CAMBIO TEQUILA EXPLAINED! | Chef John Des Rosiers on Tradition, Innovation & Transparency

[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, guys, this interview today is awesome. I got to sit down with Chef John and we talk about his product cambio. The whole story of where they started, how he came up with this ingenious idea to keep tradition the same, but create an amazing tequila with some really new ideas. So stick around. You're gonna love this one. It's tasting tequila with bread. Hey, John, I'm so excited to have you on here tonight to talk about your amazing tequila. How you doing today? [00:00:39] Speaker B: I am amazing. It's a absolutely gorgeous sunny day in Chicago right now, so it's finally. He came down a little bit. It's not snowing outside, which usually happens in, you know, in May, so we get to finally get to June, and we get a nice little bit of summertime, so it's good. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Well, you know, it's been absolutely smoldering here too. I'm only a few hours away from you. Although our weather is similar, my traffic is better, and it has finally cooled down here as. So I definitely appreciate it. It's been really hot here. [00:01:07] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. The last four days have been like Miami. [00:01:09] Speaker A: It has been. Yeah. A little. Maybe even a little bit steamier than Miami. So I see you're drinking something there. I'm gonna pour this one right here. This seller series is amazing, and this is what I'm gonna sip on during the show. And if you could tell everybody a little bit of who you are and what you have done and what you do today, that'd be great. [00:01:28] Speaker B: Sure. So I started out professionally cooking when I was 15 at a really beautiful high end French and Italian in high school. And I would, you know, leave high school and drive to the restaurant. I worked five days a week. The restaurant was open just five nights a week, so I worked every day that I could at the restaurants. I slept through at least a quarter of my high school classes, so. But I was in a. I was in a. A really good Catholic high school, and my teachers understood where my passion was and. And what I was going to do with my life. They understood the direction that I was taking. So as long as. As long as I kept up decent grades and. And I passed my classes, passed my test. It was. It was all right. So I fell in love with. With. With restaurants that I walked into to my first place and really had an incredible lifelong passion with it. Went to culinary school out at CIA in New York, where I even began. We even began to learn and study about. About wine and about different beer and fermenting and things like that out there. So I was always exposed to lots of food and beverage for my whole career. When I graduated college and came back, I, I worked in Charlie Trotter's restaurant in the mid-90s, which was really in its heyday. I worked there for a little while and then went back to the place that I started at when I was in high school. And during my five year, roughly five year time there, the, the restaurant owner, who was also a chef there, wanted to build a Wine Spectator grand award winning list. So we went from 200 bottles to 1500 bottles in a year. It was just an absolute crash course and learning about, about wine at every level. We went to lots of auctions, I did a lot of studying, a lot of reading, a lot of tasting. And I was 19 when I was exposed to all that. So from that moment on, I managed every beverage program at the restaurants that I worked. And then also when I built my own 16 years ago, built my first place 16 years ago now. So I've always been really involved in kind of both sides of it and I've got a really, I think, a wide background and a good understanding of the way that different things are made and the way that kind of the best people in all these different disciplines do it at a certain level. And so that's really where the background comes in that makes a difference of why we decided to start Tequila brand and, and why I think I have a reason for making it. Not being obviously a Mexican and not being a fifth generation family producer, but still bringing to it, you know, a level of passion and quality and respect for tradition and heritage that I think is really important when, when you should start a brand. So, you know, my cousin called me five and a half years ago. Now I married into a Mexican family. My wife is, was raised in Jalisco at a town called Arandas. So our family is in Arandas and also in Chicago. They're about half and half. So one of my cousins that lives down in Arandas called me and asked if I wanted to come and look at creating a brand that had a different outlook to it, you know, that had some different ideas that maybe could approach tradition and be respectful of heritage and honor tradition and also do some things that were new and different. And that's really where the, the very first kernel of the, of the brand came from. In the beginning idea started was just with that one phone call. So she runs everything for us in Mexico. Valerie does all of our production. She oversees the entire brand. We have about four employees down in Mexico. That work for us. She runs them. She oversees our production at the distillery. And anything that we need to get done, she finds a way to get it done. Without a doubt, she did not understand what she was getting into. When she asked me to come down there and come look at and make tequila, it probably seemed like a. Like a really soft, easy. We're just going to go to a distillery and have them make tequila for us kind of a thing, which is what everyone normally does, right? Not. We're going to completely try to reinvent the entire process. And scratch. That is a much more involved process than I think that she was. That she was in for. But without a doubt, there is no way that we could. We could accomplish what we've accomplished and get done the things we've gotten done in Mexico. Without it, it's just completely impossible because everything we did was difficult and time consuming, and a lot of things had not been tried before. So you need a really. A really thoughtful, intelligent, strong personality to get things like that done in a country like Mexico. [00:05:19] Speaker A: It's amazing. And we're going to go into some of those different things in the production methods to explain that. How did you know that you had a passion for cooking and being a chef? [00:05:29] Speaker B: What. [00:05:29] Speaker A: What age did you go? Okay, this is what I want to do. [00:05:33] Speaker B: So the love of cooking part was really early. I was like 7 years old. I think I'm from a French Polish family. So I would always spend my time off with. And definitely around Christmas time with my Polish grandmother in the kitchen. We would make. Generally our whole family got together. All my aunts and my grandmother would get together, and we make like 3,000 pierogies every Christmas. And we would freeze them and mail them to all of our family members around the country. And we started off, you know, making them by hand. So it was eight. It was back in, what, 85 or something? 85, 84, something like that when we started making them. So back then, there were, you know, you had your hands, and it was like the beginning of the food processor, you know, movement. They were, you know, these were more available back then. So I think we used a food processor to mix the dough, and everything else was done by hand. The final kneading of the dough, the pressing, using the forks, like the whole thing. But I absolutely loved being in the kitchen. And all of my uncles and grandfathers were out in the, you know, were always out sitting in the living room or downstairs in the basement hanging out. And I was in the kitchen with all the women, you know, obviously Things being a lot more traditional back then. There were not a lot of men that worked in kitchens. In family environments, very much. In professional kitchens, tons. Right. But in family environments, not really that much. But I would always get grief, you know, asking why I was always in the kitchen with them. And I loved it. It was. For me, it was. It was comfortable, and I like being there, and the community and the camaraderie was great. You know, I had a lot of fun working in the kitchen with my family. It was. It was a really neat time. So I still. It feels very vibrant to me still, to talk about it now after, you know, 40 years. So I really enjoy it. [00:07:01] Speaker A: That's awesome. You know, I watch all the chef shows, right. The Bear, which is a great show in Chicago, that I always wonder how much is it really like that? [00:07:10] Speaker B: There are a lot of moments in all the seasons of that show that are very, very accurate. And there's a lot of unbelievably ridiculous stuff that happens in restaurants. Yeah, it's. It isn't that far off. I'll. I'll. I'll say that that's awesome. And I've worked at both places that are, you know, normal restaurants and at the very, very highest level. So the first episode of. Of season three that came out this year is probably one of the best episodes of TV that's ever been made. And the, The. The level that. That showed what it was like to work in one of the best restaurants in the world at the time it was regarded that way. Um, what it's like to be in that environment is probably the most accurate depiction of that I've ever seen done in film. It is every single bit of that, of all those different emotions and all of that constant attention, intention, and constant pressure every waking moment of your life when you're in that environment. And it's a really difficult thing, I think, for regular people to understand. It's like when a. A football team or a basketball team rises to the highest level, and every single person on that team and on that field is all working for exactly the same thing at the same moment with literally every ounce of energy and passion they have, and they're leaving it all out on the field. That's what that's like every day when you're in that environment. It's a real. It's a really unique, special thing. And I think that a particular episode happened to capture it in a way that every other movie or TV show hasn't really done before. [00:08:33] Speaker A: I think it's neat that you compared that to a sports team because there's the front of the house and the back of the house, and a lot of people don't know how to make those two things work together well. But a great restaurant has an amazing front of the house, an amazing back of the house that all work together. And you got offense and defense, and everybody's goal is to make that person eating whatever it is they make to have this great experience. And I read the book Unreasonable Hospitality, and that book actually broke down really, to me, more about what the restaurant business is and what it is like. And when you go to your favorite place and the valet knows your name and puts your car where you like to be parked and. And people greet you when you come in the front door and this chef comes out and talks to you, that. That makes that $20 steak worth 150 bucks. And that whole experience is really what it's all about. And I've heard some amazing things about the restaurants that you have, and it really parlays into this amazing tequila that you made. Thanks for having that kind of mentality and attitude in what you do. It's pretty awesome. [00:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I think hospitality is really important. One of the things that, you know, there's different aspects to starting a brand. You know, there's obviously the juice in your worry about why you have the tequila and the why it's made that way, and then your packaging and your marketing in your team and all that kind of stuff. But there's also a level of personal service and hospitality that a lot of brands don't pay a lot of attention to. It's not something that brands really think about very much, but it is something that we think about. So we have got 11 people that work for us now in the US here, and we're hiring a couple more this year, which is a pretty large team for a