Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, Brad Nickham tasting tequila with Brad. I'm really excited about the interview that we've got tonight. Imagine creating a brand by collaborating with master distillers from your favorite distilleries. Each distiller crafting a unique expression, highlighting their region's style, and showcasing their artistry. That's the vision of Jake Lustwig brought to life with Art de Nam, a one of a kind brand that celebrates tequila craftsmanship like no other. In addition to this groundbreaking project, Jake also established pretty much a hall of fame of distilleries, honoring exceptional procedures and their contributions to the industry. Arte Nam stands out as the only tequila brand approved by the CRT to source its expressions from multiple distilleries. A true celebration of diversity and a mastery in tequila production. I'm so excited to bring you this video.
All right, guys. Well, welcome to the show. Today we are speaking with Jake Lustwig, the owner of Terra Nova Spirits and the co founder of one of my absolute favorite brands, Arte Nam Tequila. And he also has so many roles in the agave spirits world. It's. It's actually amazing. How you doing today, Jake?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Good, thanks. Thanks, Brad. Thanks.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Thank you so much for being on the show.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: You're.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: You're like one of my tequila heroes. So it's pretty awesome through kind.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Well, I know you have an amazing story dating back to, I think, 30, 30 some years of the agave spirits.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: One years, I guess, this coming year.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Can you tell us a little bit about your journey in agave spirits and tequila?
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Sure. Well, about 32 years ago, 33 years ago, I was doing artisan town tours in Oaxaca, taking people out to rug weaving villages and wood carving villages, pottery villages. And I had owned a winery at the time who wanted to go see distilleries. And I really didn't know anything about Mezcal or distilleries other than the fun effects of drinking Mezcal. And I called my old stepdad and found, you know, where did you take me when I was 16 that time? And he told me the town and how to get there and who to talk to. And that couple ended up that day tipping me $300, which was significant for me at the time. And I had a lot of fun doing it. And at first I just incorporated distillery tours into the regiment, and just through that method, kind of learned what people are doing asking, because I didn't know.
And I was then asked to create a brand for Mezcal, the production side of things. So I applied myself to figuring out the laws and rules and, you know, how do we export a mezcal, how do we get the glass, how do we comply with all the requirements at that time?
And I let eventually the other stuff go, the other town artisan tours. I let that go to my friend who is way more proficient than it, and devoted myself to kind of a survey of the mezcal Industry in 1994. What were points of differentiation and what were the differences in styles and methodologies and who were the people at the time in the game, you know, making waves? There were about an estimated maybe like 350 distillers in the state of Oaxaca at that time producing maybe like 400 brands. I accessed about 80, 86 of them and wrote these brief family backgrounds and stories. And I used that actually to graduate college as my undergraduate thesis and summarily was fired about a year and a half later because the person said that they had people who spoke Spanish back here in the States that could pick up the reins. And I, I avowed that that wasn't going to be possible, that he needed boots on the ground, particularly in a place like Oaxaca. But he heeded none of my words. And I was left with at that point a pregnant girlfriend and a lot of need and a lot of like, oh, wow, I've got a pickup truck and I'm here in southern Mexico. And the peso had just been devalued massively. And we were in the throes of the Zapatista rebellion with Succomandante Marcos in the next state to the south, Chiapas, and the implications of that were just kind of turmoil and heavy army presence everywhere. Couldn't go 20 minutes on the roads without getting, you know, passing through a police checkpoint and just thinking, holy cow, what am I going to do?
And embarrassingly, the most viable thing economically that I had figured out at that point and legal was scal. So I chose my favorite of the 86 distilleries and approached them and said, how about you guys do the production and I'll do the export marketing and go try to sell the stuff?
And that was a real slog in the 90s. People were still looking for the worm in the bottle.
The message for Mezcal was still a decade out from even being remotely understood.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: That's kind of the days they were drinking it out of little gas cans too, right?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Actually, I sold mezcal in bulk in my mother's old neighborhood in oaxaca.
And those 5 liter red gas cans, they're a size called in Oaxaca, una Mevida. So I would actually go knock on doors. And with a big 20 peso coin at the time, tap, tap, tap. Who is it? El guero de Mezcal. The white guy, the pale face with mezcal.
And I'd hear in the background, you know, gordo, you know, Patty, they call you. And the man say, and.
And I say, oh, I. I heard, senora, I. I'll bring it back tomorrow.
I used to sell Mezcal at that time at 35 pesos, about 3 and a half dollars a liter.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Wow.
And now. Now, now our good ones in the hundred dollars.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. A whole different thing. And it was a tough go for me in the United States, but better lucky than smart. Someone. In the mountains of Jalisco we call Los Altos de Jalisco, a guy named Don Raul Plasencia had come from an agave cultivation family in Arandas and had decided rather than selling his agave at whatever the market price was, he would try to hold the reins of his destiny in his hands and turn it into tequila if he couldn't get a fair price.
And that brand turned out to be Espalon. And he said, I. The reason I love your mezcal so much and keep buying your mezcal and have come up here to meet me is this is truly the way I remember my grandfather and great grandfather making tequila very provincially because they weren't a known distiller. They were mostly cultivators. But when he pulled in investment money and built the espalon distillery, he said, you know, he didn't know how limited my knowledge was of anything. He just said, you've done this before with your Mezcal. Why don't you be my importer in the United States? And I worked with a company called Haas brothers that was very interested in developing that brand for their old patriarch. And so they hired me to. To be. Do the import work because they had all the licenses and permits and distributors and all of that. And so I went to work for them.
And within a few years, I guess, couple years, I realized, wow. That the next chapter for me to learn is how American distributors think. Like, there's a lot of great products in the world, and there's a lot of great stores and bars and restaurants, but how in the heck do you. What are the routes to market, as they call them? And so, in working with their distribution network, was impressed on just how little people knew about mezcal and selling Espalon tequila, how little people knew about tequila production and that tequila had kind of fallen into the throes of just being like iconic, like a party spirit or a celebrity spirit. But this whole differentiation among producers and different methods, different regions, was all just not being spoken to.
And I went to work for that distributor. I created for them a Hispanic market division in California on the promise that.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: That wasn't going to be a big market.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
I made the point where a state of 40 million people, 20 million of whom are Latino and about, you know, most of those are Mexican. And the salesforce doesn't have anyone who speaks Spanish. Nobody understands or differentiates. Everyone was trying to sell every single product on by that point. It's like 100% agave and it's smooth. And so that was really my university in the industry ultimately tasked with writing a. An annual, kind of a brochure, like a booklet that broke down all of the brands that we sold, who was behind them, the reason for them. And that put me really in touch with a broad spectrum of tequila producers. And among them, I started to suss out who was carrying forward the energy that I had learned and become accustomed to in Oaxaca of devoted to unique methods and unique flavors and points of origin, Site specificity, all these kind of things. Borrowing a lot from the wine industry.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: And their. And their focus on this is why this pinot is different from this pinot or, you know, this cob's different from this cobbler.
And I guess it was towards the end of a tenure with that distributor. I ended up serving like almost 11 years there while continuing my own projects, while doing tequila and Mezcal. Then I saw we sold the Haas brothers, actually sold the agency for Espalon because they were the importer.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: And Don Raul Plasencia ended up passing away from. From. From natural causes. And I was just very impressed with the call to cast that same light on tequila producers that we have become accustomed to in Mezcal, which is the who, when, where, what, why, and Art Daynomo's born. What I didn't know was that you're not allowed to distill at different places under one brand name. But the advantage for me in that, in that case was I had been sending Mezcal samples to the tequila labs, to the tequila regulatory council labs, because I was hypervigilant about off flavors in Mezcal. Those like fusely creosote, petrol flavors that sometimes would occur.
