What the dish is and where it came from
Tequila is a distilled beverage made from the blue agave plant, primarily around the town of Tequila, 65 km northwest of Guadalajara, and in the Jaliscan Highlands of Jalisco. By Mexican law, nothing may be sold as tequila unless it contains between 35% and 55% alcohol and is produced in Jalisco or limited municipalities in Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit and Tamaulipas. Before tequila or mezcal, pulque had been brewed from agave sap for thousands of years. Distillation of mezcal spread into the highland valleys of Amatitán, Tequila, Magdalena and El Arenal in the mid-1700s, and the mezcal made there became known as tequila. Tequila differs from mezcal because it is made only from blue agave.
How it works, in terms someone would actually use
Jimadores plant, tend and harvest the agave by hand. They trim the quiote, the central stalk, so the plant does not flower and die early, and cut the leaves from the piña with a coa. Harvested too early or too late, the piña lacks the right carbohydrates for fermentation. The piñas are slowly baked to break fructans down into fructose, then shredded or mashed under a stone wheel called a tahona. The juice ferments for several days into a low-alcohol wort. It is distilled once to make ordinario and again to make clear silver tequila; two distillations is the legal minimum. It is bottled as silver or aged in oak barrels.
What it gets right
Place shows in the glass. Blue agaves from the highland Los Altos region are larger and sweeter in aroma and taste, and valley agaves give a more herbaceous, earthier tequila. The red volcanic soil near Tequila suits the plant, and more than 300 million plants are harvested there each year. The region was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. The classes are defined by time in oak: blanco is unaged or aged under two months, reposado at least two months, añejo at least a year and extra añejo at least three years.
What it does not
It does not allow flexibility. The name is reserved to designated municipalities, and the Mexican government holds all rights over its use. Tequila of 100% agave cannot be flavoured. Mixtos need only 51% agave, with other sugars making up the rest. Fermentation is largely outside human control, since yeasts and bacteria from the environment take part. A blight, tristeza y muerte de agave, has cut agave production and raised prices.
What it changed
In 1974 tequila became Mexico’s first appellation of origin, and the Mexican government declared the term its intellectual property. In 1978 it was registered internationally under the Lisbon Agreement. It has been a protected designation of origin product in the European Union since 1997 and is recognised as one in more than 40 countries. International sales of tequila from Tequila municipality reached about US $572 million in 2024, mostly to the United States.
Who it is for, and who it is not
It is for people who want to sip it as it is drunk in Mexico, neat and sometimes alongside sangrita, or to find out what a label means. Many higher-quality 100% agave tequilas are usually sipped from a snifter. It is not for those who need salt and lime to get it down, since with many 100% agave tequilas that combination is likely to remove much of the flavour.
Is it worth your time
Yes, if you want to understand what the word on the bottle guarantees, from agave and place to the classes of aging.