young brand like us. It's not very normal for a small, young brand to hire that many people, but, you know, we're. We are a high service brand. You know, we take care of our customers and we go out of the way to make sure that they're happy. And if they're not, we bend over backwards to try to fix a problem that we missed or something. We can learn from bringing all of that. That same hospitality ethos to. To running our brand. And that's one of the things that can set our brand apart beyond just the normal how we produce it and stuff like that, is that we're, you know, we're. We're a company that's focused on making people happy all the time. And whatever lengths of the earth we have to go to, to do that, we will make that, you know, we'll make that effort, make that happen. [00:10:49] Speaker A: And that's what people remember in the end. That's really awesome. So when I met you in Chicago at the Saburo event, you were the first tequila that we tasted there. And I had been waiting to taste these tequilas for so long. And the way that you explained them and went through them with my wife and I. My wife, when we walked away, she's like, that was really awesome. And those were really good. And I was like, yeah. And I said, do you know anything about their story? Because she, she watches some of this stuff that I do, but, you know, she's the normal wife, you know, what are you doing? [00:11:19] Speaker B: Yeah, what's wrong with you? [00:11:22] Speaker A: Exactly. She's. She's been with me for 30, 36 years in September. So it's a long time. She said that that was great and they were really informative and that's really good tequila. But I said, he's an amazing chef, and I'll tell you the story about the tequila later. And she's like, that makes sense. Like, the way you were able to explain what you did and why the flavors were there broke it down in a way that people that don't understand flavor, you explained it in a different way. So it's been a learning process for her as well. But what you guys did at the, at the tasting there in Sabora really opened up her mind to what, what we were tasting. And you guys did a great job at that. So I, I thank you for that. And the way you did their presentation there was really awesome. [00:12:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I think the way to articulate and the way to communicate when you talk about, when you talk about tequila and agave spirits in general is really important. Most Americans really don't have a consistent grasp on the way that it's made. Some of that comes from the tequila industry. Not wanting to be open about how they actually make their product. Right. Even high quality brands, when they come and do presentations and you know, we, you know, I'm, I travel at least three weeks a month, if not, if not all four weeks a month. And I'm in all different kinds of accounts. And I listen to the way that other people talk about their tequila and the process that they use to make it is normally not a very big part of their conversation. They have, they talk about flavor profile and they talk about what it's Supposed to be like. And they might talk a little bit about the story about who makes it, but they don't really spend a lot of time talking about the process. So when you mentioned earlier that you brought whole cooked agave in for people to taste that you were doing a seminar for. Most Americans don't understand that you take this plant that weighs 50 to 60 pounds and you have to cook that plant and then you squeeze it and you make juice out of it and then you ferment that juice. That simple three step piece isn't a normal thing for most people to understand because it isn't a part of the normal way you describe how something is made. And they don't hear it from other brands talking about it very often. You know, so it's difficult for most Americans to really have a grasp on the way that tequila is made. And obviously it's a, it's a really old tradition in Mexico. So everybody who lives there knows how it's done. But here it's just not a normal part of our, of our thing. So unless you're interested in it, you're not really going to understand it, you know. So I think talking about it in a way that is dumbing down isn't the right, the way to describe it. It's simplifying the way that it's done. And like a methodical process. First you to pick the plants, then you do, then you cook them, then you crush them. You know, that basic understanding is really important. And I think the more that we do that, the more Americans are educated with it, the better tequila that they want to drink. And then everybody who makes good tequila sells more good tequila, right? And the people that don't make good tequila won't sell anymore. And that's really the goal. But the whole industry is, the industry should be filled with high quality brands. So that we're not talking about, you know, tequila that's made with chemicals and a diffuser. We're talking about what I like about this high quality brand versus that high quality brand. That's the point we need to get to. That's the conversation all of us should be having where we're not saying I like this brand because it's filled with sugar and glycerin. It should be this tequila because this is more my style than this other high quality tequila. And we need to, we'll get to that point. It's finally and I think gotten to enough awareness where, you know, we can have conversations like this and Americans can have conversations about different styles of High quality tequila that's made properly. And that leads to, you know, regular Americans that don't know very much about learning more and more. And then all of us who make good tequila will all benefit from that. So more of those conversations that can happen is really better for all of us. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And that that's the goal here. For what I do is trying to explain the difference. I don't talk about additive as much as I talk about traditional versus industrial. Let's look at this traditionally made tequila and let's look at this industrial made tequila. And that usually picture, you know, people picture that in their mind. You know, it's the farm to table. Right? You picture, okay, this egg is coming from a farm. So you picture a couple chickens in somebody's front yard and a guy plucking those chickens out of, you know, those eggs out of a nest. And when you talk about industrial, you picture a barn with a million chickens in a conveyor belt collecting those eggs. Even though the eggs may be kind of the same, but it gives you a different thought process of the difference between industrial made and, you know, traditionally made. And I love the fact that the way you are making tequila not only is traditional and non industrial, but also, in my mind, a little revolutionary in the way that you're doing it. So let's dig into the first piece. You get this call from around us, this amazing, beautiful town not too far from Guadalajara. And they said, hey, do you want to make a tequila? And you go. And you now got to go visit some distilleries. And there's so many choices and so many great places. Talk about that journey and the distilleries that you met with and maybe drop like an Easter egg of that bottle that some people are still desperately looking for that may not be available anymore. [00:16:33] Speaker B: I found five of them at a store in Tampa, Florida about two weeks ago and bought all of them. [00:16:37] Speaker A: Okay, I will buy one of those from you. [00:16:41] Speaker B: That nine bottles total. Now. I keep looking for them everywhere I go. So one of the, one of the reasons why we. So when I went. When I went down, about two or three weeks after Valerie called me, we went down and we're touring distilleries. And the main reason for touring was to find a place to actually make the tequila that we wanted to make. And there's all different levels of distilleries. We toured, you know, Don Julio and Herradura, all the way down to Fortaleza and G4 and Arete and Costcoine, and then like four or five distilleries in between probably saw maybe a dozen, maybe 15 different places. I think one thing that's really important is that everyone we saw was incredibly open and honest about their process, whatever their process was. Everybody answered all my questions and nobody seemed guarded or untruthful. Everybody was really pretty straightforward about what they did. Even if it was something that maybe doesn't have the best, maybe a technique that doesn't have very. A very good reputation, like using diffusers. They were honest about it and they explained why they. Why they do that. Right? So. So that part was, was, I think, really, really positive. And we learned a lot about, about who to choose and why we wanted to work with different people and how they were made and stuff like that. I had a. I had a Mexican restaurant at the time that had all traditionally made clean tequila in it, and we didn't have anything that wasn't. That didn't fall into those parameters. And a lot of family brands, multigenerational brands, things like that. So I knew a really good amount about tequila and about the traditional ways of making it before we went. So I had an idea of the brands that I wanted to emulate, brands that I looked up to and thought, these guys really make not just traditionally made tequila, but they also make the best tequilas that I enjoy the most. And that's really guy. That's what kind of guided the decision for how we were going to make it. When we spoke to Costcoine and I started to describe some of the ideas, ideas that I had and how much time it would take to make it, they really quickly told us two things. One was we only have one to hone, and no one else, except for our family brand can write to Hona on a label and use our Tohona to make all their tequila. And I said, but all we want to do is make Tahona tequila, and they want it to be 100%. And they said, then you can't make it here. I said, and you can't do two week long fermentations. We don't have enough space for that. I said, all right, this is really cool. You guys make great stuff. But obviously there's no way we couldn't make it here. We. So we started to find places that would be open to us maybe producing it there. My cousin actually went and spoke and spoke to Felipe over, over at G4 over at Pendio, and he said, you know, he said, you guys can come in and make whatever you want to make. I'm not sure if it's going to work in the long run. But it sounds like an interesting project, you know, you guys had. There are some, definitely some different ideas. He said, I think you're a little nuts. And I'm not sure that all this is going to work, but it's. So I'm thinking, great. This guy is like the most radical tequila producer there is and he's telling us that we're nuts. [00:19:28] Speaker A: Yeah, the guy that's nuts in the industry is telling you you're nuts. [00:19:34] Speaker B: Valerie looked at me and said, okay, if that guy says we're crazy, maybe we should do all the stuff we're trying to do. And I said, or we really have it right. And. And nobody just knows how this is going to go yet, so. [00:19:46] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:19:47] Speaker B: I always look on the positive, you know, anything can be accomplished side of things. Not everybody in my family looks at things that way, so. But it was, but it was really neat, right? So we spent probably four months of actual production time working there and trying to figure out how we can make it and where we could do it inside the distillery and whether the idea would work and stuff like that. And then we did make the one batch. We made one batch, six barrels of tequila. We did it. We fermented it in one of his wooden tanks. He had a couple of old wooden tanks that were sitting off to the corner that had not been used in a really long time. The tanks were dried out and we couldn't fill any liquid inside of them. So his team at the distillery spent like two or three weeks stuffing them with straw and filling them with water a little bit at a time to get the tanks reconditioned so that we could actually ferment something inside of them. And so we just, we took his agave