And a lot of the export markets have strict methanol controls. So I had already gained a rapport with CRT lab people and functionaries who ultimately, through a three year process, gave me the benefit of the doubt and allowed me to push forward with Arte Null.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: If I remember this story right, it was a Tuesday call around 2:00 that told you, well, Kobo, this is the last time you get to submit this. And if we don't, 4:00.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: But it wasn't Tuesday.
There you go, all of your appeals.
Or maybe you're right, maybe it was like early in the afternoon, they said, call back at 4, we're going to tell you and you're going to have to accept this as the final verdict. And such a knucklehead as we call putting the cart before the horse. I already had the labels designed, I already had the glass on order.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: And I remember like it was yesterday just ringing my hands call or made the call to them and I said, felicia, congratulations, we're going to let you do this. And then the most enjoyable part of the process was going to these families and saying, I really don't want to just buy your tequila and put in my own bottles. I want to do kind of collaboration work with you.
And the idea is that you've, I know about you because I've tasted your tequilas one way or another, they're phenomenal. But they're sold under a brand. Your gnome is like in micro print by the back barcode. Let's bring you to the forefront and let me learn about your stories and you know, pull out all the stops. Like do something that's next level that really showcases your best effort. And ultimately I ended up giving them each a portion of their, their expression because otherwise it was like give me your best, best effort and then here I'm gonna go take it and market it without any, you know, repatriation of participation. And so that was just really fun with each one like. And I can go through them, but they are all very different than what anything that they were making. But they showcased what they were making and what they were capable.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: To me, the, the Arte Non bottle for the distillery is like giving somebody their hall of fame, their hall of fame ring, you know, in the NFL or you know, in the NBA, this is saying you made it.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: I didn't really imagine it would emerge like that.
But in the last few years I've seen that all of our participating distiller partners and then others do now really have their dome on their com, on their teeth, on their shirts, their employee shirts. They have it on their billboards. Patron came out with like know your gnome a few years ago. And, right.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: I was still, I still don't know their gnome.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But the focus just, it was very gratifying to see that and among my distiller partners and even with others, I can't say like everybody credits me with this, of course, but if I ask, you know, after a few shots, you know, and who started this kind of thing, is it Yuri Hakomo? So I wanted to, I wanted to like affect that and be involved in that, but also because behind great tequilas is great agave. Right. And we had, the industry had gone from a contraction of over 25,000 families devoted to cultivation of agave had collapsed down to like 2200. And so I saw as with the, with the like consolidation of production among a few massive distillers. And I hope most sincerely that by lifting artisan home craft distillers by virtue of that we would be able to restore jobs in smaller agave cultivator families.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: And that was, that was actually one of the questions I had for you. You know, as, as we. You've seen a lot of things change in, in those years of going to these mass produced tequilas and diffusers and you know, changing the farmers and now that you've seen a switch in the consumer to look for more traditional tequilas and we're getting to see some of these distilleries that in our world, you know, these guys are small compared to the big, you know, the big ones that are there.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Have you seen they're like, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: They'Re, they're big, but they're not doing, you know, what those ones are. Are you seeing a positive impact on local communities and farmers and employees and employers in the areas since you've seen that change over the last few years?
[00:17:13] Speaker B: I have to say yes. And then I also have to say no. I mean, in Oaxaca, for example, I mentioned that in, you know, 30 years ago, we were at about guesstimated, but around 350 distillers and around 400 maybe brands. We are now closer to 3,000 distillers in the state. Wow, 5,000 brands.
And when I began that initiative, it was actually just after the throes of Nafta and Monsanto and Simplot. Nutritionless cheap yellow corn was in local markets, even outdoor markets for less money than local growers could produce their corn. So we saw just so many families broken while the young man had to be working in the tobacco fields of North Carolina or the factories of Chicago or the letta fields of Salinas Valley in California. And just realizing if we can create local economy, we can keep kids home and have more intact families. And that has happened and that's immensely gratifying in tequila being a much more like mature industry on a, on a global and financial level. Of course we know now what, what the forces did is innovate to port over from the sugar industry, essentially this diffuser process and make mature agave, quote, unquote unnecessary and use chemicals and enzymes to create tequila from two and a half year old plants with sulfuric acid and then a ton of flavorings and additives. And so that has hampered the overall ambition of if we can create, you know, more homespun tequilas that are dependent on more homespun small as we call them, of agave, like agave orchards. It's, it's been a lagged, beleaguered process.
And I'll think, wow, we're really getting somewhere.
And then, you know, we were really celebrating the price of mature agave because it became really increasingly viable for more families to engage in cultivation and saliva. But the big brands innovated diffusers and that just cleaned small producers clock and made small agave cultivators even more of a, of a rare species.
So I can't really herald our achievements in tequila. I can for where it applies to the dozen or so really high quality, smaller producers of which I work with, five or six of them.
But right now the domination of young agave for diffuser spirits, diffused tequilas, you know, there it's very much more consolidated and the agave price has plummeted down from like 30 pesos a kilo to so like 4 pesos or less. And so as much as I'd like to, you know, present a different narrative, we have even more small agave producers throwing belly up now just because they can't get a good market price. But we in response will continue to evolve and focus more on who are our producers, our cultivators, the agave producers. And not just the distillers it seems.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: You know, I've been a tequila drinker for a long time and of course I, I, you know, started in good tequila back in the 2000s and then, you know, I, I thought the one at the Bell was a great tequila, you know, because it had great marketing. And then, then kind of dove back into learning and realizing, you know, how these diffuser tequilas have changed. Not only a profile of a lot of my friends in Mexico that they're, they're still, you know, that brand's not good, you know, I drink this one. I'm like, what are you talking about? Have you had this. Yeah, you know, because they've had this change of what's available. And, you know, I've noticed in. In my circle of people, this. This whole change of attitude of wanting to know what they're putting in their body and, you know, is it real, is it traditional? And then. Then being able to share the stories is what really turns people around to realize, you know, that big company that you're thinks are great tequilas, making 35 of those same tequilas, and it's owned by a company in Europe. Let's. Let's talk about these guys that are, you know, maybe they have, you know, some parts of their company owned by another company or maybe a brand within their company, but they're staying traditional.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: Usually that. Yeah, yeah. So.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: And. And I just get this, you know, real rise of excitement from people.
Hopefully that continues, and that continues to grow that way. I use your tequilas all the time to explain not only of it, but then the difference in the areas and the tequilas and how it's made and. And it seems to resonate with people so that I think what you're doing is, you know, along with others.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Right, right, right. So importantly, I mean, it's. It is a movement now. And I mean, I'm proud, very proud to be able to work with the producers that I do, but I'm also very excited about producers that I don't yet work with. Sure.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Now, were these your original four producers that you wanted to work with? Or has there ever been any other people involved?
[00:23:02] Speaker B: No. In fact, coincidentally, just on one side, your 1414 and 1146 are original. Of the original guys.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: The two Blancos that I do were not. Were not part of my original selections. And that was a little bit my. My experience with the big distributor that I mentioned previously showed me that the wine salesman or the wine reps, if they were out of, you know, 2005, you know, Central Cospino wouldn't lose the slot on the shelf necessarily, or wouldn't lose the slot on a menu.
They would say, hey, we've got the 2006. Or. Right. We still have some cabernet stuff. Or not from 2005. It's a different varietal, different. But I was. Because I did this just like, again, better lucky than smart. But because I revised this manual every year to kind of give an overview of the producers, I became impressed with how many tequilas that we had spent so much time and treasuring on distributing had folded because of a distillery fire or a divorce or legal trouble or something happened with the owner or one, and that brand is just gone and all the work starts all over. And I thought, what if I could do a tequila where if we were out of something or something happened, we could pivot and in that way make a tequila that a distributor would have faith in selling?
