Tequila Talk

I don’t have a ton of experience with tequila/mezcal/sotol but I have enjoyed the good stuff when it has been offered. A friend of mine goes (or went, pre-Covid) to Central America on a regular basis for business and always brings back interesting stuff. I couldn’t tell you the name of the different spirits, but there have been some Blanco tequilas which have been quite tasty, given that they are basically unaged.

Today is tequila day for me. Today I am tasting all of my open bottles of tequila:

1) Don Julio Anejo

2) Casa Noble Anejo

3) Don Julio 1942; this is a 2.5 years aged lightly-wooded anejo tequila

4) Exotico Reposado, a Luxco Product, now owned by MGPI. Yes, yes, yes! After waiting three years of open bottle air time this underperforming bottle has finally become a fully enjoyable sipper. I was very unhappy for those first three years because my bottle tasted nowhere near as good as the sample I had tasted at the store which led me to buy the bottle.

5) Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia Extra-Anejo. C'est la creme de la creme

6) El Tesoro de Don Felipe Anejo

7) Tanteo Jalapeno Infused Blanco. This usually should be the last tequila tasted in the same way that Ardbeg Corryvreckan usually should be the last malt tasted. Buying this bottle of Tanteo Jalapeno Infused Tequila was a great move. With it I got: 1) a conversation piece, 2) a remarkably interesting sipper, and 3) a heavy-weight cocktail champion. Eyeballs pop out of sockets when people taste this. It was drinking a cocktail made with this at a resort on vacation which sold this to me

Tequila and Irish whiskey have for me the similarity in both being quietly enjoyable easy drinkers. I tend to drink through bottles of tequila and Irish whiskey without noticing that I am consuming them, and then being surprised that my stocks of each of these tend to always be running low

In my first several years of tequila experience I tended, I think, like most whisky drinkers, to be heavily partial to the longer wood-aged categories of tequila, viz. the anejos and the extra-anejos. I've grown over time to increase my enjoyment and appreciation of the agave flavours, per se, as do the Mexicans. Now I love a good Blanco very much, though I fully understand that the mood to want the unaged tequila is a different mood than the mood to look forward to a wood-influenced tequila

Salud!

I'm much in a similar place as @OdysseusUnbound, minus the central American travelling mate that is. What I've had I've really enjoyed but I'm still yet to try any anejos.

Out of Blanco and Reposado I'd say the little bit of cask influence makes for a more rounded experience and is more quaffable. I do quite like the vegetal aspect of the blanco but feel it's a taste I need to get more acquainted with. I've also been impressed with the Mezcals I've had.

Corralejo and Fortaleza Repasados are on my wish list as is a good anejo like the Jose Cuervo Reserve De La Familia.

My main gripe though is that bottling strengths can often be 38% which is very off-putting as a spirit sipper, especially for premium bottles.

@Victor reading your affinity for these savoury/vegetal flavours it's no wonder that Rum Agricole is in your top 5 as well.

I avoided Tequila at first in my renewed spirits journey because of the abuses of youth (There was a brand called Tequila Bang Bang...enough said). I once again have my brother to thank for bringing me into the fold, through him I was able to try brands like Don Julio, Cuervo 1800, Corralejo. I also had friends who would regularly travel to Mexico and so I was then able to try local and less known brands. I've slowly been learning more about Mezcal and Sotols over the last couple of years too, It's as complex of an industry as any other spirit, also just as colonized as rum.

I love trying barrel rested or aged versions, although I do find that they sometimes lose a little something in the process.

@RianC the minimum abv of 38% is a total killer, so his 40%abv in many ways, there's a growing number of higher proof Tequila offerings but they are still few and far between. Mezcal fares better in that regard as many products are offered at higher proofs and the texture is much better for it.

@RianC even more interesting than the spirits my buddy brings back are the stories of his travels through some interesting parts of Honduras and Guatemala (he’s in the coffee business btw). But that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

@OdysseusUnbound your post reminds me of a comment by a writer about what travel in Afghanistan was like in the 1970s: "The odds are 100% that you will be robbed, and 50% that the body will never be found."

(Not that travel in Afghanistan would be a lot of fun in 2021 either.)

@cricklewood thanks for joining in. I never had any experiences to speak of with tequila in my teens or twenties, though I was put off by the bottle of Cuervo Gold, a low quality mixto (= 49% grain neutral spirits) of course, that was the first bottle of tequila that my wife and I ever owned, in my 30s. So until about 12 years ago I considered that I would never like any tequilas, and that tequila was for me "the final frontier" of spirits appreciation. When I actually got the experience of 10 or 20 reputable tequilas it didn't take long for me to understand that I had hitherto merely been ignorant by virtue of inexperience. I then considered Pisco to be the final frontier, because I had never tasted a pisco which I liked. Even that is no longer true for me in the last 4 years.

Apparently 38% ABV is a/the common bottling and drinking strength in Mexico. No tequila is sold in the USA under 40% ABV fortunately, though it is still true that higher ABV tequilas remain as of February 2021 quite rare worldwide. This can and probably will change in the near future, at least in the USA.