and, and we fermented it and we used yeast that we wanted to use. And what happened was that there is. So his. The building is fairly small and there's a lot of natural airborne yeast just in the facility. And so the fermentation happened where it was both his yeast that they use in his distillery and the yeast that we brought in. And they both kind of work together over like a 10 day period to produce this really special fermentation. And that's the main reason why that tequila tastes so unusual is that it's a little bit Felipe and a little bit John all kind of put together. And, and then, you know, we only made, you know, we only made the one batch. He. It was too small of a batch for the, for his normal stills. Plus they Were busy, they were using them every day. So he, I think he, he had somebody go and get either his father's or his grandfather's old copper mezcal still from his house and they brought it over and we set it up in the back of the distillery and we built this unbelievably janky looking little setup to, to actually make the, to make it work. And, and we had the coils running through tanks with cold water and the tanks kept leaking. And then when we finally got it all put together and figured out his distillery engineer was amazing and they gave us so much time. I mean I still, to this day I don't understand why they were so generous with knowledge and time other than this is just how everybody is in the industry. Everybody is amazing about talking about what they do and, and being open about it and, and kind of not, not, not no negativity towards other brands and stuff like that. Like everybody really gets along well, you know, and it's a small industry. It's not something that, that's filled with a bunch of people that don't like each other. So. But they were unbelievably welcoming. And, and so we finally came time to, to actually distill it. And I built, I'm an Eagle Scout, so I can build fires out of anything. So I built a fire underneath the still and we did a wood fire, cooked, you know, cooked distillation, super old school. And all the pictures of it look really cool, like it was really neat. And then we age it in barrels. And over the course of all that happening and us figuring out how long it was going to take for us to make tequila the way we wanted to make it. The physical time to make it, you know, normal, normal high quality artisan tequila is a three day cook time at ovens. It's a four to five day fermentation time and then a day and a half to two days to distill. Right. So basically inside of a week or a little more than a week, you can make a batch of tequila. But our process takes almost a month. So it's a significantly different calculation to make a brand like ours at a distillery like Pandio that is very busy, where they are constantly using ovens and they're constantly pressing and they're constantly fermenting with everything they have almost every day of the week. And I think they were running two shifts back then, a morning and a nighttime shift. So throwing in a brand that is going to take three to four times as long to make is not something that's sustainably. There's no way they could do it. So we kind of figured all that out together and, you know, we parted ways and all good, all good feelings, no negativity, nothing, nothing bad at all. It just, we couldn't make it there. And if we were making it there now, we would disrupt everything they're doing so. Right. I don't want to have a relationship with somebody where they look at our brand and say, God, we hate making those guys tequila, you know? Yeah, really, we really don't want them to be here. You know, they're ruining all the other stuff we're trying to do. Right. Yeah. I don't want anybody to feel that way about us. So it just, you know, it wasn't the right, it wasn't the right place to do it. So my cousin goes out and she finds, and she finds this old building, finds this distillery. And on this, on the property of this distillery, and this is 1605 that we're at now, they have a honey producing facility. They make agave syrup. That's their oldest building. They've got another factory that makes diffuser tequila. They make millions of liters a year of diffuser tequila. And, and actually most of it gets trucked out in tanker trucks. They sell it to other large brands, all the ones you've heard of. And then about six years ago, they built a new building and they put their offices inside of it and they built a traditional setup. So it's got three ovens, two tahonas, 12 fermentation tanks, and three sets of stills. They built it assuming that their high volume customers would buy a little bit of traditionally made tequila to either blend with their regular tequila with their diffuser to yield to make those brands better, or they would blend with it and market it as saying to honor pressed. Because there's no, there's no legality by using the word to hone on a label. It does not mean that it's that 100% of what's in that bottle was pressed with a tohona. It actually doesn't mean anything other than some portion of what's in the bottle was done with the tahona and it could be 1%. So there are, there are brands out there that, that write to honocrushed on their bottle and there's 1% inside it. So the distillery that we're at assumed that customers would want it. And all of those customers told them, they didn't really care. They all said, we don't, we don't need that. We don't want it. Makes no difference to us. Whatever. So the building was just sitting there empty. And Valerie asked him, you know, you guys aren't using it. You built this gorgeous facility. Everything in it is brand new. Can we modify it and we will use it to make all of our tequila? And they said, sure. Like, they let us go in and we started changing tanks, we started changing pressure valves everywhere and the ovens, because the, the oven with the cook we do is different. And they let us, you know, modify a good chunk of their distillery so that we could make combio inside of it. And if it wasn't for that, I don't know where we'd make it because Costcoin's way too busy and Fort Delaysa can't do any valve system. They only make their own tequila there. And we saw two other distilleries that maybe, but it was a little bit difficult for them. And then there was no way we could make it at Pandio. So we didn't really have an option for any place to make it besides this one building. You know, like, people always ask us about our nominal, like, why we're at this knob, which doesn't really make tequila for anybody. It doesn't make any high quality tequila at all. And I even got into an argument with a guy on Instagram the other day about, about our, about our facility and how we do it. And he told a customer of ours that don't believe these guys. They're just, they're just using all of that stuff for pictures and stuff, and they don't really make it the way that they're describing. You should be really careful. So I just asked them to not say things that weren't true. I mean, we, we're way too transparent. I've done too many interviews and too many podcasts and I've written too many blogs about all the way that we do things to, to do anything different than what we actually say that we do. So. But we were, we were really fortunate to find the distillery that we're at. Anyway, so all this stuff. So we leave Findillo and all this, all this time. About a year goes by and my, my cousin finds a distillery. And then Felipe reaches out and he says, hey, you know, the tequila that we made is, is. Is really good. Do you guys want to buy these six barrels? And he told us the price of what the barrels would be. He said, I thought Valerie was kidding when he told us what it was going to cost. And now I know why he did the calculation. What he Was going to sell it for. And. And I thought that he was just going to sell it to us. And I didn't actually think he was going to. To bottle it. I figured he would just, you know, not do anything with it or blend it with something else later or whatever. But Felipe's. Felipe is really smart. He's not just a crazy person. He's actually a really thoughtful, intelligent guy. So he knew what it was worth to him if they sold it under their brand. And he offered it to us and they said, we're not gonna. We're not gonna pay that for it. It's too much. You know, we don't have a. We don't have a brand that could take something like that and. And sell it now. And so he kept it and he released it, you know, with that little six barrel sticker in the corner. And now we're all running around the country trying to find it. It's one of those really neat things. It doesn't happen very often with spirits where you have an experimental batch that goes so well that one of the best tequila producers there is loves it enough to put his family's name on it. And the people that made it with him love it so much that they now want to try to find bottles and buy it. So there aren't that many experimental batches that go that well, Especially from the perspective we were coming from. Right. We'd never tried all the things we made that batch with. It had never been attempted before. There were a lot of really new ideas with that. Oh, one, we were completely honored that, that, that he was happy enough to release it. And, and, and two, I totally understood as soon as we saw it released him. Like that's why he wanted so much for it. And it was like right on the money. Like he asked us to pay exactly what he made off of it. So it was, it was really good. It was really smart on his part. And I'm glad that he did it because now it's even a better story. You know, it wouldn't be the same if we'd. Underneath our name. It's even better that he did it on his. [00:28:53] Speaker A: It's such a cool story. What, what are those bottles called for? Those people that are out there now going to go to every liquor store in America and look for. [00:29:01] Speaker B: I'd say good luck on that. On that. On that run. So it's. They bottled it with his. With his maroon colored maroon and gold label. It says G4 and Yo in the front of it, but in the left Hand corner. There's a little sticker they put on it and it says six barrels. [00:29:15] Speaker A: Okay, so. [00:29:15] Speaker B: And that's it. That's the only real differentiation you can see on the bottle. To tell it from a normal version versus that one, they just put a little special sticker on it and sold it at a, at a special price. And then the retailers, because it was a, a really rare one time production release like G4 doesn't do a lot of stuff like that. And that is a complete one off that they could never make again if they wanted to. And we couldn't make it again either. None of. We would have to get together. Maybe we should do a 10th anniversary with them. That'd be kind of cool. Get together another combined version. I kind of like that. Yeah. I kind of like the idea of a 10th anniversary edition, like a remake of it. That'd be kind of cool. [00:29:49] Speaker A: It'd be very cool now. [00:29:50] Speaker B: So anyway, but it was just, you know, it was, it was great. You know, we, we learned a lot, a lot working, working with him. And it couldn't have been more generous and more open and, and really think that. I think that he cares about the way that people view the traditional ways of making tequila. I think he cares about that and he cares about Americans understanding Tequila a lot more than just selling a brand. I think his family history is incredibly important to tequila production and very important to the identity of people that live in Jalisco and to Mexicans in general. That means a lot more to him than just a brand. So you know, I think that the way that they do it and the way that we talk about it, all these things, you know, all work together to make, you know, to make the conversation about Tequila better. And this is what we should be talking about. You know, not so and so's marketing idea. For a, a famous person to sell something that doesn't mean anything to anyone really. It's just to make money. You know, 100 and that's fine. You can start a brand if you just want to make money. And you know, people can, consumers can choose to buy that brand if they like that. That's, that's