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: So that's happened a few times now.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Yeah. You keep saying luckier than smart. I don't believe you. I think there's a lot more smart than lucky.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: I mean, there's kind of like just innate intuitiveness through observation. But I'm lucky to have been open to those opportunities to learn and see.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: One thing that is about the spirits industry, the wine and spirits industry, is it's made up of a lot of really good people. Sure. I mean, the jerks kind of get pushed out and some of them stick around, but for the most part, it's been three decades of embrace and instruction and correction and patience with me.
And so I do feel very much just lucky and blessed more than like, ah, this was my vision. You know, it wasn't like, things. Things developed natural, painful way.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: I. You. You and I have a road. I didn't realize. So graduated from high school with a girlfriend that was pregnant. Right. Was going to go to college, realize, okay, now I got to go to work. And, you know, success sometimes breeds out of the necessity to make things happen. And you and I have that in common. And it's funny, people will go, oh, you're so lucky. Really. You know, it's.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: I get that now. Yeah.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: There was.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: There's a whole host of, you know, my friends growing up, going to Europe or places or going surfing in Baja and stuff. You get used to, I can't go, I can't go. Yeah.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: You know, people say, oh, you're so lucky. Well, the guy that wins the lottery because he bought 200 million tickets isn't lucky. And that's. That's what I feel like, us business people that make it, you know, or have some sort of success, it's like, no, we did everything nobody else was willing to do when nobody else was willing to do it. So.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: And in this industry, I would say that success is also tentative. Like, what?
I had someone the other day say, you made it. I did. I didn't make it. Like, there's about a thousand different angles or things that could go awry. But, you know, we give. We give it our best shot. And I'm one who raised my children Believes a lot in process and not the finish line. If you. If you have. I was told this. I didn't come up with this, but if you devote oneself, if oneself devotes to good, steady, applied process and integrity, more often than not, you'll get good results.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: That's similar to. I've lived by. If I help other people get what they want, I'll inevitably get what I want. But my focus has to be on other people and helping them, you know, get. Get to where they want to be and whatever service I offer or however my friendship is, you know, then. Then those things come back.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: It's such a message that never gets old. Just about a week or two ago, my brother from another mother, Quasi Boy Tequila is me amigo on Instagram, a little plug there. But he had me watch a movie where one of the lines he pointed out was, the best businessman is a good middleman.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: That's a good line.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: You know, That's a good line.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: It's like connecting people and not being jealous and a trust that high tide raises all boats and just playing straight, doing our best. So, yeah, I'll jump in on the 1414, because you asked who was in at the beginning. This is the tequila. I'm really relishing how much people are enjoying 1414 right now.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, it's so good, because.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: This is one of the ones where I just felt like, you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The proverbial door is closing, you know. Don Feliciano Vivanco, when I met him, was about 90, and he passed away at about 94.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: And his sons among. There's three of them, Armando. But mostly I worked with Sergio and Jose Manuel Vivanco. But before we started the recording, you had mentioned that you saw me talk about another time when I asked old Feliciano Vivanco when did things get so rough in Mexico? And I thought he would talk about the Lopez Portillo's presidency in the 80s or blah, blah, blah. And he. He mentioned it was back when electricity came to his town, but he had done something so divergent from the norm, which was, I guess, first and foremost, be a critical thinker and open to learning himself. And disclosed to me that he Learned in a 1957 National Geographic in Espanol that Bordeaux winemakers were extracting the yeast out of their vineyards to do their fermentation. And while there's no problem, you know, buying commercial yeast or passing along a yeast strain, he was struck with the novel idea of scraping the agave panka to pick up yeast right out of the orchards.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: To use in his fermentation and that it was that one of those expressions that I had tasted and just gone head over heels for and so said he was receptive to me saying, will you bring that back and do that for 14, 14, to really showcase something you do differently. And for my part, I'll do this kind of thing, you know, I'll, I'll talk about it.
And then he said, you know, don't be one of these gringo jerks that wants everything over oaks and you know, make our, make us do a reposado at 10 or 11 months. You know, 11 months in 20 days. Like if you want this and you, you want to be able to detect the contribution to the products bouquet and everything, we're going to do like four months and very exhausted barrels. And then that was my opportunity to say, oh my God, I'm here, hat in hand, like learning and humble, not giving you directives. And you know, if, if for me this showcases just a phenomenal repo salo. And so that was really, really like the impetus because he would say, he said as a matter of course. Well, that's fantastic. Do our blanco, do our anejo. And then I say, well, here's the complicated thing. I only want the expression that you do the best. In my subjective opinion, this distillery makes just incredible blancos and award winning anejos. But I really was impressed. And in those times also, that distributor sold patron silver and we sold the heck out of petron silver. But it was tough for us to sell petron repo and petron anejo. And at that time, Don Julio actually made a more consumer friendly repo. And I, I kind of was impressed on this idea that nobody does everything spectacularly well. Sure, if you're gonna really focus on cultivation and expression of, of the plant or you're gonna, or the, you know, botanics, or you're gonna really involve yourself in understanding all the nuances of barrels and make some of the most spectacular nails. Or you're gonna do something like a repo that still shows this terroir and these, these orchard notes. And so I was able to get out of that, that meeting with him, just very excited to do the reposalo.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: You know, each one of these places, I like every.
Everything they offer, to be honest. Right. Whether it's an anejo, an extra anejo, a blanco repo. But, but I am. Cheers.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: I can't talk about them too long about.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: I try. You know, my bar is just below my office. And I have to walk past it multiple times every day. And I.
And if I wasn't married, I would never get any work done. Love it. You know, but each one of them.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: To me, also the right woman.
Otherwise, you would just grab a bottle and a couple of straws and go.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Cuddle up and married that high school sweetheart. We've been married for 35 years.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: God bless.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: And I tell people I married my second wife first, so I didn't have to go through any of that. And a wise man. She's amazing. She'll. If I came home and said, hey, we're going to do this now, she look at me and go, all right, let's give it a shot. So very, very blessed with a wonderful kids and an amazing wife who. Who did make me run a marathon in Honolulu last weekend.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: I'm so impressed. Shoot. You wrote me that on the email. That's just amazing.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Yeah. My wife ran it 30 years ago with her twin sister who has passed away, and she said, hey, I kind of want to do it again. Neither of us are runners. We Both lost over £50 training over the last year. Yeah. So she and my daughter did it, too. Unfortunately, my daughter severely twisted her ankle a week before Honolulu. She did her best. She got 21 miles in, and she couldn't go any further, so she did her best.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: I was just thinking of that, the intelligence. And if you're running a marathon, both of you are just too tired to argue.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Well, there's. You know, here's the thing. I. I don't understand how she doesn't get mad at me all the time, but it works out well.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: You found. You found a jewel, and I've brought.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Her to tequila drinking a little bit. So over the last six months or so, I'll say, hey, I'm going to go grab a glass. Do you want me to make you a drink, or do you want a bottle of wine, or. And she'll say, I'll just bring me a sipper.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: And. And now she's like, okay, that. That one I kind of like.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: That is one of the fun things selling tequila is that it really? I've seen it. It's a global palette.
I've seen Asians from Singapore, Japan, China, Vietnam, you know, all over Asia, really embrace the taste. I have friends who, you know, I grew up in a black, predominantly black neighborhood, and friends who've left cognac, you know, left some of their more typically adored spirits, and just totally into tequila, all the nuances, and, you know, equally as impassioned about methodology and differentiation.
