Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
You ready? H. Ready. Hey, guys. Brad, Nick. I'm tasting tequila with Brad. It's been about a month since my lovely wife Tony and I brought you the 2023 Fora winter blend. And tonight we're going to bring you the. The awesome 2024 for winter blend. I was happy enough to find it at retail at Sobro spirits in Broad Ripple, Indiana. I also picked up a bottle of Repo, a bottle of a Blanco. Unfortunately, all of them for sale at retail. Pricing, no markups. And even though when I checked out of the store, the capital one message went to Tony. What did it say?
[00:00:46] Speaker B: It was like $500 one. Really?
[00:00:48] Speaker A: She put, really? And I, I just said, yes, I'll call you in a little bit because I picked up some great Siempra as well as a Ocho Puntas. High proof at 60 some dollars. Like, you can't, Honey, you know I can't walk away from these tight prices and these amazing bottles. Right, right, right. But you're okay with that, right?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: I'm okay with that.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: All right.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: So silly.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: It's not silly. These things are amazing. So let's first pour some winter blend. And so many people buy these winter blend bottles and they, they just put them on a shelf and they don't drink it. How crazy is that?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: That's very crazy because I'd be like, you spent what to, yeah, to leave.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: It sit on a shelf. How stupid. You know, hey, not stupid. If you want to keep them on a shelf, more power to you. And then let's, let's pour a little lot 26R repo in each of our agave social club glasses. And if you're not a member of the agave social club and you've never done a sip session with agave social club and got the amazing opportunity to sip tequila with a brand owner and Doug Price, you're just missing out. And do I, do I talk about.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Those all the time?
[00:01:59] Speaker A: And am I fired up about them?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: He's so fired up. Can't wait till the next session is why.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Exactly. And it was $175. Is that the best $175 I've spent in tequila ever for always or a.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Month or a year or what?
[00:02:12] Speaker A: It's $175 for one time.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: One time. One time. V. Yeah.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Is that the best I've ever spent? Doug Price has this amazing program. You get. I, I, I'm wearing a Fortaleza shirt tonight because we're drinking Fortaleza, but you get, like, a great setup of some Agave Social Club glasses, an Agave Social club shirt, and you get opened up to this amazing catalog of information of the Agave Social Club, the agave Social club podcast, and then these sip sessions that happen once a month, they're just amazing. You're going to have to sit in on one with me.
I mean, I know how much you love this. You're so excited about it, right?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: No, no, she's not. But you do.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: You.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: You do.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Like, I'm excited for you.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Yeah, she loves me. But you do like tequila a little more and more all the time, right?
[00:03:00] Speaker B: A little more and more, yeah.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: And tonight we were just sipping, right? We were watching the lionist and Siempre. Siempre, yeah. Which one did you have? The repo or the blanco? It was good because. It's good because why?
Sergio Cruz makes it. Oh, right. Alex and Monica are the owners of this great company. We do. We get to see. We get to see Sergio here in just, like, four weeks. That's pretty exciting.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Exciting.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: And. And he doesn't speak English, and we don't speak Spanish, so that's how we go.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: I'm starting Spanish lessons on the 15th.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Well, you got a lot to learn in 15 days, don't you?
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Do you think you can do it?
[00:03:35] Speaker B: Hola, mi amigo.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: And then that's it. And then we're like, alex, come help us. Yeah, well, we're really excited about it. No? Uno mas tequila.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: That's the only one word.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Oh, just more tequila, right, mi amigo?
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: My friends.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Okay, so first, let's have the normal repo. I can't believe how much I. I spilled right here. I want to lick it off the bar, but it would be not good on camera. I'll do it. When we hang up, I will lick that bar clean. So this is the regular repo. This is lot 126, R Fortaleza Reposado.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Did you just buy this yesterday?
[00:04:12] Speaker A: No, this one I've had on the shelf. I have another repo up there. This lot gone. I don't. I don't buy them to put them on the shelf. I buy them to drink them. And then I have empty bottles that hang on the wall once they're gone, because this was meant to be drank, not collected. But if you want to collect it, that's. That's up to you.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Yep. That's good for you. I do have a cabo uno up there. It's collected. Bottle 3500.
I think they're $3,500. So we'll drink it on a special occasion.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Maybe we put our ashes in that bottle.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Maybe.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: That'd be great. If you don't know what you're talking. What we're talking about. We said that our ashes were going to go in a tequila bottle when we're all done, and then the kids will have to keep it.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: So let's give this one a try. Cheers. Little fortaleza reposado. Let's see. Cheers, folks.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: That's Portuguese reposado.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah, that's just the normal repo. How good is that?
You get some good flavors out of that one. That's kind of like. Remember drinking this in the cave at Fort de Lisa?
[00:05:17] Speaker B: I've drinks.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Maybe not this one, but the cave was pretty cool, wasn't it?
And you said you've seen some actual bass.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Seen one when we were walking in it.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Seen me and freaked out and left. Maybe I'm glad it didn't bite me. Do you think we'll go back in the cave when we go down in. In February?