@Victor I guess Lambertus is truly the final frontier, in a class of its own.

@OdysseusUnbound I recall my travels in Nicaragua and Costa Rica very fondly. I experienced rum for the first time (I don't think I had ever had it other than in cooking before), Flor de Caña, and had some of the best coffee I have ever tasted there.

@Victor, another excellent topic for discussion! Congratulations on keeping the streak of alliterative titles intact for alternative spirits forums.

Tequila Talk

Brandy Banter

Rum Ruminations

@paddockjudge Gin gossip does not really align well so how about Gabbing about Gin or Gin Gabfest?

Mezcal Musings

Cognac Conversations

have to think about vodka (vitriol is the first that comes to mind as not a fan unless it is aged in oak-barrels (a find at the Whiskey Exchange in London that I will never forget)

@paddockjudge yes, the alliteration was intentional.

@JayRain I like:

Mezcal Muddling

Cognac Cognizance

Vodka Vantage

Gin Groupies

@JayRain, how about Gin Gibberish? lol

@paddockjudge Sake Savvy? Bourbon Babble? Rye Ranting?

Whisky Whining...or Wine Whisking?

For Sake's sake.

@BlueNote, hahaha those are clever.

@JayRain, Cognac Conversations... c’est bon!

Here’s a few more:

Grapevine Gospel, Grain Gospel

Barrel Char Chatter

Spirit Speak(ing)

(Vox) Eau de Vie Voice

Sour Mash Summit

New Make News

Dramming Drabble

Ex-bourbon Expositor

Half-pint Heralder

Sulphur Sully

Peat Bog Parables

Funky Finishes

@Victor, hahaha, your Gin Groupies, a bunch of Grey-hairs attending a Martini Musings Speed-tasting session.

@Victor I don’t own a lot of tequila but, by chance, I do have unopened bottles of the first 3 on your list.

I don’t know if it’s been mentioned elsewhere but Tequila Matchmaker is an excellent resource I’ve been exploring. They even have a free app. I just learned that some tequilas contain additives. Not that it’s necessarily the end of the world, it’s just something I didn’t know.

@OdysseusUnbound Just as most scotch is blended, I believe most tequilas have additives. Having followed @tequilamatchmaker for a few years, I learned additive free tequila is akin to scotch without e150A or Canadian whisky without the 1/11.

Mezcal Martini... when it comes to agave, what do people prefer, tequila or mezcal? Recipe is here: willamettetransplant.com/mexican-tequila-martini/#mezcal

@YakLord I like the clean quality of tequila.

That said, of the 2 bottles of mezcal I own I spent $ 160 on one of them, which is almost twice as much as I have ever spent on any bottle of tequila. I will reiterate a point I heard made at a seminar on mezcal at The Tales of the Cocktail. While smokey Scotch lovers like the smokiness of mezcal, the producers of mezcal, the Mezcaleros, consider all but a trace of smoke in their mezcal to be a defect. For mezcal as for tequila, the Mexicans want to taste the agave.

@OdysseusUnbound, when it comes to tequila, gold is merely fools’ gold.

A Raven's Nest, which is a fusion of a mezcal margarita and a mezcal based New York Sour, using Raven Conspiracy Dark Red Blend for the wine float...it was one of the cocktails I created last year as The Haunted Walk's Halloween Mixologist, but which didn't get published because we ran out of time. I'll be reprising that role again this year, and have so many interesting things planned...

I don't have much experience in tequila, but someone said Herradura Reposado is a good one. Is that a "good" tequila or is that just a popular one like jose cuervo, etc?

@casualtorture taste is individual. The only way to find out if you like it is to taste it.

Just go out and get yourself tastes of 20 or 30 tequilas and find out what you like. There are a lot of good ones. Avoid all mixtos, of course. Only "100% de agave" tequilas.

Herradura is Brown Forman's "senior" brand of tequila. They also make El Jimador, which costs about half as much and is tremendously popular both inside and outside of Mexico.

Taste them all, friend!

@Victor Have you any experience with Aguamiel? I tried that one (the Blanco) over the summer and enjoyed it tremendously, both neat and in Margaritas.

@OdysseusUnbound I don't think that I have tasted Aguamiel. .

I am having some Fortaleza Blanco, 46% ABV right now. This was a sample given me by one of my basketball playing buddies. Currently the only 750 bottle of blanco I have in the house is Tanteo Jalapeno Infused Blanco. The mood for that one does not arrive just every day.

This Fortaleza Blanco is nice, but I think that it will relax after long air time and go from "pretty good" to "very good".

@Victor I am a novice when it comes to tequila but I am trying to learn. I have a bottle of the Fortaleza Reposado which, with my extremely limited knowledge, think is pretty good. Granted, I am only basing this on a few tequilas I have tried but I find this to have a flavor that does not hide the agave with an over the top sweetness like Clase Azul.

@cricklewood Yep! The Fortaleza Reposado is 40 ABV, so a bit better than 38% but not much. I don’t have enough experience with tequila to know how the high ABV would affect flavor but I would assume similar to Whisky?

@TracerBullet, you are the one and only authority in the entire universe about what you like. Have at it!