Most Tequila Fans Get This WRONG! Tahona vs Roller Mill Explained

[00:00:00] When tequila fans talk about production methods. Everybody wants to talk about the tohona. The giant volcanic stone. The traditional process. Old school craftsmanship. But here's reality. Most tequilas today never touch a tohona. Instead, it's made using what's called a roller mill. So what is a roller mill? Who invented it? Why do so many distilleries use one? And does it actually make worse tequila? And let's find out while drinking. A great tequila made with a roller mill is Siempre. And. And this is made at nom 1414 by Sergio Cruz. It's a great tequila. So let's talk about how tequila is made using a roller mill. After agave is harvested and cooked. The sugars need to be extracted from those fibers. Traditionally, it was done with the tohono. But a roller mill takes a completely different approach. Imagine a series of massive steel rollers. The cooked agave is fed into the machine. And those rollers crush and squeeze the fibers. As the agave passes through each multiple set of rollers. More and more juice is extracted. They spray water over the top of it. To help extract those juices down into a pit below. And that sugary liquid is called musto. It is collected and then sent into fermentation. The remaining fibers, when they come out of the last roller mill. Are incredibly dry. And if you taste them, they're not sweet at all. So they got most of the sugars out of those fibers. They're usually discarded. And sometimes used again in the fermentation process. It is an incredibly effective way to extract sugars. Here's something most people don't realize. The roller mill wasn't invented for tequila. The origins go back to Europe during the Industrial revolution. By late 1700 to early 1800s. Roller mills were replacing the traditional stone mills in flour production. Because they could process more grain faster and consistently. The technology later spread into the sugar cane production world. Where roller mills became a standard way to extract juice from cane. Eventually, tequila producers adopted the same concept for agave. By the mid-1900s, roller mills were starting to appear throughout the tequila industry. And as demand for tequila grew in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Roller mills became increasingly common. Today, they're the most widely used extraction method in all of tequila production. A lot of people think the tohona automatically equals better tequila than the roller mill. But that really isn't that simple. Some of the best tequilas in the world are made with the roller mill. Others, they use tojones. And some use a combination of both. The truth is, the roller mill doesn't automatically make it an inferior tequila. What matters is that entire process working together. How old were the agaves? Were they harvested at the right time? How were they cooked? Did they use a yeast? Or was it all open air? Was the fermentation temperature controlled? How was it distilled? And where's the water source? Those decisions often have a bigger impact on the tequila other than the Tahona versus rollermill. In fact, if you poured two tequilas blind in front of you, do you think you could tell the one that was crushed with the tahona versus one that was crushed with the roller mill? The roller mill may not be as romantic as that giant stone wheel, and it may not look as good on social media, but it has become an important modern tool in tequila production. And whether you're asking if a roller mill is good or bad, maybe the question should be, how's the distillery using it? I believe that in tequila, it's rarely one piece of equipment that determines quality. Unless we're talking about a diffuser or a column seal. Those always mean to me an inferior tequila. But a roller mill used the right way can produce a fantastic tequila, just like this one right here. Siempre. Alex, Monica, Rick, Sergio, thanks for making a fantastic tequila, and thanks for doing it the way you do it. If you like learning about tequila and learning information about how it's made and reviews on which tequilas I think you should drink, hit that like the subscribe button. Cheers. Have a fantastic day.