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Well, I hope so, because you wanted to do the.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: We got to do the rest of the tour, right? We got rained out.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah. But it was pretty cool tour, wasn't it?
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: What was your favorite part of the Fort Delisa tour?
[00:05:48] Speaker B: I don't know. I. I think I liked when. I think I. I liked watching the guys scoop the stuff.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Oh. At the Tahuna.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: At working at the Tahuna. I thought that was fascinating.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: It's really cool, wasn't it?
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: And then the people we met and.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Then seeing how big those pinas were.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Oh, the pinas were huge. Yeah. They were cut in half, and they still were gigantic.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: But then the. The Golden Gate Bridge and the gazebo out on the lake is so beautiful. The whole. The whole facility. If you get the chance to go to Tequila, go to fortunately. Yeah. It's really. It's a magical place. I mean, no, you know, there's a lot of haters out there. Like, oh, fortunately is not as good as what they say it is. Those are people that can't buy it. Oh, I think. And you got haters and everything, right?
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Somebody. There's always somebody that wants to hate something.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So haters be hating if you go there. The place is amazing. When they. As soon as they open those red gates and you get to walk through that thing, it was like Disney World. It was so cool. To me, it was. There was no children. It was tequila and agave plants everywhere.
It was pretty, very Welcoming. So do you like this? Like, caramelly got a cooked agave. Tell me what you think about it. Okay. This is where we ruined Fortaleza and Tony's reviews.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Dang it. Because the only thing I smell is the sticky part of a bandaid.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: You get the sticky part of the band aid of Fortaleza. Are you serious?
I'm gonna. I'm gonna edit that out.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Sorry.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: You don't get, like the cooked agave smell of standing at the oven. Now, we didn't get the oven smell at Fortaleza because they weren't cooking, but we did at Casca Wien, remember?
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: That smells so good.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Yeah. You don't get that. Like, that's all I smell is the cooked agave and a little bit of caramel. For some reason, I smell a little bit of caramel.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Maybe because I drink other tonight.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Maybe it's because we drank some other tequila tonight already. Maybe your senses have been numb.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Oh, no. I don't know.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: No. Yeah, let's finish that one because now we're going to dive into what is lot with. Let's see, what's that say? LWB R R06. Bottle number 7075. That what it says?
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: So this. The. The winter blends, I think are so amazing. They taste so different. And yesterday I was sitting here with my buddy Andy, and he brought the Fort Delasa repo and blanco that he bought. And we taste different than that one. A little bit. Yeah. It was a newer lot, like lot 129 or lot 130. We couldn't. We couldn't do it in Kilo matchmaker because the lots weren't there yet. Oh, and this isn't in tequila matchmaker yet either. So Grovers need to step it up and get it caught up. But we were drinking a couple of different repos, mine and his, and then two different blancos, mine and his, and those tasted different. And then we pulled this out and we sipped it in between.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Oh, you guys had some. Yeah, Yeah, I see that.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: And what was amazing was in the beginning, this was really, to us, really hot and peppery.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: And then it became less hot and peppery and more buttery and more fulfilling. You put that over here.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: That was kind of hot.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: You can't. You gotta finish that.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: This was kind of hot. It's kind of hot.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is going to be different. Actually. You put that in the middle because I want you to taste against the two. Because what happened is this came out hot. This became More subdued. And then this became less hot and more subdued, and this became hotter as we sipped through them. So the more they opened up, the more they changed, which was pretty amazing. The.
So this winter blend is. Let's see. Let's catch everybody up. This one is aged in a French oak cast still. So this has come out as at a higher proof. It was put into a wet residue of original content, content of a Spanish cream sherry barrel and then blended with a regular American oak French reposado barrel.
There were three of them. A three month and a ten. Oh, sorry. Both three month and ten month aged and then blended together. And they don't say the percentage of the blend. We had a lot of friends that social media friends that were here and got the opportunity to taste different blends that they made by hand. And this is the one that they came up with. And this is what they ended up blending. Phenomenal tequila. So wet sherry casts and regular French oak. And this is 2024 4th Elisa Winter Blend. So let's give it a shot.
What do you smell?
I smell good cooked agave and a little bit of caramel and a little bit of vanilla.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: I must stop smelling it, right?
[00:10:55] Speaker A: You got no smellers. This girl can smell when the dog is wet for four blocks away. And tonight she can't smell anything.
Nothing. I get a lot of mineral. I have mineral, a lot of minerality, a little bit of wet earth. But it's. It's a lot of the fortaleza DNA of the smell of fortaleza. Like you can't get away from what their tequila smells like to me.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Right? Yeah.
Oh, that smells sweeter than this for sure.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Really? See, so that. That. What was funny is when we did the tasting yesterday, the winter blend was sweeter than the regular repo, but then the regular repo started out as much or this one started as much spicier, but that ended up being spicier.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: That's what you said.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: So give it a shot. What do you think?
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Clear the nose.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's hotter, isn't it?