It's starting really in Europe to catch on. They've been bombarded with just horrible tequilas for so long that they, they kind of have a softer spot for mezcal as being more like authentic. But when I show them quality tequilas and quality mezcals, they embrace it. And now we've seen that tequila in the United States has taken over. I mean, bourbon is just amazing to take over, but vodka, but to sell more tequila than vodka, it's amazing. It's just mind blowing.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: And I live, you know, in bourbon country, right. Everybody around me is a bourbon person and I do love bourbon. I'll drink a bourbon neat. And I have several bourbon friends that are like, oh, that I got so sick on tequila, you know, that's. And I was like, no, no, no, you didn't get sick on this tequila. And I break them in with either the 1414 because to me it has, it has a bourbon esque like quality to it, but it throws the agave in the front and it makes them taste something different than what they normally taste. And if they don't like that, I go to the 11:46 because now I get a little bit more of that barrel note, but still the agaves in front. And what's amazing is they'll start here, six months later they'll be here and a year later they're over here.
[00:36:38] Speaker B: Isn't that cool?
[00:36:39] Speaker A: It's so cool.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: They explain maybe a little bit of the potential tie in is that the 1414 we do use only American white oak.
We scrape those barrels so that there's no carbon in them at all because.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: We don't want more like a toasted barrel then or.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: Well, in fact, this, this family does buy used bourbon oak casks.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: And that's something I wouldn't be so excited about. But they recondition them and they scrape off the char. And so what you're getting is below the char.
That's different than just a toast.
But that, that's a nice segue to 1146, where I just really didn't want to put on the market another vanilla sugar bomb denuded of, of agave nuance. And the barrel master that I most know is devoted to retaining agave character in age spirits is Enrique Fonseca, 1146 at Tequilania, who had that unfortunate paradox of how to. His. His family, when he was a young man, was embroiled in a 12 million plant agave contract with Cuervo over a 10 year purchase calendar. That Cuervo reneged on four years into it.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: And Enrique, as a young man, saw that the family was going to go bankrupt just like so many other agave cultivators if he didn't pull a rabbit out of the hat, do something differently. Because at the price that Cuervo had rejiggered and broken their agreement. And you know, Pepe's got it down the road for, for half of what your. Our contract is.
If they had sold all their agave at that price, they, they would have ceased to exist.
So he did the very bold move of buying a retired distiller, a distillery in a zone that wasn't historically relevant to hear his family to live.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Because these highlands. Right.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: And well, kind of midfield.
Yeah. I call Atotonilco El Alto. Kind of like a mid slope town.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: It's okay. It's further, further west of like where the Vivankas are.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: East. Yeah.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: Further east of where the.
I get that backwards every time.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And tequila lies to the west.
So for him to, for him to decide, you know, I'm gonna spend the hour that it takes from Atoto Nelco back to Guadalajara and then another hour and a half to get to tequila, which is the land of like our customers who are these big just bottling plant distillers.
Culturally, not what he wanted to do, but that was where a distillery was available. And he decided to turn all of this agave into tequila rather than sell it at a. At a price that would lead his family into bankruptcy. But they didn't have a brand. So everyone said, Enrique, young Enrique, you can't store tequila for, for whenever, for many years without ruining it. And so Enrique really applied himself to, to studying. How are they doing it in Scotland? How are they doing it in France? What are the tricks? What do I need to be using? And took a huge stance early on on, aging without any idea when he'd be able to pull it out of beryl. French oak, limousine oak, really dense grain. And he just didn't like really what he was seeing being discarded by cognac and spirits. He fell in love with the barrels from Loire Valley that have been used for Cobb franc. You love that, the way that, that varietal penetrated the staves and really like marked those barrels. So at a price of like $680 per barrel used versus $80 for bourbon.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Bought just a ton of those barrels. And that's the reason why we have now Fuente Seca tequila that goes back to 1993. But I went to him with an understanding that he's a savant in the world of barreling. And as it turned out, when I asked him, you know, let's make just a very dynamic anejo that's anything but a sugar bomb with no agave retention. What he ended up doing is the interplay between French oak, which is really, someone told me the word years ago, austere, I think so, like not immediately gratifying, like spicy, nutty, dry, kind of challenging, but creates just this really great foundation to lay the nuances of butterscotch, caramel, vanilla of American oak. But in that interest, that devotion to to retain agave character went with your aforementioned toasted barrel. Who's got tons of American white oak that just toasted is Canadian whiskey.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: Oh, no kidding, I didn't know.
[00:41:52] Speaker B: So he started buying and, you know, usually one doesn't. Harold. Canadian whiskey is the end all, be all, no spirits. But it turns out that those barrels really work good. So he layers this kind of high, a little bit stingy with gratifying French structure with the more free, fun caramel, vanilla, butterscotch, looser grain. Sure. American white oak.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: So it's awesome how you, I mean, you still get the agave right on the nose. You know, you get the barrel notes and everything, but you still have the that.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: And that's really critical to Enrique. And again, this allows me to not, not bullshit, say, oh, this was my idea. I'm such a genius. This is Enrique responding to the opportunity to create a product that talks about who he is, his experience. It's not my experience, but it gives me a good story if nothing else.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. Now, is he doing probably deep well water, is that right?
[00:42:57] Speaker B: Yeah, he's doing deep well water because they've so ruined their. Their creek there.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: And then the highland agaves. Right.
And then again, they're like mid slope agave.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: He's got, yeah, he's got some highland agave, but I'm talking for me, highland agave now is 5,500ft to 7,200ft.
And it's not just splitting hairs. Those are agave that are literally sunbeam.
Never get enough nutrients, never get enough water, jealously hold every little bit of sugar that they can create.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: At his agave, I mean, he does grow in six regions. So it's hard to talk comprehensively about Enrique Fonseca's agave, But the majority of it is around 4,600ft, 4,200ft. It's above Guadalajara, but it's below what I call the real highland and he.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Uses like a personally invented screw mill. That's different than like anybody else's, right?
[00:44:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: That's completely crazy.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: That used to be controversial to talk about, but yeah, just because nobody did it. You know, most people are going into fermentation at 9, 10, 8, 9, 10% sugar in there in their. In their agave.
Unfermented agave mash. Going into fermentation with that much sugar in. In the most.
And by essentially using a screw press to wrench out the cooked agave before passing that through roller mills, which in roller mills, so that the agave doesn't get packed into the grooves and clog everything up, you're continuously spraying water to dislodge it. Right. And that of course dilutes your sugars. He does this first pass and kind of a ringing out of the agave without addition any additional water at that point. And so by the time he's passed that wrung out agave through three roller mills, he's going into fermentation closer to 15% sugar, which all the yeast, because it's too much sugar, it'd get too hot.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:45:21] Speaker B: But he had the wherewithal to work with some Mendoza region fermentation scientists to create high tolerance yeast. Because in Argentina, they're great. Their vineyards, their grapes get a lot of sun and they needed to have a stronger, more hearty yeast.
And so Enrique is, Is a man who, if anyone knows him, they know this. He does things well all the way through.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: It seems like they're all end up being these geniuses in some mad scientists way.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: I tell you, you're not off. It's really, I mean, that is how the greats become great or became great is not just settling in with what they could have done just to keep up the status quo.
But how to, I don't know, take the, take the ball and run with it. And some. Some way that fascinates them. And I could go on and on with how each of them have done that and. But that's what does makeup.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Not to innovate to cheapen and make it faster, but to innovate in a way that makes it better and maintains the tradition that that's what's so amazing.
[00:46:40] Speaker B: Nailed it. Yeah. Yeah. Not how to. To necessarily ilk out more profit, but how to really showcase their family name.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: No H. How can I make more profit by selling the most fantastic product? Not by how can I make the most money by selling just the most product? I mean, I say it all the time there, there's A Walmart and a Nordstrom's for a reason.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: And these guys are. They're. They're using that tradition to make these fantastic brands.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: When they go into distillation. I know his distillation methods are kind of different than everybody else's, right?
