I want to tell you all a story that happened about 5 years ago now. I generally have not spoken about this because I do not want anyone misjudging me for telling the story, or claim that I am trying to trade on an important and famous family/distillery, and the reasons why I want to speak about it. Tequila and its history, production, heritage, culture and traditional are all incredibly important to me.
It is important for me personally, for my huge Mexican family, and for our brand identity. I am not just the next white guy trying to make tequila, rip off the local industry/culture and sell the brand while leaving everyone in Mexico out of it. (This act has been carried out dozens of times before and is happening right now. I am also conscious of that history, and the path brands take during their growth) I have integrity, I think about these elements, and I consider my impact on tequila and Mexico every single day. I honor and cherish it, and I want to show and teach the world the breadth and importance of what Tequila can and should be. I want to make a permanent mark.
Roughly 4 years ago my cousin Valerie was looking for a distillery to produce Cambio. This was an incredibly difficult task as our process is 3 times longer than normal for a distillery to produce. We are very disruptive to any busy location. Val spoke with Felipe at G4 and explained what our nutso ideas were and why we wanted to make tequila differently. Shockingly (to me, I thought we had no chance to secure his help); he opened his doors to us with open arms and a strong smile—plus a healthy dose of skepticism, positive it was for sure.
We were given an unused corner of the distillery with instructions to the distillery manager to give us whatever help and aid we needed. Honestly even at this point it’s unheard of for someone of his generational caliber and family history to be so forthcoming and helpful. In this unused corner of the distillery sat two Mexican pine wood in fermentation tanks that had certainly not been used in years. The team at the distillery helped us prepare the tanks and begin the process of repairing them and getting them ready for production. Adding water a little bit at a time and patching the seams in order to bring the tanks back to life the team worked for weeks on that task alone.
In the preceding months, I had purchased a glycol chiller in the United States and had it shipped down to Mexico. This would be used to control the temperature of the fermentation to make sure we had a good result, and we could reproduce tequila later. With lots of interesting eye rolls we set out to make the very first dribbles of an idea for Cambio. We used the agave from G4 and ran a 10-day fermentation time at about 50°F. When it came time for distillation someone on the team brought a Mezcal still from Felipe’s father or grandfather that was stored at his house. We spent a couple of days getting the still prepared and ready outside in the back of the distillery.
Finally ready, we cut wood from the property and stoked a fire underneath the small still, and began the process of creating the very first drops of our crazy little idea. Over the coming days we spent time evaluating and tasting and sharing Tequila that we had crafted and gathering everyone’s feedback thoughts and opinions. We then decided to age it inside of six 30-year-old limousine cognac casks. Over the coming months we realized that it would be too difficult and too disruptive to Felipe’s operation for us to produce Cambio at the distillery and so we parted ways on positive terms and best wishes.
The time and care that Felipe and his family and his distillery team showed us was incredible and will always be the very beginning of the very first tiny ideas we had to produce something honestly special and unique.
As time always moves on and 2024 came to be; wouldn’t you know it on the shelves in America a small bottling with a special G4 label on it and a tiny little circle with the corner named 6 Barrels made its way into the fans hearts. It turns out that Felipe was proud enough of what we created together to give it a special bottling as a one-time limited release. There could not be better praise for the potential of our ideas than for a producer of his caliber and pallet to bottle our little six-barrel project.
These types of small releases and productions are quite literally tiny moments in history. All of the things that needed to come to fruition for all of us to be together for those few weeks and months in the distillery creating this tiny little batch can never again be reproduced. These types of moments are special and they should be treated as such.
All of us should consider this tradition and the way that these special tequilas are made when we are standing inside of a store, choosing what to buy. Ask yourself a simple question, do I want to buy a piece of history and culture, or do I want to buy an adulterated, concocted beverage that has very little to no resemblance of the history and time of the traditions of the regions it comes from?
There is a battle right now for the soul of Tequila and there are large international corporations worth billions of dollars and corrupt consortiums trying to hide and cover up what’s inside of 90% of the tequila that is produced. They don’t want you to know of the 50 different ingredients and artificial flavorings and fake colors that are placed inside of that Tequila. They don’t even want us talking about it, we aren’t even allowed to write on our labels that we make clean Tequila. We aren’t allowed to even write the ingredients that are in the bottle.
These actions do a disservice to the people of Mexico, the history of Tequila, its production, and the heritage of one of the most incredible spirits in the world. Probably the most disturbing fact is that all of these actions and all of this oversight and control is being carried out by a group of people that are supposed to protect tradition—by a group of people whose entire ethos is supposed to be about honoring their own heritage.
Not a single brand needs to use any of these ingredients to make quality tequila. Each and every one of them could produce a high-quality spirit without any additives at all if they simply made a choice to. That’s what each of these brands must decide. They simply just have to choose to make a better product and to be open and honest about what they’re selling to consumers. It’s not complicated and honestly, they should just be better.
My hope is that the more consumers can talk about this, learn and choose more wisely. The more we can have an open and frank conversation about it, the better off that we are all going to be in the end. My hope would be over the next couple of decades, there will be no brands left that use additives in any way in any of their Tequila. That all of these brands will either change and adapt and produce better quality or they will pass into history as consumers reject everything artificial and chose to embrace genuineness, transparency, history and heritage.