fine for their story. But it doesn't really mean anything to Tequila and it doesn't mean anything to the people that make it every day. So it's just money. [00:31:05] Speaker A: So true. And if you are one of those celebrities that want to make them a tequila, there are some that are making good tequila today that, that honor tradition. But we know that most of them are making a cash Grab and, and white labeling something that's being made at one of those diffuser tequila places. So, so one of the things I heard that I think is really cool and really interesting to me is I heard somebody say that you said that if, if you can smell what's cooking, that the flavor is being lost in the aroma of what is cooking. Is that true? [00:31:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And the idea overall, generally, yes, that's really broad. But basically the idea came out of, of why we cook our agave whole instead of cutting it in half every time that in every place that we visited, whenever they would open up the ovens, the entire distillery smelled like cooked agave. It was amazing. It was beautiful. Right? And so the idea was that when all that aroma is in the distillery and the aroma is lost, that moisture is also lost. And so the thinking behind cooking it whole was to retain more moisture and to retain more aroma by not cutting it in small pieces. And the analogy that I use to try to relate it for consumers is if you smoked a brisket or a pork shoulder, you would never cut it up in small pieces and then go smoke it. Those pieces will be small and maybe more dry. And the, and it would change the way that, the way that the flavor is when you, when you eat it later. Cooking agave is a, is a really similar process to cooking any large piece of meat. It's got to be done slowly and carefully with just the right temperature and just the right, you know, just the right amount of pressure creating the temperature inside the oven. And if you cook it too fast, the flavors don't taste the right way. Literally, your tequila will taste different. Even by changing it by a few degrees centigrade over a three day period, you'll produce different flavors in your tequila. There's a specific method for creating high tone aromas like fruits and flowers and perfuminess, versus cooking agave to create more earth tones in it. And if you, you change your cooking process to do that, the. I just. The idea, the idea was just to cook it whole to retain more moisture and try to retain more aroma inside of it and to see if that would lead to more aroma and more flavor during, during fermentation. And it's definitely a. It's definitely different. It's not something that I've ever heard anyone do before or been able to do. Most of the people we talked to said it was impossible that you couldn't cook a 50 pound plant evenly without overdoing it. Because if you cook it the wrong way, you can actually produce chemicals that you don't want in your tequila, which is Pharrelli. Yeah. And. And if you overcook it, you get way too many fooferralis and then you've got to actually filter them out to get them out of the tequila. You can't bottle it. The CRT won't let you bottle it because it's a chemical that, that, that in high doses can be. Can be harmful. So every time you produce something, there's limits of what you can put inside of a bottle, whether it's methanol or foofrales or anything else. Even superior alcohols, which is just a general classification of different types of alcohol. So. So it has to be done really carefully and really specifically. Without a doubt, that's the most difficult piece of all the things that we changed and all the things we looked at doing differently. Cooking the plants whole is really, really hard, and it takes a lot of careful attention doing it. We have to. We have to go through three different temperature changes over the. It takes about four days for us to do it. We have different temperatures at different time lengths during that four day process. And then so that it cooks the right way evenly and produces the right flavor profile. So it took a long time for us to figure it out, you know, how to get it there and how to get to that point. And that's one of the things that we changed. But without a doubt, that's the most difficult one. [00:35:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So. So now instead of just kicking it up, turning on that temperature and cooking it till it's done, you've got to almost like when you're cooking a turkey on Thanksgiving, you gotta adjust those temperatures and those times to know that when that turkey's done, it's gonna be moist and flavorful. And so you're putting more of that chef level thought of how do we cook this to make the most flavorful, juicy, amazing agave at the end of that. So then we can extract from there. That. That's pretty amazing. That's. So did you wake up one night and go, hey, we cook it whole. I got this idea, like, how'd you come up with that? [00:35:45] Speaker B: So when we did the very first trip. So I think the first. When Valerie called me, I went down there. I think it was in September or October of 2019. So this is, you know, five months before, before COVID and the very first trip, I think we saw seven or eight distilleries on that trip. And during that trip, I had made a handwritten list of what I wanted to change. That was about the way that it was being done. And the first thing was we wanted to make it only traditional. And when I, when I, when I speak about traditional, the what, what I mean is that it's, it's only cooked in brick ovens, it's only crushed with Tohono 100%, it's only fermented in wooden tanks 100%, and it's only distilled in copper stills. Those four techniques are generally the most traditional ways of making tequila in the modern world. So the biggest change being that original tequila would have been cooked in pits the way Mezcal is now. But since tequila became formulated, you know, 130 years ago now, it's generally been done with brick ovens to hona wood fermentation and copper. Still, things like autoclaves and roller mills weren't used really until the 70s and 80s and then a lot in the 90s in column stills. Yeah, column stills, yeah. So the idea being that we were going to use all the traditional methods for making it and then we would layer changes on top of it. So one of the things that makes Comio different is that we are a very, very traditional brand where the, I think that we're the, we're the first brand in the last 20 years that has launched that uses only those traditional methods for every drop of tequila we make. Not just a one off bottling or something like that, but we use those four techniques for everything. But we're also very forward looking at the same time and we, I think that we do both of these things really well. Honoring of tradition and heritage is very important for me personally, but also for our brand. And obviously our brand is named Compio. So we need to look at changing things. And I think that, you know, one of the things that we do well is we, we add in changes along the way that, that can create more flavor, add more aromatics, create better texture. Even our harvesting is, is different. You know, we start harvesting at 2, 3 o' clock in the morning and our hemodoris work until about, about 10 or 11 o' clock am. So they're working at night and they're working with headlamps on cutting down all the fields for us. And that's because we harvest and we start cooking the same day that we harvest. So we start early in the morning, we truck everything to the distillery by midday and we load the ovens and start cooking the afternoon time of when it's pulled out of the field. That's another thing that we do that's differently, that's different That. I don't. I don't. I've never heard of anybody else doing that before. Technically, there might be someone who does that, but I'm not sure if there is. Where you harvest and cook the same day. So our agave isn't sitting in the field, cut in half for a day or two before somebody picks it up, and then sitting on a floor, distillery for a day or two before somebody throws in the oven. It's really all done at the same time. There's, you know, everybody's gonna, you know, some people will criticize. Well, that doesn't make a difference. And they're right. Maybe. Maybe it doesn't make a difference. Maybe it does. I think it's a better way. I think it's a better version of doing it. Rather than having the plants sit in a truck or a field and dry out for a couple of days before. Before you start cooking them. It's just a simple, fundamental thing. Cut it, get it inside, cook it. Don't let it dry out for a couple days first. And you can tell how long plants have been sitting out. And there's, you know, three, four, five days is not uncommon between a plant being, you know, cut down and being cooked. So, I mean, that's another one of the things that we wanted to change. It was different, so I made up this whole list. [00:39:15] Speaker A: When you harvest, are you harvesting all the way to the pina, or are you leaving any pinka left on at all? Like, what. What's your shave ratio on your pina? [00:39:27] Speaker B: Yeah, we do it to about two and a half centimeters. Two to two and a half, three, something right around there. So we do weave some on it. So it's about. It's about an inch away from the actual core. You know, we want brands like Siete. Siete. Lagos are famous for their herbaceousness and their menthol. And that comes from leaving more of that on. On. On the pina and herradura cuts it clean, white, all the way down. They don't want any of it. So every brand has their different style of doing it. We wanted some of that herbaceousness, but we didn't want it to dominate the flavor of the tequila. So we leave some of it on there, but not all of it. And then our guys cut the cogollo out in the field. So we. Because we cook whole, there isn't a chance cut it in half and then cut out the. Cut out the stem at the top like. Like a normal brand would do. So we have two crews of humidoras that work for us. And they're the only people that are allowed to cut for our brand. No one else is allowed to do it. And these and the guys figured out a way. They've got like this three step triangular notch thing that they do of like one from one angle, one from the other angle and then one from the bottom kind of at the side of it where they can knock out the coyo and leave it whole. So we can just throw it in the oven like that. So they do that in the field and then we just harvest them like that. [00:40:37] Speaker A: So that's what I was going to ask you. How do they get that coy out of there? Because you know when you watch them cut it in half, it's like bam, bam. And it pops right out. I figured you removed them to, to get rid of that bitterness. But that, that's like a. That's pretty awesome. They figured out how to get that out of there and do it in the field. [00:40:54] Speaker B: That's awesome. I don't know. Those guys are incredible. I. I can't. And like we took our team there and we're all harvesting it like with them and kind of we're trying to cutting down some of the plants and our whole team was like, Jesus Christ, this is hard. [00:41:04] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:41:06] Speaker B: When they're, when they're like knocking on like God, they're just like. It's like easy. It's like shaving butter. Right. And when you actually do it, it's. It's really damn difficult. So for them to cut it the way that we need to cut, leaving, you know, leaving a couple, a couple centimeters of the stems and then, and then knocking out the gago is really amazing. They. And they figured out a way how to do it. They. They just. The crews worked on it themselves and eventually they got it to, to, to notch it and pop it out. And I don't know. They're. They're all. They think we're nuts for cooking at home. And we think they're nuts because we watch them do it. Right. They're so good at it, you know, and they're so fat. [00:41:38] Speaker A: What's your cooling time like? Your cooling time after cooked has got to be twice as long as the average cooling time is as well to get those out of there. Right? [00:41:47] Speaker B: