Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I actually found where this tequila was made. And I have to be honest with you, I didn't even know bebemos was a tequila. We were driving through El Arena Jalisco looking for a distillery owned by my friend Danny. We thought we found it, we pulled in and nope, wrong distillery. We had actually stumbled on to NOM 1560 Tequilas Gonzalez Lara, also known as Casa Maringo. And instead of wondering what these random gringos were doing pulling into the distillery, I, Isaac Ganito, welcomed us in and showed us around. I took a ton of pictures while we were there. So before I taste this babemos, I want you to walk through how this tequila is actually being made, because I got to see the process firsthand. It starts with Tequila Valley Blue Weber agave. Once those agaves are harvested, the pinas come into the distillery and they're loaded into a traditional stone or masonry oven. This is where the heat slowly cooks the agave, converting those complex carbohydrates in the pina into formidable sugars. When you walk into the dishore, you see those ovens filled with coke agave, it smells absolutely incredible. The once cooking is finished, the cooked agave goes through a crushing method to extract those sugars, and they're using a roller mill. The cooked agave moves through the mill where it's crushed and squeezed, and those fibers separate the sweet agave juice from the magasa, the leftover agave fiber. From there, we move into fermentation. At non 1560, they're using fermentation in stainless steel tanks. The yeast there is all wild. That's what goes to work on those sugars and converts that into alcohol. From there, the fermentation is going into distillation. Another interesting part of this step, they're using stainless steel steels with copper coils. That copper contact really matters. Even though the body of the steel is stainless steel, the copper components give the spirit. The contact with the copper helps remove some of those unwanted sulfur compounds and give you a clean distillate. Tila is then double distilled. But bamos talks about how very selective their cuts are through the process. It's what they call the heart of hearts, keeping the portion of the distillation that gives them the profile they're looking for. We walked into this barrel room, and I have to tell you, it was pretty nice. You'll see all types of barrels in there. The room is filled with lots of different types of barrels, and babimos is a hoven. They're blending their blanco, a reposado, and their Anejo together. The Reposado component spends 8 months in French oak. The Anejo spends 22 months in French oat. And those aged components blended together with their blanco give you your final expression. They don't publish the exact percentages of each in the tequila blend.
[00:02:20] I asked many times, so I was unable to find out. So I guess we'll just have to kind of guess through the tasting. How much of this fresh valley agave can I still find? How much of the influence we're going to get from the french oak? And before we taste it, we got to talk about these bottles, because this is a pretty cool presentation. Renewals has a late 60s, early 70s, Southern California look to it. My favorite part of it, actually, the hardest part about getting this home is the shot glass right on top. You take it off, and this is your glass to pour in. I really wish it's separated, but it doesn't. So it makes it really difficult for traveling and fitting this into your luggage. But, hey, as you can see, we made it. And actually, the name Babemos is pretty cool as well. It stands for we drink. So having this glass built in is pretty fitting. But here's another thing we have to talk about. This bottle's around $135, so that's some pretty serious money for a bottle of tequila, especially a hoban. So let's get it into the glass and see what the nose of this is all about. Okay, let's get into the nose. It is pretty light. You'll see. You know, but it is a hoeven blanco, repo, and anejo. I'm gonna say probably not a lot of anejo based on the color. Good cooked agave. A nice minerality to it. You definitely can tell it's valley. A little bit of pedrichor. Not a lot, but just a nice minerality. Not a lot of barrel notes. Just a little bit of caramel, a little bit of vanilla. All right, let's dive into the taste.
[00:03:42] Got some nice legs on the glass. It has a nice mouth feel. There's a nice sweetness. Good cooked agave, but it has a little bit of a weird sweetness to it. The finish is kind of long. It definitely has a peppery compound to it. Definitely get that minerality. 40 ABV. It has a nice mouth feel for that. The. There's a nice coup da Gabe. A little bit of minerality. There's a little light vegetal nest there. Almost like clove, I want to say. Maybe a little bit of a grassy note as well. And I. I will say it's a little bit complex when you think about a blanco and then an 8 month repo and then a 22 month on yo. There should be some complexity there and there is.
[00:04:20] The sweetness that I was kind of picking up is a little better now in that second taste. This does seem very balanced. The bottle is really beautiful. It's one that maybe I need to revisit and sip on a little bit. This was a fresh crack. I really don't know a lot about NOM 1560. We didn't have an appointment, we didn't know anybody. We just pulled into one place thinking it was someplace else and it was the wrong spot. But the people were incredibly welcoming and I'm really excited that we got to visit it and see another distillery. So let me know if you've had babimos.
[00:04:48] Babimos. Seems like it might be something worth checking out. Like I said, a little bit higher price, but the bottle's cool. Great presentation. Tequila itself, I'm going to say, not bad. Let me know in the comments if you've had it, what your thoughts are on it, if you have. Cheers. Thanks for watching. Have a great night.