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Yeah, they are. Because again, just circumstances. The distillery that he bought 10 with, what it has.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: And he is financially pragmatic and also he's a very educated person. You know, he reads every day. He reads for an hour or two every day. He's very conscientious and he's a natural born ecologist because his family was really devoted to cultivation and not just agave, but many crops.
[00:47:50] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: So he sees, you know, reads an article about the problem of topsoil runoff. And he goes on to read about what are solutions in oats and wheat and corn to like pneumatically inject the seed a centimeter or centimeter and a half below the soil using pneumatic injectors rather than tilling.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Like just smart stuff, you know.
So he inherited a double column. I mean, a column, double copper column still. Like a Thomas Coffee still. Which anyone. Because the distillery that he bought had been owned previously by Bacardi. And rum is made and therefore in their mind, tequila, by distilling the hell out of it, kind of stripping it and then putting back in the notes that one's looking for. He was tasked with how can I figure out how to use this thing for agave? And ultimately it was by removing a ton of the plates. But understanding he could open valves at the bottom and let out fuse oils, and he could open valves at the top and let out methanols and superior alcohols without making these cuts of the heads and the tails that you otherwise have to do in pot distillation, where the heads boil off first and are loaded with superior alcohols and methanols towards the tail. And you're getting a lot of fuse oils. But then he also inherited there at that distillery, two big stainless steel alambic stills and two copper alembic stills. And so with all of these different stills, he allowed himself to innovate. And trial and error, try this and try that and this blend and this mix. And for me personally, that was really an incredible thing to see because I renovated a. I helped renovate Mezcal distillery back in eons ago, our distillery in Oaxaca.
And I take great pleasure in having now all these different still types.
[00:50:03] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: I have commissioned some copper. We have copper pot stills, we have clay pot stills. We have some steam roasted agave. We have outdoor roasted agave, you know, so it's. He really showed me that one can be a mad scientist, as you said, and try different things. Enrique is the most like that of any of my. My personal friends and partners.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: I've read so much about him and how he went to Scotland to learn, since no one would teach him there and like.
[00:50:37] Speaker B: Right.
[00:50:37] Speaker A: It's just very interesting.
[00:50:38] Speaker B: It's so cool that his story is out there. Yeah.
[00:50:41] Speaker A: Has anybody gone back to make a tequila with the clay, the Filipino clay, still like you do in the Mezcal world?
[00:50:50] Speaker B: Not that I'm aware of, but I would expect that you'd see something like that from the Casca wing family, the Rosales, or from Felipe Camarena.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: I was even thinking David Sorro.
[00:51:07] Speaker B: David Sorro, Yeah.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: That's who I was thinking.
[00:51:09] Speaker B: I would imagine that David Soro would probably do that with Casio. David Soro is the one who's kind of at the leading edge of. Of that kind of stuff. And yeah, kudos to. To David, you know, I mean, what a great guy.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: That's another thing I wanted to ask you about. You know, I know the bat friendly program has been something that a lot of the places have really embraced over the last few years. Has there been some really good things come away from that now? Are we starting to see like.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: I'm not. I. I won't. I won't. Yes. I'm not. I've never really participated in the hype of that program or not that that would, you know, make it sound like it's not viable or irrelevant, but it's a response to something that I think has a lot of different responses to. Sure. It's kind of a conclusion of a problem that I think there's a lot of different reasons that that problem exists.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:52:04] Speaker B: For somebody like Enrique Fonseca growing in six regions, I can tell you Enrique doesn't really spend too much time thinking or worrying about bats.
He moves agave a lot.
Little, what we call huelos, little baby agave that he's getting that grow in colder climates. He's moving to warmer climates. A little Ihuelo Pintzon. The point is, Enrique says we move our agave and he understands really the biology of what's going on when he's got it. People say there's a weakened agave root stock because of cloning and hybridization.
He's one to say, ah, that's not really what happened. The real. The real problem came when, like Cuervo and salsa were bought by foreign corporations. Cuervo bought their stock back, but for a while, like they were sold half Diageo. And where people wanted to grow the agave repeatedly. And these orchards and wouldn't move and circulate the. The, the crops.
[00:53:15] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: And not leave certain land, follow and not leave certain land. Agave orchards to grow their own weeds and have their own little biosystems. And so I never got that involved with, with the bat project. That never seemed like the most efficient place to put our attention.
And bats are. Bats are an important, of course, species for fertilizing, you know, the agave or whatever. I'm missing the word right now, but so are butterflies. Our orchards are just packed with butterflies. It's another subject that I won't really go into, but it's about beetles and who. It's a beetle that lives about 2 inches under the soil and looks to get its nutrients by carnivorously eating bacteria that's growing on decaying agave roots. And as these, they cut the roots so with the little pinchers so that the roots start decaying. So this bacteria grows. So then they eat this bacteria. And if you're just a very present agave cultivator, you can see in the ground infected plants and get them out of there quickly.
[00:54:23] Speaker A: So they know.
[00:54:24] Speaker B: So they know. And someone can say, ah, but maybe the absence of bats cross pollinating or something, you should grow more. You get a heartier root from an agave that's like from seed. And I'm like, no, you won't get a stronger root from an agave from seed.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: Just get a stronger beetle.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: Yeah. But all of these can be, you know, what do they call it? Down the rabbit hole or Pandora's boxes?
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah, Deep. Deep. Big time. All right, let's talk about. Let's talk about Felipe's. This. This one is the word that I explain. This one with the most is. It's the. The most buttery agave bomb blanco that I taste. And I. I get a little cinnamon. I get this really nice thick mouth feel. I get the great agave with a little citrus and then a very subdued pepper end. It's phenomenal to me.
[00:55:18] Speaker B: Thank you.
This is probably one of the ones that I've. I've had the least contribution to. I was always really enamored with Felipe and his tequilas, his ethos and his approach to tequila making and his legacy. I was a huge fan of he and Carlos father Don Felipe. But Felipe's own G4 for me was a little spicy and it was just hanging out with him and drinking G4. When we had that novel idea, that was my business partner, Jose Jose Espinosa, who added in his backpack some of those Venturi wine aerators.
And for nothing more than, like, spontaneous shits of giggles, we started pouring G4 through a wine aerator. And it just suppressed the, like, peppery, spicy for me, a little bit indelicate notes, and delivered a product that had all of the same characteristics and botanical sweetness, all those things you say, you know, creaminess and lushness.
[00:56:28] Speaker A: Did it enhance that Pedrichore taste, too? Because this.
[00:56:32] Speaker B: It did. And that has.
[00:56:34] Speaker A: Wow, that's my favorite.
[00:56:35] Speaker B: Really coming with it. That was.
[00:56:37] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:56:37] Speaker B: The impetus of this, because I really needed. I, you know, I do presentations to, like, diners in a restaurant or, you know, wait staff. And I was like, how am I going to talk about agave?
Like, what is the benchmark base flavor of agave? You nailed it. Petrichor. And for the listening audience or the watching audience, if they're not bored to death already. But my diatribes, I'm so sorry.
[00:57:04] Speaker A: They're gonna love it. I'm telling you.
[00:57:05] Speaker B: It's like, you know, in a Florida or an Arizona street or Mexico or wherever, where you get, you know, a burst of rain in the. In the early spring, and then the rain goes away, but the sun comes out and evaporates that water off of the streets. You can't really, like, uses a descriptor table side in a fine dining restaurant. You know, it smells like wet cement.
[00:57:31] Speaker A: It sounds like your sidewalk. When it's.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Petrichor is the flavor it is.