It is. It's about. It's about 30 to 34 hours, something like that. And normally you would open the ovens and then they would blow fans inside the oven to get it cold faster. And I didn't want them doing it that way. And I didn't want everything drying out. I didn't want the fans blowing out. So we actually crack our ovens open and we open them about halfway, three quarters of the way and let it cool really carefully. Naturally, we don't put fans, we don't try to blow it down too fast. And for before we start crushing, because of our ferment, because our fermentation temperature is so low compared to a normal brand, the agave needs to be room temperature before we can actually start crushing it because we add cold water to it. So we can't use hot agave and start crushing it. Then it's literally gotta be cold before we start, before we start crushing. So that, that's, you know, it takes a little more time for that. Again, it's the whole idea, you know, we're, everything we're doing is a little bit slower than normal and a little more careful of a, of a process. So, you know, we do a cold water maceration. It takes a few hours with our tohono. So we'll add cold water, about half the pit, let the tahonas run around, crush and macerize everything together between the fibers and the acids and the juices and sugars, and then we'll strain it off and then we'll crush it dry after that. So that even that part takes a little bit longer than normal. [00:42:59] Speaker A: I, I picture the tona chasing a soccer ball around. Are you, are you doing some type of cut to put them in the tona so it doesn't look like a bunch of marbles running around a tona and getting them to actually crush? [00:43:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So remember when you're at Fort Delaza and they've got that really loud machine and they throw the cooked agave inside that loud machine and if you look inside of it, it's a hammer mill, right. And it's got these really large metal, like basically dull like hands like this inside of it. Right. I tell people it's like when you take like a pork shoulder out of the oven and you take forks to pull it apart, right? Yeah, it does that. So it pulls apart the plant in long strands without breaking apart those strands. [00:43:38] Speaker A: Not tearing the fiber, just ripping it open. [00:43:41] Speaker B: The whole idea is to leave the fiber whole and not, not chop up the fiber. So that machine does that work. We have a 20 foot tall version of that machine at the distillery. So normally we throw the whole agave inside. Sometimes their plants are too big and we've got to cut, cut the plants and then put them on the conveyor belt to go up to the top of the hopper. So that actually just basically shreds the plant. So once we take the shredded plants, then we put shredded plant inside the tahoni. Yeah, if we just, if we left them whole, man, there'd be no way you, you have to use a machine to shred them. Otherwise even, even they're cut in half, it wouldn't work the same way. So. Right. Everybody uses a machine to, to pull them apart. When we start fermentation at, you know, right around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, it's, which is about half the temperature of normal. It's, it's really, really cold. We built special wooden fermentation tanks to do it. So I said we wanted to be traditional, we wanted to ferment only in wood. But the yeast that we use doesn't work above 60 degrees. It dies when it gets too hot. And so we needed to build custom fermentation tanks that are wood and chilled. And they don't exist in Mexico. There are no temperature controlled wooden tanks in Mexico, so we had to build our own. So the distillery had stainless steel tanks. So we did jackets around the stainless steel tank. So we put a layer, another layer of stainless steel so we could run cold water through them so we can chill it from the outside. Then we built wooden tanks with 20 foot tall staves because the tanks are huge or 20,000 liters each. And we built 20,000 liter wooden tanks inside of side of the stainless steel tank so that it's cooled from the outside. It is a watertight wooden tank built inside of a stainless steel tank. And then we ran coils through the middle of it so we can cool it from the middle as well. So we have jacketed interior cooled wooden fermentation tanks to perform an accurate temperature controlled fermentation. So it doesn't matter what time of the year it is. Our fermentation temperature is always whatever we want it to be. And again, both being traditional and non traditional, we built three, three of the tanks out of Mexican pine, which is traditional. That's what all the tanks that are built in Michoacan are all built out of pine. And then we also brought in a whole bunch of oak from Tennessee and we built three tanks out of American white oak. And as far as I know, we're the only brand that ferments anything in American white oak. And it produces a completely different set of aromas and phenols inside of a literally a chemically different tequila just by changing the fermentation wood. So even Using same temperature, same agave, same yeast and different woods makes different tequila. And that's one of the things that we learned by experimenting with things, by doing tequila differently, is that you can change your flavor of your tequila by changing the yeast that you use for fermentation, by changing the wood that you use to ferment it in, by changing your distillation a little bit, by changing your cooking temperature and time. All these little things you can change along the way will give you different styles of tequila with completely different sets of aromas and flavors inside. And that's just one of the things we learned, and that's without even barreling. That's just on the regular, normal blanco side of doing everything. So. [00:46:38] Speaker A: Which makes sense, you know, when you go back to the original place at El Pendillo with Felipe. Right. That moderna blanco that he puts out has a much different woody flavor in a blanco just because it's rested in those pineapple. [00:46:54] Speaker B: Yeah. By the way, I'm gonna, I'm gonna totally take credit for him doing a wood fermented version because he did not do one before we started working together. And then after we made our first version and after his guys fixed those two tanks that were in the corner, then my cousin Valerie went to the distillery. When we talk, we're talking about buying the barrels from him and she took a picture and he had like eight brand new wooden pine tanks all lined up that they, that they were going to do a fiber fermentation in the wooden tanks. And I love it. It's absolutely fantastic Tequila. But they weren't doing it before we were there in a small, small, tiny way. It is totally because of our experimenting with Felipe that they, that they now make the Madeira version. Yeah, right. Maybe Felipe wouldn't care, but all the Americans are going to get really mad at me now. [00:47:47] Speaker A: Who cares? I. You know, you were talking about the trolls on Instagram earlier and just, just yesterday I got a great message. Dm Nickem, your podcast sucks. I'm like, thanks. Would you like to be on to talk about your perspective? You know, no answers. So you, you can't, you can't listen to the. The trolls out there that say bad things. I. It's just not worth it to put your. Although it stabs you in the heart and makes. That's the only thing you think about when you go to bed, which is their goal. You just can't put any thought into it. [00:48:18] Speaker B: So. [00:48:18] Speaker A: So when you do your fermentation now, since you're tohona crushed a lot of tohono crushed tequilas. Ferment with fibers. Do you ferment with fibers? [00:48:28] Speaker B: So the versions you have in front of you right now don't, don't have any generally. However, the one that I'm drinking right now, this one, it's actually out of this bottle. This is one that we did with it. So this is a very official. You can tell this is a, you know, all CRT approved. There's all the noms and labels and everything else. This version. So this is the new version of our regular blanco and it does have fiber in it. Everything else about the process is the same. But I've been working on figuring out how much of a percentage of fiber that we can add where it adds a little more complexity and a little more earthiness without changing the flavor. And the idea was make it taste like 97% the same with a small 3% difference so it doesn't disrupt the market. And we're still making the same tequila. You know, that's important. We're not going to label it differently or anything like that. The production for 2025 from the mid year on is going to have a little bit of fiber introduced to it because I think it just adds a little more layer of complexity. And now that we've got a solid 18 to 19 more than that, 24 months now, of course, of really consistent production and we know what we can do really well. And now we have a better understanding of what some small changes might make. We were able to kind of add a little bit in, so it's kind of the natural progression. You know, we're always going to look at ways to make our tequila better. We're never just going to make one version and say, okay, we're done, we're just going to sit down now and that's all we're going to make from now on. And we will constantly look to improve and to give more flavor and to get more complexity. And every chance that we get, it's a mission for us so that our tequila in five years will be better than it is from the really great versions we're making right now. I mean, that's the goal. You know, we should always continue to look to improve, not just make really good tequila and say, oh cool, we're good, we can all sit down now. So our whole company always looks to improve. [00:50:19] Speaker A: Are you seeing the one with the fibers bringing a little bit more of a hotter, more pepper in the finish than what you currently have? I mean, I love the finish, but it does. [00:50:30] Speaker B: It Adds a little more to it. And that's part of what the balancing piece is. You know, one of the things about. About our tequila is that for people that don't love tequila, they really like cambio. And that's probably doesn't sound the best way, but there are a lot of. A lot of our customers that have negative experiences with tequila, especially in their youth. And including people in my own family, and even my own mom, you know, she drank some guy under the table in cozumel, which he was scuba diving one day, you know, when we were kids, because they used to go vacation for a couple weeks with her kids. And so she hasn't been able to drink tequila since then until we made ours. So I think that there. There's a way to bring people into drinking tequila again, and while giving all the flavors that you're supposed to get from the agave and the flowers and fruit and things like that. But when you introduce too much of a burn or you introduce too much of that pepperiness, that gives people the immediate reminder of that negativity. And I know that brands don't really talk about stuff like this, but there's a lot of people that will not drink tequila again, and there's a lot of customers that will drink just vodka because of it. One of our goals is to broaden the appeal of tequila, and we want more people drinking it. And if. And if they fall in love with combio, not only are is it one more person that drinks tequila, it's another person that can help us, you know, make more traditional tequila. Right. So, you know, we want to be careful to not stray too far from what makes combio special and not stray too far into that. That whether it's the heat, because it also. Fibers can also produce a little more ethanol, which makes it give that little bit of burn going down esophagus. Burning from alcohol is not a positive experience. I. I don't. I don't care who you are, at least for me and for all the things I've tasted in my entire life, which is an awful lot, My throat burning is not a positive experience, and it certainly isn't for most people. People. So if we can make a softer style of tequila with less ethanol in it so it doesn't burn as much, then that's