After a brief pause for some traveling, trips to Mexico and some events, I’m back on the blog with a few thoughts about tradition. I think we’ve made it pretty clear that our entire ethos is to question everything and to examine all the best possible ways to make tequila and how to improve it. There is no brand who does this the way that we do and truly innovates along every step of the process. No one—regardless of their fancy expensive marketing and PR campaigns.
Even with all this innovation and all our never before used techniques, at our very core we are a completely traditional brand. We are the first tequila in the last 20 years to launch that really cares and talks about heritage and tradition and honor. And we don’t just use it in marketing campaigns, we do it every single day and we live it every single moment.
And this got me to thinking about what other brands tell everyone.
I noticed a post about a brand that makes very good, nice tequila. The brand claimed to be traditional.
Then I realized that almost everyone says this. This sort of statement is complete bullshit. Obviously this really bugs me for a couple of reasons, but the main one being that traditional tequila is a very specific set of details that you use for your process. To be very plain about it, it’s only about four techniques. That is all.
In a very direct and simple way, if you don’t use these four techniques to make all of your tequila—and I mean every drop of it—then you do not make traditional tequila.
There are lots of brands with incredible heritage and history that someone new like Cambio could only hope to achieve. But very few of these brands actually make traditional tequila. All of them make some modified version of these four techniques, whether it’s using stainless steel for fermentation or using roller mills for pressing, the number of brands in America who actually make traditional tequila is roughly around 5, and I can’t think of a 6th. Off the top of my head, these brands are Fortaleza, Santaleza, Alto Canto, El Tesoro, and Cambio. Yes, if I forgot somebody, please don’t freak out. ☺
And I’m not talking about the special label one-off versions that brands charge people $150 for. I mean every single drop that they produce uses only these techniques and nothing else. These traditions are roughly 120 years old, tracing back to when tequila became standardized and started using brick ovens instead of the traditional Mezcal methods of cooking in pits. From that moment on, Tequila became a singular specialized version of Mezcal.
That’s it. If one of these elements is different, then it’s not traditional tequila.
No autoclaves, no roller mills, no stainless-steel fermenters, no stainless stills, no mechanical rollers made from metal and concrete—and for god’s sake no diffusers.
Every brand is free to make their own choices about how they make tequila, and there are some very nice tequilas made with non-traditional methods. But don’t lie about your tequila being traditional. There is NOTHING traditional or historically important to quality when you use an autoclave or roller mill. Those modern mechanical inventions are only used to make tequila cheaper and faster. That’s it.
All right, that’s just a quick trip on the soapbox. My next blog will be about actual innovation and creativity and a new way forward for tequila. And as always, we will be honest and transparent and detailed when we make claims like “there has never been a brand that has innovated like Cambio before.” I’ll lay out our case for how we have managed to be completely traditional and totally forward thinking in the exact same moment.
Bye everybody, talk soon!
-John