And nobody delivers that like Felipe.
So what he ended up doing for us was developing a tank with a bubbler.
And he aerates our tequila for better or for worse. There's another brand that I really like a lot, and I won't mention them, but I really like the owners, and I really like the tequila.
And they're mistakenly going around saying, like, wear this aerated tequila. That's what.
And Felipe, I said, felipe, what's going on? I thought you did that for Gordon selection of this. And he said, I did. I don't do that for anyone else. So.
[00:58:22] Speaker A: But yesterday.
[00:58:23] Speaker B: Yesterday, this is the aerated tequila from. From Felipe Camarena.
[00:58:28] Speaker A: I did a video yesterday on how can your tequila come from one distillery and taste different? And I used. Yeah, but. But most people don't understand it. So I used your 1579. I used Terra Alta, and I used Don Vicente, which each have a different process of each one, different water in each one. And then I tasted through them all and, you know, talked about the differences, and you clearly can tell the differences in each one.
[00:58:57] Speaker B: But when I was on, Grover had me. When he and Scarlett were. They had a little apartment in San Francisco before they moved to Guadalajara, before they moved to Sonoma and then Guadalajara. He got me on that. He had myself and a couple of other guys. He and Scarlett did. Hosted us and poured, you know, all these different tequilas and had us try to choose what they were.
And we tripped all over ourselves because they were all from. I think it was 14. 14 at the time. I mean, it was a distillery. I should know. We're like, I think this. But I knew this forever because I myself and my Mezcal, our Mezcal distillery, we bought. We make. We make mescals for a range of other people.
[00:59:42] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:59:43] Speaker B: Other companies. And there's just about a thousand different things you can do that really significantly alter flavors. But usually, and hopefully you will have, like, a house style.
[00:59:56] Speaker A: You get the DNA of the brand in there.
[00:59:59] Speaker B: But I would say, like, everything coming out of 1146, for example, is expressive of that. Screw press, extract, sugar extraction first. You know, like, everything that's coming out of Costcoine has a certain integrity in its fermentation, in the way that they do their fermentation there with. With tile tubs and all this.
Everything that. That. That. Felipe Camarena is going to have this heightened petrichor because that's his environment 7200ft up.
[01:00:35] Speaker A: Yesterday, when I finished that video, I had a little bit of 1579, a little bit of Tara Alton, a little bit of Don Vincente. And I didn't want to carry three glasses in the house. I blended them together.
[01:00:46] Speaker B: Gotta get you a.
[01:00:51] Speaker A: My wife will tell you, no, I don't need that. But after I blended them together, I was like, holy cow, this is amazing.
[01:00:58] Speaker B: Hey, that is so funny that you mentioned that. Like, there's been plenty of times. Of course, I'm cleaning up after a tasting, or I'm cleaning up the shots when people leave and whatever is left.
Remember in Oaxaca, we drink mezcal in, like, a gourd called a hicara, and we pass it around like a joint. Like, everyone kind of sips it and you pass it. You know, everyone's not their own, Right. And when I was young, showed concern about that, somebody reminded me, this is spirits. Like, it's killing everything in there.
So I won't mix. I won't say I'll Mix guest glasses, but my own.
And it's fantastic.
[01:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I've had parties where people left things in the glass, and I'm like, what was that that they left in there? Because I might want to put that in one of mine.
[01:01:47] Speaker B: It doesn't matter.
[01:01:49] Speaker A: It doesn't matter.
[01:01:51] Speaker B: I mean, we're talking, you know, at best, we're talking 40 alcohol. I think things are made sanitized at like 5%.
[01:01:58] Speaker A: Exactly. Well, let's dive into this last one. We kind of went in a weird direction, but I love it.
[01:02:04] Speaker B: Well, this last one is. Is. Was a kind of a twofer for me. I.
[01:02:10] Speaker A: And technically it was the last one to come into the deal. Right. This one is the latest one, like 2021, January 21st or something.
[01:02:19] Speaker B: It's not the end of our expressions, but it's the. In this, I wanted to. For the same reason of trying to really always show people a differentiation with climates. I wanted to show people how a higher brick agave, higher percent of sugar in the pina will give you sweeter botanical flavors.
But like everyone, I was sitting around in Pandemic, you know, reading stuff and scratching my head. What the hell am I going to do with myself? I'm going crazy. And.
And I had a. Like a kind of an epiphany of. Or a confluence of ideas.
One is a few years ago, I mean, before Pandemic, I don't know, 10 years ago, someone had sent me the old 1940s original Norma on tequila. And it's shocking how similar it reads to how we make mezcal today. And it. That loop back. I guess the reason that connected with me was that it was Raul, Don Raul Plasencia way back, who told me in 1994, he was buying my Mezcal up because it reminded him of the way his grandfather made tequila. And I was like, oh, there's validity to this. And so it really, you know, jumped out off the page. The other thing was just kind of a rumination of if he didn't. If there's no train going through Arandas and Jesus Maria and Los Altos de Jalisco, and they didn't have the internal combustion engine until, like, turn of the, you know, 20th century. How the hell, you know, the 19th? Let's just say late 1900s. Early. I mean, late 1800s, early 1900s. How the hell did people enjoy highland agave?
Bright botanical. Botanical fruitiness in, like, a real, like, Baller's Tequila from the Valley of Tequila? Because the Valley of Tequila produces a lower brix. Spicier. Tequila. And so I started asking people. I still had to go. I was like the guy like the Michelin man with the like made at home hazmat suit. The only one on the airplane going down to Mexico with like sunglasses and face mask and a hood and gloves tear off as soon as I'd get to the airport. You know, we were all in this, like, panic in the early. In the early period of the pandemic. So going down there. And so I had this idea and I started asking people, the oldest guys that I knew, the oldest, oldest guys I could find.
When you were a kid, what did you and your cousins and brothers play on behind the distillery while you're waiting for your freaking dad to get off work? Yeah, you know what was the old rusted. My dad worked ranches sometimes when I was growing up. And he. There was old farming equipment, old tractors, old thrashers from so long ago, you know, wheat thrashers and stuff. And I say, what was that equipment? And finally, you know, someone said, what the hell are you asking? What, what is it that you're after?
And I said, I'm just really wondering what did a. A big baller in Guadalajara in 1850 drink as their tequila? If reposado as a category wasn't created until the 70s, 1970s, and ANO didn't really exist.
[01:05:47] Speaker A: Right.
[01:05:48] Speaker B: So counterintuitively, anejos pre existed reposavos because they made tequila to try to be a little bit more like whiskey. But again, Mexicans, I. Not again, but I'll make the point. Mexico was militarily invaded by the United States seven times.
Half their land was stolen and an illegal treaty surrender from General Santa Ana, who didn't even have the authority to surrender half of Mexico's land and the treaty of Hidalgo in 1848. So Mexico was not like slurping down whiskey and didn't have a lot of the barrels.
What were people drinking? And I got answers. If you know what question to ask, you get answers.
[01:06:33] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:06:34] Speaker B: And people would say, we had people. They had people, which are those large vats with reinforced rebar, like around them, using 20,000 liter. Like French bats, like in Spanish. In French they call them tons. In Spanish we call them toneles or more commonly pipones. Or they did have brandy barrels. And by. By just. I'm making this short story long, but by a funny coincidence, I have been buying brandy barrels for Mezcal since 1986 from Pedro del Mech, just because I had a carpenter, a painter, Santiago Cruz, who had a cousin who worked for Pedro The Mec in Mexico City and one day said, hey, my cousin can sell his barrels that Pedro del Mec, who makes presidente and Dom Pedro and very low brow Mexican brandies. But I don't really care. The point is those staves of the barrels are impregnated by brandy spirit. So I've got those and I've been using them and reusing it and reusing them for Mezcal. Because congruent with Oaxaca's history with Mezcal is always reposados. The reason that we don't have so many reposal mezcals in the United States was purely a function of politics and.