better for all of us. It's better for everybody. So we want to be careful. [00:52:33] Speaker A: You do have a great mix. The anejo, the repo, are so easy to drink and so full of flavor. And what I'm curious of is how you extend that fermentation without having that really malolacticness. I mean, I do love that in tequilas. I love that funky, cheesy, creamy malolactic funk. But are you keeping that malolacticness from happening in the long fermentation because you're keeping it cooler? Is that where that doesn't happen? [00:53:05] Speaker B: So our tequila actually goes through a full three days of mellow. So our fermentation time in total is roughly 15 days. It'll be 12 days of primary and then it'll go into natural malolactic for two and a half to three days afterwards. [00:53:18] Speaker A: Okay. [00:53:19] Speaker B: But the, one of the differences, when you go through mallow at a 50 degree temperature, it's very different. When you do it at 90 degrees degrees, it is a slower, more careful, more gentle malolactic effect. So you get some of it and some of it is definitely there from a textural component. But you don't get the overwhelming level of funky of the funky milk piece. Right. And going through Mao is a really old technique. There aren't a lot of brands that do this anymore. I mean, we were at Ocho and they do a four day fermentation with like a half a day of mallow at the end. And that's really just between the. When the fermentation stops at night and it goes to the next morning, there isn't really a lot of it because it takes, if you really want to do it for real, it takes a good three to four days. I mean, if you're doing patient, it's a lot of extra time. Right. So most brands don't do it. It's actually, it's an old, old technique. And when we first did it at the distillery, all the old men in the distillery were watching us, let it sit there and they were wondering why we hadn't pulled it out of the tanks yet. And we told them we were going to go through mallow and they would tell stories of their fathers and grandfathers, you know, always making tequila at home that way, where they would do a long cold fermentation, especially in the wintertime. I mean, it snowed in around us, you know, seven or eight years ago, and, and really let it go through the whole process and go through a full mouth at the end of it and that they hadn't seen brands do that pretty much anymore. So it's like one more piece of tradition we brought back into it. But because we do it at a really low temperature, it doesn't dominate the flavor of the tequila. A. It's a background piece. It's an element in the background that creates more complexity and creates more texture. So we use it in that way. So it definitely comes off differently than if it's done at a high temperature. [00:54:59] Speaker A: You, you get that viscosity and you get that creaminess. That's why I always say, okay, I smell that malolactic. I have a feta, that blue cheese, that amazing phylactic smell. But then when you taste it, it's not there. You get that nice thick, creamy viscosity and the, that really nice flavor that doesn't have that same smell. And, and you have that without the, that mallow smell. That's why I asked. [00:55:24] Speaker B: Without the heavy funk? [00:55:25] Speaker A: Yeah, without it. But I do, I gotta tell you, I do like the funk. [00:55:28] Speaker B: Right? [00:55:29] Speaker A: I mean, every once in a while you gotta turn on the funk. [00:55:32] Speaker B: Yeah. YouTube, I'll tell you. So there's, there's a lot of considerations about the choices you make about how you want to make your brand. Because the brand and the future of what you want to do with your brand has a lot to do with the decisions you make. And if we went really old school and really, really funky and heavy and did a warmer fermentation, we would end up with a brand that I would like. You know, I would enjoy it, right? And you would enjoy it, right. But you know, we're trying to build, you know, we want to, we want to build a brand that's large enough to actually impact the way tequila is made. We want a brand that, that where everyone pays enough attention, where they say, maybe we should be making our Tequila different than anything how we're making it now, now, and we can't do that as a hobby. So it's the reason why we don't use wild yeast for fermentation. It's too unpredictable and it's too inconsistent over the course of a year. Especially we're making it just outside of the Papitlan, So it's like 6,000ft elevation. Temperatures change a lot. And, and the natural yeast that is available in the air changes a lot. We could never make a consistent product in a, in a place like that with only wild yeast. So we'll do versions of it that will. You will do a wild yeast ferment and a natural outdoor fermentation. But we can't, we can't do that on a regular basis and build a 200,000 case brand to really do enough to start to influence what happens with Tequila. And we've got a lot of long term goals and how we want to grow and what we want to do and we want to make traditionally made tequila that's made at scale. So we, that first conversation with Valerie and us launching our brand, which is roughly 14 months ago now, there was a, there was a big three and a half year window, four year window. And what we did was we actually built a company and a structure and a process so that we can scale and we never have to make the patron choice of, you know, leaving a high quality distillery and then making a lesser quality tequila. And I think, by the way, that's not a negative thing on Patron. They made their own choice. They're, they're fine to do that. I also think that they're a, an important part of making real tequila with only agave, yeast and water. And I think that that's, that's a very, very important part of where the industry is going to be in the next 10 years. I don't want people, I think a lot of small artisans always jump on Patron, but, but you know, they're a, they're a very well run company. They're very highly respected in Mexico by the people that are, that make tequila in Mexico. And I think it's easy for a lot of influencers to sit around and kind of bash Patron because they're a huge brand, but they are trying to do things really well. They don't put anything inside of their Tequila. And they are the biggest force for traditionally made, at least close traditionally made tequila that there is. And they're fighting brands that are, you know, five times their size size. So there's a lot of good that can come from them succeeding and doing well that will help all of us small brands trying to make better tequila. So I don't want to think for a second I'm knocking them. Anyway, there's a whole point why I started that whole conversation and I agree. [00:58:23] Speaker A: With what you just said. Like, if it wasn't for Patron, and honestly, if it wasn't for old school Blue bottle, Cabo Wabo, there's a lot of people that wouldn't drink tequila today. I'm not a patron hater as well. You and I are on the same page. Yeah. [00:58:35] Speaker B: And I'm sure that somebody's going to give me grief for that. It's, you know, I'm not saying that Petron is going to be the end all and be all, but I think that there's a lot of good that they can bring and, you know, they can help, they can help us in a way that, you know, all of us small brands don't have the power and influence and money to fight the CRT the way that Petrone does. They're doing something for us that we are not capable of doing. We've had to change our labels five times. I burned 300,000 labels in the last two years of production because we were approved for one version and then it wasn't approved for the next time we bottled it. Changes happened to us five times in a row. Even right now, we're still in the middle of changing things that have been approved eight times on our labels that now we have to change the last. The last time. [00:59:24] Speaker A: They don't realize how regulated tequila and the label is. But then are the people that's regulating it really doing what they should be doing within it? And that's a whole nother. That's a whole nother conversation of frustration. [00:59:39] Speaker B: That's a whole different mess. You know, in the back of our bottles it says we have a modern take on a 500 year old tradition. Yes, you do. Literally. They told Valerie two weeks ago, what do you mean 500 year old tradition? You know, you have to prove to us that tequila has been made for 500 years. And so Valerie said, what? What are you talking about? You, you. You people are in charge of tequila production and history. What do you mean we have to prove it's been made for that long? So she literally had to go and dig up articles, including documents in Spain that show the manifest of ships. And they named it. They named like, like it was. It was, it was something, something brandy. And that's what they called, you know, distilled agave spirit when they shipped it in, in the, in the mid 1500, you know, back to Spain. So. But it's weird. We. They've approved eight other versions of our labels with exactly the same terminology on it. And now this is the big deal where someone at the CRT made us send them articles to let that statement be left on the label. Like, that whole thing is ridiculous. Small brands can. You can't deal with stuff like this. You can't repent your labels every five weeks when somebody tells you something is different. But that's what it's like right now. [01:00:49] Speaker A: There's a couple of books. You should just send them. The agave spirits book written by Dave Soro. Here you go. Just read this book. [01:00:57] Speaker B: I feel like we, like. This shouldn't be a conversation we're having. How are we the ones telling you how old your spirit is? Yeah. [01:01:04] Speaker A: Hey, wait a minute. Did you know I'M from America. Like, come on, what. What do you got going on here? [01:01:09] Speaker B: Like, it's really weird. It's just bizarre. [01:01:11] Speaker A: Okay, so I have a question for you. So since you've done this really traditional style and I. I love your whole take on what you've done, is there a thought to make. Take a true ancestral style and do like a. A pit cook? And we're gonna do. [01:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah, we're going to. I've been talking about it a lot the last, like, four or five months, and we're going to take all of our production technique, but we're going to dig a hole in the back of the distillery. So. Right. My cousin has started the conversation with them about why we need to dig a pit in the back. But we're going to take. And there's no. As far as we can tell, there are no. There isn't a rule right now with the CRT that says you can't cook it differently and still call it tequila. It has to be the right plant, it has to be from the right region, all that kind of stuff. As far as we know, we can go out and we can. And we can cook it in the way. Basically, you would do. You would do mezcal now and then proceed with all the regular tohona and fermentation and everything else, but cook it old school. So we are going to make an ancestral version of actual tequila. [01:02:13] Speaker A: That is awesome that you're going to do that because that takes your spin on what you're doing and it steps it back an amazing level. That's going to bring a whole nother awesome flavor profile in your tequila. That. That's awesome. [01:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah. We're working on doing concrete. So a couple guys use concrete tanks for fermentation. I think it's a really neat method. It's obviously been used for wine for at least 25 years in a modern sense. I mean, it's. It's older than that. I told last. So we were all in Aspen Food Wine last week. We had our whole team there, and we had our team from Mexico up there as well. We were all. We all did Aspen Food and Wine together last week. And I told Valerie last week in front of everybody, because everybody always gives Valerie a lot of patience and praise for all of my ridiculous ideas. Right. I mean, everybody says you're so great to work with John. We really appreciate all the work you do with him. You know, we know it's really difficult. You