adding some of those additional notes okay that's right so so yeah Reposado then you're gonna get a nice uh pale straw Hue right on the reposado and then you can compare to nanyeku you're going to get a lot darker darker color because this is aged much longer uh anunyako is going to be a one year usually about 18 months again you're looking for specific color in Aroma once you you get it out of the barrel and then the extra on you Who's Gonna Be age three plus years now on the direction you're going to get a lot more overpowering Oak flavor um a ripple saddle you're still going to get a lot of the Agave notes but it's refined a little bit because of the Aging so it's going to smooth out the edges get a little vanilla little caramel flavors from the American Oak barrels and if people want to learn a little bit more about that watch our episode on essentially how to learn how to drink tequila yes or you can actually walked us through the different types of tequila how to drink it the glasses everything but also how to understand the notes of it and you know where you should mix it and things like that so like I'm a big Reposado fan um that's my favorite tequila type um but if I'm gonna sip a tequila I'm going to go with fernandejo right so so right so then uh you know what we believe in is uh okay so so you're there right now such a special product you want to could be in a in a container that that is you know as artistic as a product really so you know with Our Brands we've really been uh important to create also a piece of art as we would like with this art sorry the bottles so these are hand painted in a group of artisans in central Mexico um they're actually using natural flower pigments and ceramic to to make these uh beautiful designs and um so we look at you know a great product a great package and uh and really attribute the The Testament to The Artisans when it comes to the whole tequila production the growing the harvesting the distilling all the way to the the bottle and uh you know people from Mexico are very proud of what we do on tequila and uh you know I think people now across the world recognize yeah what tequila is and uh you may have had a bad experience at first with tequila but once you really understand and can appreciate and you can sip on a really nice Reposado or anything you will uh it'll completely change your your vision and if you really see and understand what it takes to go through you'll appreciate it even more well that's what I was gonna say like the evolution that I've gone through even with tequila of course everybody's got the college days or you know that sneaking stuff out of your parents Liquor Cabinet kind of days you know in Tequila I think you know back in the 80s and things like that before you know I know your business got into it and a couple of of big names started getting into it in the early 90s but um you know to really kind of take tequila up to a whole nother level it just it's a completely different experience than what you drink back in the day but pure tequila is it's so refined you know I you don't get a headache it's not the same I love that there's not the added sugars I know some brands do add that yes I know you guys don't add the added sugars there's no and no additives so it makes such a huge difference but it's just you know it's it's so complex I loved in the last episode where you taught us about the different notes and that's something I'm going to be doing I'm actually got to do a tasting I think with some of my friends and you know just and do different food around it so you can see like how those different tastings react with the food and you know I just think it's it's just fascinating I mean tequila the the country should be very proud and the area of tequila should be extremely proud of the fact that they can put this level of dedication and time and energy into a drink that we just pick up off our shelves and you know make a drink for ourselves yeah it really is amazing what goes into it and uh you know all the people you're helping along the way and then also you know the importance of Distributors the delivery drivers the the people work at the liquor stores uh grocery stores I mean it's it's a lot of people on the way are are helped and benefited by by the tequila in the industry and um you know we want want you to have a great experience and um you know in in the 80s and 90s you know Mexico kind of kept the pream tequila to themselves and with Patron and with all these other brands uh really uh educated the people on what really Primo tequila is and what really goes behind it um you know has allowed it to explore in the American market and globally so you're not really proud of the industry I'm very passionate about everything we do and uh and all the people along the way it helps out so you do work in a great industry I gotta tell you I mean where else could you know it so it's it's 12 o'clock my time so 11 o'clock your time I believe right yes so I mean where else can you be having a conversation about tequila drinking tequila I mean yeah cheers it's tough okay so if you had I know we're gonna wrap up here if you had one piece of advice to someone that is you know we talked a little bit about going to a liquor store right but now that they understand the difference in the background of the tequila and how long it gets it how long it takes if you're gonna say to somebody okay so you're brand new to Tequila here is the tequila I think you should go with or here's what to think of when you're gonna go get that very first tequila and how you should experience what advice would you give them yeah there's there's a the good thing is nowadays there's a lot of information available online so um you can definitely Google the brand Google Google The Distillery but but I think you know do your research for sure and uh authentic it is and pretty helping along the process I think um when I mentioned this before 100 Agave is definitely well worth the extra five dollars or ten dollars on a bottle enough only for the quality but you know the headache afterwards how you feel the next day so you still love yourself it was a product for sure but uh but yeah there's a ton of information available online so uh yeah do a little research and if you don't like it that much um there's there's a lot of other brands that's it's a world out there and I'm sure you'll you'll find something that yeah it's just as complex it's fine really like all the different brands would you recommend that they try a Blanco or Reposado or a nejo for their first time great question right so if you do like um if you're a Scott string for a bourbon Drinker uh definitely if you do like um mixing or vodka gin go the blanco um or a Reposado for sure if you want to look be a little smoother um Mezcal Drinker if you can drink those heavy Spirits definitely uh Blanco's is for you but uh you can't go wrong with a nice Ripple saddle down the middle of the road that's the most popular it's for great for sipping and even better for mixing so good for a drink we talked about before like I love a Blanco and a bloody Maria because it's got kind of balances that acidic tomato but if I'm making a Margarita which I and I squeeze the limes and all that good fun stuff you know which is what I'm drinking now it's Reposado all the way and then on a you know a hot summer night I'm sipping a slightly chilled Anejo on my porch absolutely so in case you can't tell I really like tequila I guess that's why I'm doing the show called chickenlication right yeah and again you can experiment and try the same cocktail with the Blanco and the reposado it'll face completely different and uh so so it's it's that's a great thing about tequila it's endless in the world and uh of tequila and um yeah so so thanks for your time I really appreciate it and uh you know look forward to anybody's everybody's comments and uh you know what can we do next then yeah absolutely so thank you Chris for having us so to everybody watching uh let us know what other topics you'd like to see you want to see some comparisons with other types of Liquors you want to see understand the difference between Mezcal and maybe a tequila do you want to see specific guests come on and talk and maybe share a little bit more about them you want to see some cocktails like Chris taught us in our episode on how to drink tequila let us know in the comments and we will create it for you and in the meantime enjoy your sip of tequila and we will see you soon bye-bye hello everyone thank you