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: But do you get a dry, like a dry in your mouth like you do from a wine?
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: So I don't know if that's from the sherry barrel, but much more dryness in the mouth. And the finish is long, though. It stays like it lingers forever. Now taste this and tell me what happens to the taste of that.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Well, that cleared the nose too, now.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Yeah. But doesn't this become more subdued to. Than what this is subdued, like a little easier on the Palate, little more buttery, a little less bite.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Probably because I didn't try to hold it.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Try it again. See what you think. Cuz yesterday, that's one of the things we noticed that the. The regular repo had like its normal bite and then we did this, it was bitier, and then we went back to that and it was less of a bite. More buttery.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Yeah, more buttery. Oh, yeah, buttery.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: So now go back to that and see if the buttery consistency like stays stronger on that side.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, a lot.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: It's almost like my friends that have a podcast called Whiskey Tequila Fridays and they do what's called the quick sip. And one of them is a bourbon scotch guy and Drew is a tequila guy. So they'll sip a bourbon and then a tequila, then a tequila, then a bourbon and they don't let the taste go away. So they taste within the finish and they call it the quick sips. And they talk about how each one changes the flavor of each one. So this is kind of like a quick sip inside of the same tequila, yet this one changed the flavor of that one and that one changed the flavor of this one.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like, bring it on.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's crazy. So out of. Do you remember the. The 2023?
[00:13:49] Speaker B: No.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Should I pull it down and sample it out?
[00:13:52] Speaker B: No, no, no, no.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: So to me, the 2024 does have a taste that I like better. 2023 to me was. It was good, don't get me wrong. But there was. There's a sharpness in this one. A little more agave. The finish is a little different. To me, I actually like 24 better. And when you lay it against 20 regular repo, this to me is like outstanding. What do you think?
[00:14:17] Speaker B: I wouldn't say outstanding to me, but.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Which do you like better?
Okay, so. So let's make Alex Lacroix really happy. Which one do you like better?
[00:14:28] Speaker B: I mean, from what I drank earlier, I like that.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Yeah, this is a great, absolutely great.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: Tequila, but I didn't drink it up to comparing it to this.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Do you want me to pour you a glass to compare?
[00:14:41] Speaker B: No.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Are you sure?
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: I mean, I'm meeting with Alex on Monday. He's probably going to be really happy if he to hear this.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: I love these.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: So, yeah, Sergio Cruz has done a great job making unbelievable, fantastic tequila. Not that Fort Delisa isn't an unbelievable Tequila to find and so hard.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: That's one of your favorites.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: It is one of my favorites and. And one of my everyday drinkers. Is siempre the blanco. Hard to say the repo, you know, this is 40 tequila. This is, you know, $60 tequila. So it's really priced. Well, I got that for retail, which was like 170 for winter blend. I know people, crazy people are selling them for 6 and 7, $800. And.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: And that might be why people don't open theirs. They think they can resell it, you.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Know, but if you buy it for 800 bucks and you should try it.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Because you're not going to probably sell it for more.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Why have it on the shelf and not. Not enjoy it? This tequila is meant to be enjoyed, and we enjoy tequila. I enjoy tequila a lot more than you do.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: And you put up with my. My crazy videos. Hey, but you've come around. You're, like, sipping tequila all the time now.
And you sipped it when we were in Fortaleza and Arete and Cascaween and in August.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: And going back in February, where's. Where's some of the places we're going in February? Do you know the names of the places we're going?
[00:16:04] Speaker B: No. Last floor. Are we doing.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: No, we're not. We're going to 1414, which is where Los Lores may.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: We're going to spend time with Sergio Tequila. We're going to spend some time with Cristiano Martinez, which is Atomasio 1599, and get to spend some time there at Villar, and go see where the donations to the Juina Buenta foundation have gone to help the town of San Pedro.
I can't say the rest of the name, but bringing water.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: We'll learn that we'll be able to say.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: You'll be able to say it when you come home.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Especially since I'm taking. Taking Spanish lessons.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Exactly. So we can't wait to go see that. We're gonna do a day at Fortaleza. A day at 1414 with Sergio Cruz. I messaged him. I said, how much time do I need to set aside for the tour? And his answer was, all day, my friend. All day.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Oh, nice.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So we. You're gonna have to put up with me talking to Sergio, who doesn't speak English, and I don't speak Spanish all day.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: I can translate.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: You can? Yeah. He would say, hey, that's the library.
And then hopefully we get to go to Ocho La Sabikas, La Altania, and El Padino and go see the great tequila made at G4.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: So next month we will be talking about that.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Maybe we can do one of these from there with Sergio. Web Sergio. Like, right here?
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: That'd be fantastic. So thanks for watching these crazy videos. I appreciate it.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: So silly.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it is silly. But I, you know, I love it, don't I? I talk about it all the time.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Yep. Loves his tequila.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: So cheers to all you awesome tequila people and all you awesome tequila brands, and thank you for all you awesome tequila makers. Cheers.