know, he's very demanding, yada, yada, yada, right? [01:03:07] Speaker A: Yes. [01:03:07] Speaker B: And all, all that stuff is totally, all that stuff is totally true. So one of them had asked me about doing concrete tanks and I said, I said we are going to do something in concrete, but we're not going to do it the normal way. We are going to, we're going to take all the volcanic soil and we're going to make a con. We're going to make concrete vessels out of the volcanic soil so that it's actually fermented in the same soil the agave came out of. So then I told Valerie, because we have a couple of engineers we work with down in Mexico that we have to find somebody to make us concrete tanks but out of that soil, not out of normal, normal sand. So now that's a whole nother ridiculous thing we have to go find a way to do. So we'll, we'll. So we'll do a red soil fermented version coming up here in the next year, year and a half, something like that. [01:03:52] Speaker A: The minerality in that, I mean, I think, you know, like we talked about 1123 in Costco. I, and I do believe that some of that minerality that you get from that tequila comes from their concrete fermentation. [01:04:07] Speaker B: Right? I totally does. Yeah. [01:04:08] Speaker A: But I've done so many blinds where I can pick their, you know, I'm, I may, may not know which brand this is, but this is made at 11:23, I think that imparts so much. So doing it with actual volcanic stone like the Tohona is going to impart just a whole nother deep level of petrichor and minerality and earthiness, man. Might be the only tequila I drink from now on. [01:04:36] Speaker B: And more ideas than anybody can possibly execute. [01:04:39] Speaker A: And that is fantastic. [01:04:40] Speaker B: We keep, we keep hiring more people in Mexico and in about a year we're going to have more team. We have a bigger team in Mexico than we do in the US So we'll have a bigger production team than we have sales teams. [01:04:50] Speaker A: But since we've gone along, we've gone a pretty long video. So I had a couple quick questions for you. [01:04:57] Speaker B: A lot of this. Dude, you can't do this whole thing. [01:04:59] Speaker A: No, no, this is, this is all so good. This is all going out there. So tell me about the wood we're using. What are we doing wood wise for your repo and nanier? [01:05:07] Speaker B: Right. So in general, French oak is the right wood to use for tequila. And I know that this is not something that everyone agrees with, but American oak is too harsh and it's too coarse to use with with something that is as refined and complex and delicate as an agave spirit is. And it's as simple as that. It's not the right oat to use. And I understand that traditionally American oak is used. Obviously everybody knows why and what it's used for. But there's, there are reasons why old Jim Bean and Jack Daniels barrels are used in Mexico. And that's because they're basically free. So it's fine just to buy, to get free barrels and throw stuff inside of it, right? Because nobody, you know, all those guys can't do anything with a 20 year old barrel. But that choice doesn't mean it's the right choice. So French oak does a better job treating something like an agave spirit than American oak does. It's, it's, that's just, that's my opinion. And it's backed up by 30 years of me drinking and tasting everything that I, that I've drank and taste over my entire life. Everything from wine to cognac to eau de V's to everything. I just think that all of my knowledge and everything I've ever tasted in my entire life tells me that French oak is better for agave spirits than American oak is. So that's the very first thing. But having said that, I also think you can use French oak in a way that can, that can add complexity and levels of flavor. And different. Using barrels differently can make like a reposado, you know, looks like anejo. And it's like that because we take really old French barrels and we'll scrape them out and we'll retoast them to a medium wine toast. Right? So we don't use barrels that are charred ever for anything. We'll use barrels that have really thin. These are like 1 millimeter toasts on the inside. Very, very gentle caramelization of the inside of the barrel so that we can add color and flavor and complexity in a natural way and add structure to our tequila without overpowering, without overpowering the agave and all the, and all the important agave notes inside of it. So a reposado goes through three different barrel types. Again, using multiple barrels creates complexity. So we'll use Bordeaux and Burgundy barrels for about a month first, and they're 8 to 9 years old. So they're really used old French oak barrels. And then we'll put it in. Then after that we put it inside of the freshly toasted barrels and they go. It goes into first and second fill barrels only. So it pulls color and flavor from those barrels. So that our reposado comes off with more color and texture and more character than most reposados do. That's really a stylistic choice. There's nothing wrong with very light reposados. That's fine. That's certainly more traditional than our version is. But I like the way that our reposado is. And we wanted to make something with more flavor. And our reposado, I think, also tastes like a baby anejo. I know it comes off more like an anejo than it does like a normal traditional reposado. [01:07:56] Speaker A: Does. [01:07:56] Speaker B: Does. But it does it naturally. You know, we don't add any caramel color to it and anything else to it. That's a. That's a stylistic choice. And anybody's choice along those lines, nothing is wrong with that. They can like ours or they can like, you know, Ocho and Fort Delaza, which spend 61 days in barrel and they're out. Right. And that's fine. Those are all really positive, really good things. This is just a different marketplace and everybody has different choices. The anejo takes all of that idea and amplifies it to the next. The next degree. So it has three different barrels with different finishes in each barrel and different time in each barrel. And the length of time in different barrels is really important. So for us and for. The way that I think about tequila is that it needs to be tequila first and everything else has to come after that moment. I hate tequilas that taste like whiskey, and that includes a lot of extra nijos that are on the market now. They're left in barrel for so long that they just taste like whiskey. And if you want to drink whiskey, just go drink whiskey. Don't drink tequila. There's no point in aging tequila either with a heavy enough barrel or for a length of time where it just turns into whiskey. And I don't understand that. So for us, it needs to be tequila first. So the time in barrel for us with these three is it's two years in the barrels after we've used the French oak for the reposado first. So it's third and fourth fill barrels for two years. That's the bulk of it. So it's two year old tequila at its core. And that's. That's, you know, that's a long time for a normal average price, Daniel, to spend two years. And then we do 30% of it goes into a raw wood cask. So it goes in a French oak that has no toast at all. So they're old barrels that we've scraped everything out of the inside and there's no toast at all. So an untoasted barrel introduces a totally different set of flavors and aromas than a toasted barrel does. But we know that. We noticed that you can't leave it in those barrels for too long because it gets really astringent with too much time. So the untoasted version is only for 13 months old. So 30% of it is only 13 months old. 60% of it is 2 years old. And then the last 10% goes into 30 year old limousine cognac casks. And those have their natural finish on the inside. So no modification to those barrels at all. It'll be 15 months in those barrels. So it's two years, 13 months and 15 months in three different barrels with different finishes in each barrel. The idea being that you can use barrels to create complexity and to create different levels and layers of flavor without needing to add anything to it. And part of this is showing that you can actually make different styles of tequila with different barreling without using any additives to it it. And we've actually got a version coming out. It's going to be early next year now where my goal was to make it taste like Casamigos, but naturally. And the idea is to show that you can actually make that style of tequila without putting anything inside of it, only with barreling and fermentation technique. And you know, that's not our normal style. We would never normally make tequila that way. It's really an experiment to show that if you wanted to, you could make it this way on purpose without putting anything in it. And that's really to start to dispel this notion that you cannot create certain styles without putting additives inside of it. And really you can. You can do it with thoughtfulness and you can do it with intention without. Without dumping caramel color and flavoring and other garbage inside. [01:11:19] Speaker A: The level of. I'm going to call them stone fruits. That apricot. [01:11:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like peaches and apricots, like screaming out of it. Right. [01:11:27] Speaker A: It's like, wow, that. That is really, like you said, complex. But you still get a piece of what I call it creme brulee. Like a burnt sugar, like creme brulee flavor in the anejo that turns into this massive fruity flavor without it. Without it turning into Fruit Loops or Fruity Pebbles. Right. But you get this like amazing stone fruit flavors. [01:11:50] Speaker B: Caramelized peach creme brulee. [01:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. [01:11:55] Speaker B: The toasted out, like the toasted brioche elements from the barrels and from it being French oak and the way that we toast them, right? And then you get vanilla from being French oak as French oak throws off a little more vanilla than a regular barrel would, than a, than American oak barrel would. And then you get all the fruits. From the way that we, the way that we cook our agave and how it's fermented, we intentionally do that process to promote flavors of aromas of fruits and flowers. Our, our water is all deep, well, high mineral water. So we get minerality and our salinity undertone from our water. We don't. We want to, we want ferment and cook in a way that gives us lots of fruits and flowers. And again, this is thinking about the way you would layer a dish for a chef. You want different, all these. And then sending a winemaker to make wine. You want these different aromas and elements to be in balance with each other, but you want complexity. So you use water for minerality for, for this particular process and you use cooking to get the right fruits inside of it. You use your fermentation techniques to get more high tone aromatics, the perfumeness and flower and all these different things end up inside the base tequila. And these are barrels to add even more complexity and different levels of flavor that bring out those elements inside of it from, you know, from, from the agave. And the agave has like all of the things in that glass are in the agave plant. It's all there. By using different fermentation techniques and by using different yeast, you bring out those different aromas and flavors. And I think that's one of the things that, that isn't talked about enough when you talk about how peel it is made, is that you can change your flavor profile by changing your yeast and by changing your fermentation technique and you can create and show more flavor and more and more. There was one of the questions I wrote with the very first list that I made that list of all the ridiculous shit that I wanted, I wanted to do. I wrote, you know, what else does agave have that no one shows off right now? And that's really the idea. What other aromas are in that plant that the tradition that the regular methods of making tequila don't bring out, I mean, all that stone fruit is one of them. All those stone fruits, all those peaches and apricots are in the plant. We just don't use the. Not everyone uses the right technique