Torrente Tequila High Proof Blanco Review – Worth the Hype?

[00:00:00] Tarenta Tequila has been showing up all over my social media feed lately and people are saying some pretty big things about this brand. So I was in the town of Tequila recently staying at the Jose Cuervo Hotel. I stopped into Armeca Number two, which is a really cool tequila shop in the town of Tequila, looking for something I hadn't tried before. I saw this bottle of Torrent High Truth Blanco sitting on the shelf and I figured it was time to find out what everybody's been talking about. What really caught my attention wasn't just the hype around the tequila, it's the story about how they're growing agave. Trente is produced at NOM 1588 Tequilas El Mexicano in Villa Corona Jalisco. It's in the highlands region and the centerpiece of this brand is regenerative agriculture. Trente says its agave farming has been certified regenerative by regenefied with the idea that just instead of simply sustaining the land, you're actually trying to improve the health of the soil and the ecosystem over time. That means things like cover crops, biological fertilizers, increasing biodiversity and putting the major focus on the long term health of the land. And I love this idea. We spend so much time talking about ovens, tonas, fermentation and stills. Everything we're drinking ultimately starts right here in the soil with the agave before we dig deeper into the bottle. If you're someone who wants to learn more about tequila and people making it and knowing the production methods and distilleries and stories behind it, check out the Tequila Report. That's exactly what it was created for. To give tequila drinkers another resource to learn more about what's actually in their glass. Check it out at the tequila report.com subscribe now back to Torrente. They're using 100% Blue Weber Agave and they also do something interesting during the Hema, they trim the agave extremely close, reportedly to leave only less than an inch of the pinkas on the pina. The difference there is to remove more of the bitter pinka leaves that stay on the P. This is going to give you a cleaner flavor with less bitterness. Now here's something else I want to point out because I think it's important. Tarente uses low pressure autoclaves. If you've watched me before, you know I'm a brick oven guy. But I also say this many times, not every autoclave is the same. Using an autoclave doesn't automatically make your tequila bad. Tarante cooks these agaves slowly for on 18 to 24 hours. After cooking, goes through a roller mill using deep well water for extraction. And they reportedly run cooked agave through a five pass mill process, gradually washing all of the sugars with the fibers. Then we get to the part of the process that really interests me the most. That's fermentation. Tarante uses open air stainless steel fermentation tanks, allowing the fermentation to last somewhere around 120 to 180 hours. That's five to seven and a half days. That's a long fermentation. They're allowing naturally occurring yeast and the environment around the distillery to play the role, which potentially can build some interesting fruit, floral, herbal and funky characteristics. After fermentation, it is double distilled in stainless steel pot stills with copper elements, careful cuts designed to concentrate the heart of the distillation. So when you put all that together, I understand why this brand has got people's attention. This bottle, it's the high proof that's going to give us a pretty direct look at all of these decisions that they made to see how it tastes. Okay, so let's get this in the glass. I have drank this quite a bit when we were at the distillery because I needed a good tequila to drink. Now it has opened up and rested a little bit since we were in the town of Tequila, drinking this at Jose Cuervo's hotel. So let's hit this one on the nose. Okay. I do get some minerality, some coat agave. It's green, it's earthy and it's green. Almost pick up, almost like, I want to say juniper, but maybe it's more of a really wet grass with a little bit of a pine note to it or maybe something floral there as well. And it does have a little teeny bit of a funky character. Okay, let's see how it tastes. [00:03:34] Okay. I get the coke agave, but I also get this minty pine type note. Very earthy, very green. I guess the green is the biggest part of this. That minty pine type note with Coco, there's a little bit of citrus, I want to say maybe like a lemon grass because it's citrusy, but it's still very grassy and there's some pepper there. The finish is nice. It's sweet, it's very balanced. It gets you on both sides. I like this one. This. I can see why everybody's talking about it. The. The proof is probably better for this one, for me because I am getting so many more of those flavors. The green note that I'M getting just kind of came to me. If you've ever had a Salmiana agave mezcal, it has this really green note to it, very herbal. That's why I'm picking up in this and I get a little bit more of it in the finish, so. So I've seen a lot of people talk about it. Apparently it's got a lot of people's attention and I know why. I'm glad I stepped into that little tequila shop and picked it up. This is one that I'm going to sip on. Half the bottle's gone. I'm probably going to have to get some more and give it a try. Maybe we can have them on the show and do an interview about how they're doing this. If you've had a bottle of this tequila, I'd love to hear about it. Put it in the comments and tell me what you think of Terente. Thanks for watching. Have a great day.