Tequila

On Sunday we all headed to Tequila and went on a tour at Cofradia. Cofradia is the 7th largest distributor of Tequila. I enjoyed the tour much more than the Cuervo Mundo tour we took a few months ago. It's more informal and intimate at Cofradia (as tours go) plus they didn't make us wear white hair nets to walk through the factory and distillery. The whole tour was very interesting. We had a sampling of Blanco (straight from 2nd distillation to bottle), Reposado (aged for 3-6 months), ANejo (aged for up to a year) and Extra aNejo (aged for a couple of years). After our Cofradia tour, half the group went to the local bar/restaurant in town and watched the Mexico vs US soccor game. That left Gwyn, Daniel and I to explore Culumpio, this family run blue agave destilado business. It was awesome. We parked in front of their agave field and met up with Don Jose and he explained the family business to us. While he was explaining the distillation process, their puppy got very excited and peed on my leg. Yes, this really happened and NO I did not enjoy it, but that's what puppies do right? I think. Anyway afterwards, we headed to their store front shop, had our selves some fairly large tastings of their reposado and ANejo. We purchased a bottle of destilado reposado to take home with us. It is tequila but they can not legally call it tequila because they haven't filed the paperwork and received the authority to call their very lethal and potent blue agave drink tequila. Sarita could explain it all...
In short, the history and sale of tequila is very complicated and it is absolutely BIG business in Mexico. Columpio only sells their destilado from their store front as well as distributes to Japan. They said it is too expensive to sell their drink on the national market and it is actually cheaper to export it. Cofradia said the same. Tequila is very expensive and is not widely consumed in Mexico. I think (i'll have to double check with Sarita) but I think more tequila is consumed on the US and Western European market than in Mexico. I can't wait for Sarita to publish her work. It is so interesting and really takes a close looks at identity and tequila imaging (or "mexico" to be more precise) on the global market.

Info on Cofradia:
http://www.tequilacofradia.com/inicia1.html