[01:07:49] Speaker A: Money and getting the product there now instead of waiting.
[01:07:53] Speaker B: That's a long story. And it kind of.
[01:07:56] Speaker A: That's another video. Yeah, that's another video.
[01:08:02] Speaker B: But I'm sitting there thinking, I'm thinking there in my apartment in East Oakland, I've got old brandy barrels that I've been using for Moscow for decades, or at least a decade and a half. And I'm understanding that people in the 1800s weren't benefiting from like bright botanical sweetness of highland agave and how did they do it? And yada, yada, yada. And I, I, I thought about Guillermo Erickson because he's such a beautiful guy. Like, I love him, I love what he's doing. Family who doesn't, you know, yeah, it's right on the money. But I thought that he doesn't stand alone. There's the Rosales family who's still making and like in the middle of the enemy with all these huge houses and huge distillers, still making very provincial home spot homemade tequila at Cascawine. And bless his heart, Chava and his father, Don Salvador, were very receptive and said, yeah, let's, let's do it. And so what I began doing was sending them my exhausted mezcal barrels when I, when I do a bottling of my Donna Mado reposado Mezcal, which by the way, I mean, when people try it, they're like, oh, wow, you know.
[01:09:17] Speaker A: I haven't, I haven't tried it. So that's, that's my next thing to go find.
[01:09:20] Speaker B: I mean, we make a really good espaline, regular old repos. I mean, blanco brustico. I call it Mezcal. But the reposado is just something special. And so I started sending those barrels up 20 at a time. And then they age. But again, it's, I shouldn't say aging. They condition the spirit because it's Just a blanco, right?
[01:09:43] Speaker A: You're shooting like, 24, 21 to 28 days or something.
[01:09:47] Speaker B: 20 days.
And it's so. It's so funny how, like, the brain works. I remember our first batch just like, sitting up at, like, 4 in the morning one morning, a good couple hours, two hours before I get up in the morning, saying, oh, shit, it's getting over. Oh. And just biding my time till six, when it's eight in Mexico, to say, go, get that out of the barrel. And he said, yeah, yeah, just in time. Just in time.
[01:10:15] Speaker A: So you get in one of the interviews, I heard you had a word for that. When you're in between your REM sleep and you're waking up where your best thoughts have. What's that word in Spanish?
[01:10:24] Speaker B: That's pretty much all my thoughts these days. And.
[01:10:28] Speaker A: And because I. I do that all the time. That's like, right in the mortgage business. I'm like, I didn't get this done like that.
[01:10:37] Speaker B: I don't know why. In Western culture, that's like a very undervalued time of Wednesday. It's like an hour when if we could wake up and just. I don't know. I. I kind of. I. I don't know crap about that. But it's just a special time. Yeah, we're. We're.
[01:10:54] Speaker A: We're on this. We're probably gonna have to have a drink somewhere in person because we're on the same wavelength in, like, a hundred different places. That's pretty awesome.
[01:11:01] Speaker B: I love it. So. So this. This is really just such a delight for me to be able to offer to the market. This is the.
I. I call this blanco historical, like, historic blanco.
[01:11:13] Speaker A: Now, how come you didn't add that to the label? Is it too difficult to have that added? They wouldn't let you. Yeah, that makes sense.
[01:11:19] Speaker B: CRT said that's not a designation.
You can't call something like blanco. But then I was fighting. Felipe says he got a second blanco. You know, what's going on, cabro? And I said, no, Felipe, you're very much a blanco classico. Like, this is a classic, good blanco, and then a blanco historico. And the other thing is what this allows me to do is show what, how your tastes get more herbaceous vegetable, a little greener, botanically bright. But they. You pick up a little bit from that barrel, right? And then I do hope that people know a little bit of, you know, it does have a little bit of that mezcal kind of legacy note a little bit of that smoke, just a.
[01:12:10] Speaker A: Little like just a hint.
[01:12:13] Speaker B: I'm like, that's right.
[01:12:14] Speaker A: It doesn't even like, it doesn't jump out at all. It's just like. And for me, the mezcal that I have had that I like is the not smoke forward. It is a sweet agave forward and then maybe a background.
[01:12:30] Speaker B: Right.
[01:12:31] Speaker A: But in the mezcal, if it comes off in the front, I, I feel like I miss the agave and the sweetness, but when it's in the background.
[01:12:41] Speaker B: No, you're totally right. And I used to tell people when they, ironically, you know, they say to me, I'm getting a lot of your botanics and your mezcal, I'm getting a lot of your flavor. I'm just missing the kind of smoke. And I would get so frustrated and say, you know, any like group of 12 year olds can make me an overly smoked.
[01:12:58] Speaker A: Right. Anybody can taste smoke or some mescal.
[01:13:01] Speaker B: Like to temper that.
Still respecting artisanal tradition where we're underground roasting for three, four days, you know, it's all, it's all the traditional process. But if I can't make a mezcal that really expresses the botanicals of the agave, it's not fun for me.
[01:13:23] Speaker A: Why even do an assembly if you're just going to make it all taste like smoke? Who cares?
[01:13:28] Speaker B: Wow. Fire. That's a good, that's a great observation.
[01:13:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, Jake, I want to say thanks for taking your time.
[01:13:36] Speaker B: Thank you. I wasn't rolling my eyes. I'm looking at your bottles and your cool. Your collection of what you've got back there.
[01:13:42] Speaker A: You can't even see a piece of it. Like it goes up six shelves.
[01:13:47] Speaker B: I see my daily drinker, Cimarron right there. I drink that.
[01:13:51] Speaker A: Cimarron is my daily go to. That's like, I'll have people ask me, what's an inexpensive budget tequila that tastes fantastic. And I'm like all day long. And it comes in a literal 20.
[01:14:04] Speaker B: Something bucks a liter there.
[01:14:05] Speaker A: It's fantastic. That, that probably is the fastest rotated tequila off my shelves because I can sip it, I can make a great drink with it. Don't, don't judge me for the one in the corner. So I use, it's a familiar. Okay, so I use that. So when somebody comes over and I'll say, here, taste this. And then now here, taste.
[01:14:29] Speaker B: The real teal from Cuervo was their last in product.
They make that at their, their fourth distillery, Lalaja.
[01:14:38] Speaker A: Right.
[01:14:39] Speaker B: And they didn't turn that into a diffuser product until like Four years ago. That was their last non diffuser product. I've got no qualms about la familia as long as you got a bottle from, you know, that's like a year old. Oh, that's like a year.
[01:14:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So, and so I do tequila tastings here at my bar. I'll have people come over and what I do, it's free for them to come, but they have to bring a bottle of their favorite tequila. And my favorite thing that happened recently is one of my buddies, a fireman, he's really learning tequila. A buddy of his is a. Works for a distributor, said this is the best.
No, it's Hudura Ultra Crystallino.
So he brings it and I, I use Alteclino for like my basic.
[01:15:32] Speaker B: Just basic.
[01:15:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great, like, here's a, here's a blanco. And then, then I pull down is.
[01:15:40] Speaker B: A totally authentic real tequila 100.
[01:15:42] Speaker A: And then, then I'll pull down 1414 and I'll pull down the 1579, 1123 and I'll show them because now you get this additional flavor, right. This additional. What it all brings down there. And then I pulled out his Hodoro Ultra and I put it in a glass and he took a drink of it and he spit it back in the glass.
[01:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[01:16:05] Speaker A: That bottle is over there in the corner.
[01:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:06] Speaker A: And I use it to show people the difference.