to show them on. [01:13:59] Speaker A: Okay, so I'm going To throw some rapid fire questions at you. [01:14:02] Speaker B: Ready? [01:14:03] Speaker A: Okay. So we love tequila, we love blue agave. Is there any other versions of Cambio that's going to be made with a different agave coming up in the future? [01:14:12] Speaker B: Not right now, not for a long time. I'll tell you this. So we work with Ruval Ferte, which is our farming company and they have they. Every time that something happens to a field and maybe they're. And there is mutate natural mutations in the field, they will take the natural mutations and they'll plant and propagate those mutations as entire farm. So there are nine different variety sub varieties of blue agave that they've identified that are natural mutations of blue agave that they have farms growing right now. We are working with them to take those different plants and use our techniques to make tequila with it. To see can you make good tequila with this sub variety or that sub. They're like clones in wine. Same idea, right? So over the next couple of years we will be starting to make these new sub varieties of blue agave. So it still falls underneath the regular teal production. But there are plants that are growing right now that don't look like regular plants at all. They're like tiger striped and weird orange things in them and yellow like vertical stripes running down the, running down the stem. There's all kinds of weird looking stuff that's growing in the field right now. So we'll take those things and we'll experiment with them and we'll see if we can make good tequila with these sub varieties. Which is also the long term goal of creating more genetic diversity because there isn't any right now. There's virtually none. Right? So one bug that attacks this one plant, we're all screwed. So, so we need, so we need this, we need projects like this to, to really lead the way in the future to protect ourselves against. Because everything on earth has always been destroyed by something at some point, right? So if you understand history and all the ways that we've, we've gone through the things we've cultivated stuff and how nature always claims everything back to itself, there will be something that is going to destroy these plants. And if there is no genetic diversity, we are totally in for it. So it's important for us to really work on that, on the farming perspective now so that when those things happen, you know, we're, we're, we're more immune to them than we are now. [01:16:10] Speaker A: I just had a feeling that there's going to be another agave plant that Gets crushed and cooked. That you go, holy cow, that tastes completely different. So, okay, Chicago question. Illuminati's or Giordano? [01:16:23] Speaker B: God, I feel like this is like asking somebody if they're a Democrat or Republican. Whichever. [01:16:29] Speaker A: We don't want to go there. We don't want to go there. [01:16:31] Speaker B: But the idea is whichever one I pick, half of the people are going to hate you for it. Right? [01:16:35] Speaker A: No, that's true. [01:16:36] Speaker B: I will say Giordano's and I know that, that all the Malnati's fans will. Will kill me for it, but I can. Yeah, I'll just say Giordano and I'll. All the hate mail can all start coming in now. [01:16:48] Speaker A: I love them both. [01:16:49] Speaker B: Both. [01:16:49] Speaker A: But I can't have gluten, so I'm really screwed in both cases. Okay, so what goes on a hot dog in Chicago that is only supposed to go on a hot dog in Chicago? [01:17:02] Speaker B: So fresh tomatoes, mustard, relish that is dyed the color of your shirt. It has to be fake green relish, onions, celery, salt, and a pickle like an actual traditional dill spear. And that's it. It. If there's, if there's, if there's ketchup anywhere in sight, the person should be shot on site and dragged out of the stadium. I took my daughter. I took my daughter to her first because I was gonna answer your next question. I took my daughter game about three weeks ago. That's the. I've been to, I don't know, probably 100 games in my life. I did one year where I did 40 games. My. For one of my earliest moments with my Polish grandmother was going to a Cubs game and sitting way, way up in the Raptors, like for an eight dollar ticket because that's what, that's what my family could afford at the time. So we, we take my daughter, she's three now, to her first game. And I may. I made. We made a sign. I've never made a sign for a game in my entire life. So we made, you know, it. You know, my first Cubs game with the data and everything else. And we took pictures all around the field. It was incredible. Incredible. It was really a beautiful day. And we all got regular hot dogs. And for whatever reason in Wrigley, they have ketchup next to the mustard. And I don't understand why there needs to be ketchup inside the ballpark. [01:18:20] Speaker A: People in Indiana come there. [01:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I. That's great. Well, they can heat ketchup when they go back home. No one, no one needs ketchup anywhere near a hot dog or even a french fryer for that matter. I'm not a big fan of ketchup. Ketchup is the only food in the world that is 99% tomatoes and doesn't taste like a tomato. Up. [01:18:36] Speaker A: True. [01:18:37] Speaker B: I don't know how, how you, you do that, but it, you know, so anyway, there's always funny that, that in Wrigley you have all the perfect condiments and ketchup. [01:18:46] Speaker A: So I was going to ask Socks or Cubs. So obviously Cubs. Right. So my next question. This is a good one to throw at you. So packers or Colts? [01:18:55] Speaker B: Oh, Colts all the way. [01:18:57] Speaker A: There you go. [01:19:00] Speaker B: Actually, every other team. Team except for the Packard. You know, Mike, we were born and raised in Illinois about 30 miles north of Chicago. And my dad, though, when we got out of high school, moved to Wisconsin to get a horse farm. They bought a, you know, they bought an old cow barn and a nice farm and they converted it to a horse farm because my mom always wanted to have horses. And so he lives in Wisconsin. Technically in Wisconsin. His street is the state line. So half of his street is in Illinois, and half of his street is in Wisconsin. But he, but he's way, like, way, way west of Rockford. And so he doesn't get Bears games out there. So he had to buy, like a special antenna. And he, he's got this, like 20 foot wide, huge antenna that will get a signal from Chicago. So he, because he's outside of the market for Bears games, he's like, on the board. So, Haley. So he bought this free. This is, you know, 25 years ago. He buys this ridiculous antenna so we can actually reach to Chicago and get the signal coming from Chicago. He's got the whole thing with a, you know, all dialed in with a compass. And it's. My dad's an engineer, so for him it was like an extra project. Right. He loved it. Half the size of his house is this antenna. [01:20:11] Speaker A: It's fantastic. Well, I grew up a Bears fan. I'm from northern Indiana. We didn't have the Colts when I was a kid, so we all watched the Bears and the Super Bowl Shuffle. Well, John, I, I, I so appreciate the time that you've taken, especially on a Saturday, you know, afternoon away from your family. I love your passion, I love your history. I love that you're a chef and that you've taken this whole idea to enrich flavor, and that's really what you've done. You've taken all of these scientific things to make tequila but really, it's. It's what you do as a chef. It's how do I bring flavor to the table, to my customer? And that's what you've done in these tequilas. And they're. They're absolutely phenomenal. Tequila of 2024. And I'm gonna say tequila of 2025. And I can't wait to see what you do in the future. So thank you so much for what you do and the time you spent with me today. I appreciate it so much. [01:21:08] Speaker B: My pleasure. Thanks for the time. It means a lot to us. We love talking about. We love talking about our story. We love talking about tequila. We love being transparent about it. You know, there's never a question that I. I won't answer, except for which yeast we use. Use. People ask me that all the time. What kind of. What is your strain of yeast? And I will always tell them no one knows what our strain of yeast is except for three people in Mexico and myself. Even my own wife does not know what yeast we use for our tequilas. It's a. That's the one thing that we're. That we're. That we're closely guarded about, but everything else, like, we want to talk about it all the time, but we want to have the conversation about how your tequila is made. That should be something Americans ask every brand. Brand. How do you make your tequila 100. Why do you choose a diffuser? Why do you choose an autoclave? You know, how do you make that choice? That's a great conversation to have with brands. And. And you'll. And you'll really quickly determine which brands are willing to have that conversation and which ones are not. [01:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So I agree 100%. And I figured your yeast was what I would call proprietary, so I didn't ask that question. So I know there's a lot of great yeasts out there and a lot of great ways that people do it and that, you know, I. You know, the whole, like, music thing. Right. Like, a lot of people will do, like, Mozart music. And I was like, ah, that's kind of crazy. Until I was in a distillery, and the guy started tapping on the tank, and all of the yeast circled right around. I was like, okay, yep. I don't care if it's Metallica or Mozart. There's something going on there that's pretty cool. [01:22:36] Speaker B: It's the vibration of the airways through whatever can, whatever vessel it's in. So I know that other people have done a couple of really, really great versions that are done to different Musics. We were thinking we would do like Mozart and Beethoven together in rooms. [01:22:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:50] Speaker B: So we would soundproof rooms and age like five or six barrels in each room and only give them both conductors music for like a year and a half and then release them together as a Mozart and a Beethoven version so that every detail would be the same yeast, same batch of agave, like exactly the same details except for one change and then we'd release them. So that'll be like years, but we'll get there. [01:23:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Can you, can you do one that's just Luke Combs and another one that's just Johnny Cash? Because that would be awesome. Awesome. And that tequila, when it comes out, it's going to be happy and pissed at the same time, I'm telling you. All right, well, I'll put up here where everybody can find you. I know you've got pretty good distribution. I know people can purchase from your website as well. And this, this is a tequila to to not just have on your shelf. This is a tequila to drink. I gotta be honest, I haven't made a. I only make one cocktail, John. It is called glass, air and tequila. Those are my three ingredients. I don't like plastic air and tequila. It's just glass. Aaron, Tequila is the best cocktail, but I'm sure you stand out amazing in cocktails. And this is, this is a tequila to have. So check them out, go to their website. I'll put it up here. You got great social media as well. And like I said, I really appreciate your time and thank you so much for doing this. [01:24:11] Speaker B: My pleasure, Brad. Thanks a lot, Phil, for the time. It means a lot to us. So as a small brand, like, we'll do this, and in five years, we're a big brand, we'll still do the same thing, so. [01:24:19] Speaker A: Well, you're going to be a big brand in five years from now. I'm telling you. This is awesome. All right, well, cheers. You still have some left in that glass? [01:24:25] Speaker B: I do. I really refilled it like four times. [01:24:27] Speaker A: So, you know, I, I, I actually switched, I switched to the ano just because I wanted some of that Kim Brulee. Cheers, my friend. [01:24:35] Speaker B: Cheers. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening.