Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, guys, let's pretend you're brand new to tequila. Let's go back to some of those questions people ask me all the time. Hey, what should I be drinking? How should I be drinking tequila? What is the best tequila to drink? Those are questions I get every day. So let's talk about tequila. Let's talk about siempre. I'm going to use them as an example. With Siempre, you have a lot of options in tequila, but let's stick to the basic three. A blanco, a repo, and an anejo. So a blanco. A blanco is the tequila that's right off the still. And in a lot of cases, they've rested it in stainless steel for a little while, sometimes even rested in a barrel less than 60 days to make it be a blancos. This, to me, is where I live. This is the agave forwardness. This is where you get the real flavor of tequila. But a lot of people think this is just for mixing. It is great for mixing. There's a lot of great tequila cocktails that you can make with a blanco. But for me, I'm going to drink blanco, just neat, at room temperature. I'm not one that's going to add ice to it because you, even though you chill it down, it adds water. It dilutes the flavor a little bit and takes away some of those aromas and, and the taste of tequila. Your next option is reposado, right? Reposado means it's been aged in a barrel, usually American white oak, usually old bourbon barrels. But there's a lot of options out there, there aging tequilas and a lot of different things. So a blanco is aged up to 60 days. Most of them are not aged at all. A reposado is going to be aged somewhere between that 60 days and one full year year. And most of them somewhere fall in that six months, eight months. Each company does it a little differently, and that's going to give you a little bit of that color from the barrel. It's going to take some of those barrel notes, some of those barrel flavors, and it's going to bring that into the taste of the tequila. So it's going to round out the flavor a little bit. If you feel like a blanco is harsh is a word that I hear a lot. The, the reposado is going to round that out for you a little bit, make it a little bit easier, easier for you to potentially drink. So then your next step is anejo. And anejo is that same blanco tequila that has now been Aged somewhere between one year and three years again in American white oak bourbon whiskey. Some wine barrels, they use all kinds of different barrels for your, your anejos. So if you are a bourbon drinker and you're trying to figure out how can I move into drinking tequila, maybe having less hangover than what you have when you drink bourbon, you might want to start with an anejo. That's anejo is going to give you a lot of that barrel nuance, a lot of that whiskey nuance that comes from those barrels. Again, it's going to be easy for you to drink because it's, it's been aged for that long. Rested. Some of the harshness of the tequila, maybe it's calmed down a little bit or some people like to use word smooth. One of the things I notice about tequila is good tequila will burn in your mouth, but good tequila doesn't burn going down. The burn is in the front, not in the back. When you start sipping through different tequilas, one, you're going to figure out which one that you like the best. And that's going to allow you to really decide. When you're at a bar or a restaurant and you're wanting a cocktail, it'll help you tell the bartender, can you make that with an anejo or make that with the reposado? Or just give me a blanco neat. That's how I do it when I'm in the source. A great cocktail to make with an anejo is make an anejo old fashioned, something that you would make with your bourbon or your whiskey and have that same nuanced flavor that you're getting from that barrel with that agave forwardness and that agave flavor. Do look for tequilas that are traditionally made and I like to look for tequilas that don't have a lot of additives in them. Gly oak extract. Nothing that's kind of changed from that traditionalness. I like to have the tequila have that agave forward flavor through the repo and the anejo. Also, a lot of people ask me, do I keep it in the refrigerator? No. When it's cooler, it takes away some of those flavors. I don't like to add ice and I do like to drink it out of a glass like this where I can actually get the aromas from the tequila to know what I'm smelling and what I'm about to taste. And then, you know, to sip out of a glass like that is my favorite too. There's a lot of tequila brands that are great. Siempre is just one that I grabbed off the shelf real quick to talk about. They're traditionally made nom 14 14. Knowing how your tequila is made to me is very important. It helps me choose the brands that I'm going to drink and what I'm going to enjoy. And keep in mind that good tequila doesn't always come in a beautiful bottle, and good tequila is not always expensive. These are tequilas that are very affordable in the forty to seventy dollar range. It's, it's easy to find. Siempre's got a really great distribution, so it's one to check out. If you have a question about drinking tequila or a comment, please let me know. Thanks for tuning in. Have a great day.