[01:16:08] Speaker B: I've screwed up. Some people, like I, I was doing something like that and this kind of billionaire boys club and they had all bought a pallet of a really tall, gorgeous bottle, hand painted about this tall. I'll stop there. And that was like their cat smile, you know?
[01:16:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:16:27] Speaker B: And we do what we do. And then by the end they were like, holy shit, who watched that palette?
[01:16:34] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. What am I going to do with that now? We're going to dump it out and make candles and lights out of it.
[01:16:40] Speaker B: Right.
[01:16:41] Speaker A: Well, I want to say thanks to you. I've taken up too much of your time.
[01:16:44] Speaker B: You've been a real pleasure.
[01:16:46] Speaker A: You've been a great educator for me. I know this is the first time we've got to talk, but I, I've, I've listened to like every interview you've ever done and just really ingested what you've done and.
[01:16:57] Speaker B: Better than counting sheep, they're going to sleep.
[01:16:59] Speaker A: Yeah, but I understand, I, I really understand the beauty of what you did. And I, I did a video and you, you commented on it. That, that's the, that is literally the heart of what we did or some comment like that. And I was like, oh, man, I'm so glad what I did in the video came out to what I understood your brand to be. And I appreciate it.
[01:17:20] Speaker B: Give you affirmation. We've got more. We've got more coming. We've got a lot of projects.
[01:17:25] Speaker A: So is there something, an arte Nam new thing that you haven't told anybody that you want to. Want to put out here that no one knows about yet?
[01:17:34] Speaker B: I'm a big believer. And you want to make God laugh selling your plan.
[01:17:37] Speaker A: Oh, no, that's. That's absolutely true.
[01:17:40] Speaker B: Things to really work out like that.
[01:17:43] Speaker A: Well, when you're on this boat, would you get that next thing? Can. I want to. I want to do the video so we can talk about it. I want to sneak in the exclusive.
[01:17:52] Speaker B: Yeah, sure, sure.
[01:17:54] Speaker A: Doug Price will be pounding me in the face if I get that exclusive.
[01:17:59] Speaker B: All right. What a great Price. It's all good. It's a great community.
[01:18:05] Speaker A: Doug is also a great place for. A lot of my education has come from over the last couple years.
[01:18:11] Speaker B: I should say. I'm not Mexican. They have the best say in Mexico.
El pasteles grande. El pasteles.
The cake is big enough for everyone.
[01:18:23] Speaker A: Ah, that's awesome.
[01:18:25] Speaker B: It's like, there's no, like, it's so annoying in American politics, in American culture, about as if it's a zero, zero sum game.
[01:18:33] Speaker A: It's not a zero sum game.
[01:18:35] Speaker B: We got to kick out undocumented workers so they can give job. Those jobs can be made available to Americans. Like, don't get me started. It's not a zero sum game. There's. In the United States of America, we have an abundance. God bless for everybody. Right. And we're never going to run out of these resources unless we misuse them and mismanage. But this kind of like not understanding that there's enough cake for everybody here.
[01:19:07] Speaker A: It's awesome that in Mexico you use cake because in America, a lot of times they say that person has a bigger piece of the pie. And. And that's why I got a little, littler piece of the pie. That's true. And I've always looked at it as, you know, just because it's pie cake.
[01:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:19:23] Speaker A: It's like, yeah, just because, you know, Bezos has a big piece of the pie. He made the pie bigger for more people.
[01:19:30] Speaker B: Yeah, there's that. I guess that is inevitably a truth.
[01:19:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:19:35] Speaker B: Because every time I buy off of Amazon, though, because I should just get my lazy ass in the car and go support A mom and foster store. But.
[01:19:43] Speaker A: This is going to sound horrible, but I have two Amazon warehouses within an hour for me and if I order something, it's on my doorstep in the same day. And it's become so easy. But. I know, but they also employ a huge group of people in my area and they.
[01:19:58] Speaker B: Yeah, but they gotta stop union busting.
[01:20:03] Speaker A: I don't, I don't. I don't always disagree with that either.
Several sides of the fence, so there always is.
[01:20:12] Speaker B: But thank you for this opportunity. What a lot of fun. And I. I've been.
[01:20:16] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm gonna be sporting the hat. I. I don't ever wear it on the videos, but I wear a hat a lot, but. Oh, cool.
[01:20:23] Speaker B: Do you like that?
[01:20:23] Speaker A: Although. Oh, dude. It's also. I busted this out. Like, I. I bend the bill a little. My son was a pro motocross racer, so I'm a flat bill guy, but I bend him a little bit because I'm from the Midwest.
[01:20:34] Speaker B: Oh, with his like, Fox Racing and all that?
[01:20:37] Speaker A: Yeah. My son rode for no Fear Spy, FMS and Lucas Oil. Yeah, we. We know all those guys. And I pull them down over my ears, but when I do it on the video, then my. I'm all shaded and then. So I never wear bill.
[01:20:51] Speaker B: Bend the bill.
[01:20:52] Speaker A: But I wanted to bust it out there, so I had it on the whole time.
[01:20:55] Speaker B: So.
[01:20:56] Speaker A: And that's always where.
[01:20:58] Speaker B: El Patio, because that's my homeboy's restaurant in Berkeley, California.
[01:21:03] Speaker A: I wondered what that was. I hadn't had a chance to Google it yet. I was like, well, I know it's not. It's not one of the mezcals. It's not. It doesn't have anything to do with Tequila.
It's freaking awesome, dude.
[01:21:14] Speaker B: But I was wearing that hat in Germany working on that market a couple months ago, and someone stopped me and said, is that El Patio Bar in Berkeley, California? I said, it is. She said, I love that place.
[01:21:28] Speaker A: And so now I'm going to have to go there.
[01:21:32] Speaker B: It's a great. It's like the best Mezcal and Tequila bar in this small little college town of Berkeley. But the owner, Hami, is my boy. And you know, we never, we never, we never shy away from propping up those around us. Right.
[01:21:48] Speaker A: So fantastic again that rising all ships and that helping other people get what they want is totally ingrained in there, so.
[01:21:58] Speaker B: Well, he helped me find that cool designer to made that. That whole little patch, so.
[01:22:04] Speaker A: Oh, no kidding.
[01:22:04] Speaker B: It's awesome. Bite his. His style without giving him props.
[01:22:08] Speaker A: Well, I dig it. Very much appreciate your time. I appreciate what you do. I love everything about your companies and everything.
[01:22:15] Speaker B: Give a shout out to vine and Table. They do a great job for us.
[01:22:18] Speaker A: Vine and Table is amazing. Yeah.
[01:22:20] Speaker B: So.
[01:22:20] Speaker A: And if you're ever in Indy, you got a place to stay whenever you want to. And God bless.
[01:22:25] Speaker B: God bless.
[01:22:25] Speaker A: Let's do another one on the mezcal after the first of the year. I would. I would love to talk about your mezcals.
[01:22:30] Speaker B: I got a lot of opinions.
[01:22:33] Speaker A: I love it.
[01:22:34] Speaker B: Thanks, brother. Have a good night.
[01:22:35] Speaker A: Thanks, Jocobo. Appreciate you.
[01:22:37] Speaker B: Thank you, brother.
[01:22:38] Speaker A: Thank you, man. That was Jake Lustig. I really got to say thanks for all the information that he put out tonight. That was amazing. You can find all of the Artenom tequilas@del tequila.com. i know you can find their brands really all over the country. You also can find him at Tequila, Arte, Nam on Instagram and find him all over social media. So check them out. And thanks to Jake for hanging out today and definitely give these products a try. There are no better tequilas and no better representation of the noms that they support out there. So thanks for tuning in. Have a great night.
