So, what are we, we're just going to talk through some samples and get some backstory and so on? And he was here for All Things Ago, right? Yeah, he was here last night. That would be such a ripoff if you came into town for this, and they didn't invite you to the table. Yeah, exactly, yes. Yeah, they get me at the hotel room for a long time. You know it already passed, we can still. Talk about it. Yeah. Hey, that's a cold open. Here comes some music. Hey, you are listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Back in your feed with something agave. I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's. Hi, I'm Chris. I drink tequila sometimes. Is that true? Yeah, sometimes. Okay. But I also do wine things. I'm Dan and I work in spirits. Say we have a special guest with us in the studio. I will just hand it over to you to introduce yourself and let us know where you're from, what you do, and we'll go from there. Well, thank you. So I'm Léon Bañuelos. I actually run operations at Tequila El Mexicano, and I'm a third generation Tequila distiller. Yeah. My first question, and this is just out of the blue, but did you bring any Bunuelos? Because I'm kind of hungry. What? No, no, no. I only brought the tequila. What is he talking about? No, but yeah, Bunuelos are, I would say a Mexican pastry that are really popular during Christmas time. They make like snowflakes and like sugar nut. There's a regional ethnic pastry that we haven't talked about in this podcast before? It's just fried dough, baby. I mean, we've talked about donuts a lot. All right. Put it on the calendar. We need to get some. Remind Jim. Jim's going to be into it. Anyway, his name is very close to it. Okay. Bunuelos, Ponche, and Tequila. They're great. Christmas. Yeah. Sounds like a party. I mean, what's with the name? So, what more Mexican than tequila? So, it's a... Yeah, that's one of the things. And also, it's a cool story about it. You know, family, my grandfather and father founded Cazadores. They ended up selling to Bacardi. That time I was like 16 years old, but I mean, my whole life just running around barrels, being at the distillery all the time. I told my father, you know, we have to get back to business. You did it once and you need the knowledge to keep on going. Non-compete is now expired and it is time. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, especially, yeah, we don't want lawyers getting into conversations right now. We kick them out of the room. Yeah. So you just weren't satisfied with that big sale. You had to jump back in. I mean, it's a passion that you grow up with. So of course, my father told us, if you get the Mexicano name, we'll do it again. Thinking maybe out of all the names of tequila out there, over 3,000 brands, he will be taken. I mean, it's like calling your restaurant La Mesa or La Cochina or something like that. Yeah. Exactly. You got it, Greg. It was too obvious. Nobody thought of it before. Yeah. But I mean, it was amazing because finally we got it. We were like, destiny is calling us again and we have to do it all over. It's good that you grabbed it because before and long with climate change, we're going to be growing agave in Illinois. Colorado. So tell us about opening this distillery. How long ago was it? Some of that process because that's interesting. I mean, just as soon the non-compete agreement ended, we started with planning with the distillery. Of course, I mean, the first time the family did it was a little bit of luck because both my grandparents are not from Arandas. They are from elsewhere within the state of Jalisco, but they ended up there by chance. It's a great story how they started with tequila because they were compadres, and also compadres with the priest of the town, the lawyer. It was 10 friends just trying to make a fun business to be at, and everybody had agave. You have a hill that is rocky that nobody likes to grow corn or any other crop into. You plant agave, you live it there for 15 years, and give it a blessing, helps everything goes right, and there you go. I mean, that's in the 50s, so yeah, it has evolved a little bit more than that. So thankfully for us, for your generations. So well, they ended up like, what the hell? Let's do tequila. How hard could it be? So that's how everything started, and it all came great with Cazadores. Piece of cake. What business plan doesn't want to start with a seven or eight-year wait for your first cry? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We are used to it, and thankfully we've been in the business for so long that also we keep on doing business with the same Macabre growers that my grandfather was making. So it's a lot of build up relationships and trust over the community that gets you to start right away and be able to get the best of them available. That's what I was going to ask. Yeah. We think about whisky and brand new distilleries in America. It's always a vodka and a gin until like four or five years later, and then it's small barrel whisky for a while. But if you've got pre-existing relationships with growers and you can come out with a Blanco quickly and make something. Right. There's no no aiding arc at all to some of these, right? They just distill it and go. Yeah. Also, we believe that the Macabre growers are the experts on that. We just leave it to them. It's their business. They've been doing it for generations. We ourselves have been doing tequila for generations. It's our area of expertise and also right now that we are partnering up with Folly Family Wines and Spirits to bring El Mexicano into the US. They carry a lot of great portfolio. We believe in partnerships. Of course, long-term partnerships. If we could do it with family businesses, it's great. I didn't read your bona fides sheet. Did you go distilling science? No, no, no. I did a management in Mexico. It's a funny story. I always used to fail chemistry. Right. Exactly. All of a sudden, I'm writing chemistry, seeing just changing sugars into alcohol, which is like a chemistry thing subject. Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. My dad and I would cut down trees and remove shrubs and stuff for extra money, and we were cutting down a very tall tree, and he threw me the keys. He tied a rope from his pickup to the top of the tree. He threw me the keys, and he was like, you got to drive it and pull the tree as I cut. I'm like, I don't know how to drive. I'm 14. He was like, figure it out. I'm like, it's a clutch. He's like, yeah, figure it out. I'm imagining you had something similar. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, actually, I had the chance to be at the city all the time when I was little. Of course, I started like broom, sweeping floors, and just trying to do a lot of things growing up there. Up to a time that I will say I only smelled tequila and not tasted. I just want people to see it. I smelled it. It smells great. Sure. All the influences that you get growing up defines you. I am always curious and I always ask around how things are happening and why it is happening, a little bit of common sense, and you kind of figure it out. Cool. All of the agave you use is contracted with long term relationships. You don't own any agave fields yourself. Yeah, most of it, I will say 99%. It's like that. We do own agave fields because the property that our distillery sits at is just in the middle of agave field. All the distilleries, of course, the one that my family used to own was like right on the road. Yeah. So we wanted to make a different look of field to it. So you have almost like a mile road from the main road to get to the distillery. So it's like a hill with all agaves. You have the distillery on top of it. Sounds beautiful. Do you welcome guests? Can people just drive up and visit? Yeah, of course. All the time. We have a lot of people coming in. One of the things is that at the actual distillery, we don't have a door, which is meant to be like, we have fully transparency. Everybody's welcome. You can see the actual process. But it's not like a wall. There's no door in that. You can look and see whatever you want to see. You can see. We have the gates that keep people getting into the road to there, of course, but everybody's welcome. Once you're at the distillery, there's no door. Everything's open, patios. We have a lot of arches, almost 100 arches in the distillery. We descend the distillery with the mind that people will come to visit, and experience and see the actual tequila production. That sounds pretty magical. Well, we do have three bottles in front of us. You're reading my mind. We've got the other Blanco, a high proof Blanco and a Rappasado. So how long are we out from an Añejo? There's some innovation coming on. Of course, there are five classes of tequila, Blanco, Reposado, Añejo, Extrañejo, and Joven. We will like to cover them all eventually, but we are starting with the core of it, which is going to be Blanco. And of course, our baby for so long. With Cazadores, we only sold Reposado. So it's kind of like our expertise and my father's expertise around. So we had to come up with Reposado. It's a family thing, I would say. Yeah. Okay, I don't think Dan was actually reading my mind. No, I know. Let's look at these bottles and have more conversation. Let's talk about the design of the bottle for a little bit. Okay, as you pass the bottle, it is a delicate design. Do the arches on the bottle evoke? Is it invoke or evoke? The arches at the distillery? Yes, exactly. When we started with this new project, we designed El Mexicano and the brand from the inside out, which means building a distillery, having a distillery set, and then worry about marketing. It's like the crazy stuff to do right now in spirit business. It's usually the other way around. But we had to add the consistency and the quality inside the juice, and then the experts in design and everything be the ones like worrying in and taking what we already have into a bottle. Sure. This smells great. The moment I opened the bottle, I knew we were in for a treat. It's so fruity and big. It's fresh and clean and powerful. Citrus and pear. Oh, yeah. And agave, which is essential here. You know, I had never actually smelled that before. Well, sometimes, you know, in some iterations, usually on Yeho's, you don't always get a lot of agave. Right. Blanco, you should certainly smell it clearly. Oh, yeah. It's just eating like peach. It's really pleasant smelling. Yeah, so one of the things that we've been doing also for so long is we do a malolactic fermentation. Wait, seriously? Yeah. I had no idea. Yeah, we do eight to nine days fermentation. Pre-distillation during fermentation, malolactic. I don't think you could do it post-distillation. Yeah, you're right. That wouldn't make sense. Quite a difficult task on this, Chris. Who needs a chemistry class now? Yeah. You're knocking out the malic acid early, so you end up with a rounder fruitier spirit after distillation. That's amazing. I never thought of that before in my whole life. Yeah. It's weird how that would translate in the final product. This has a soft, round mouthfeel. And when you say that, I start thinking about how wine is affected by malactic. But I don't know if that translates through the distillation process. But this is a rounded feeling. Yeah, exactly. And just a touch of pepper, too. Yeah, it's a little peppery. I really do love the expression of the agave, though, here, too, and citrus, all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Sometimes when you say it loses, it's agave character. I'm thinking about things like aloe and eucalyptus. Yeah. And this doesn't have that. It is like a peppery lift. It's not completely round. But it's not vegetal. A little herbal, but not vegetable. Yeah, a little. And that's super balanced. Yeah. That is neat. Dan, how much is this? $34.99. $34.99. That's a pretty good deal for a tequila. The way we design everything around the distillery is to get this exact profile and be consistent about it, which is also an important thing. So as the Blanco, is this the character that you feel drives the rest that you're working on? Yes, of course. We like it to be clean, crisp. We don't believe in fibers. In fermentation, just to keep them more clean. What are the tools you're using for cooking and for crushing? So for cooking, we are using autoclave. We've used autoclave for almost 50 years in the family. So it's all stainless steel. But the thing with autoclave is that you can use it in the shortcut way or the long way. So it's not a matter of what you're using, but how you're using it. It's like a, I don't know if you're familiar with kitchens, the thermomix, my wife has one of those. They cook, they chop, they do all the stuff. But I was going to ask that about pizza ovens. Is that true for pizza ovens? It doesn't matter what you have, it's how you use it. Yeah, exactly. So we ended up cooking it for between 18 to 24 hours. And why is such a wide range of cooking? It's because we have to be able to adapt to the characteristics of the agave. You know, every season the agave comes different. It's more moisture into it, it's more dry into it. So we need to be able to read it and be able to to change yourself. For example, we see the distillery more as a kitchen than a production line. It's not that you put agave, chop it up, melt, tequila bottle outside. No, it's more of a be able to read what the nature is giving you and get the best out of it and do it in your way, you know, at the end to have the same result time after time. So far, it shows in the bottle. Yeah, this is really interesting. This is the high proof. Yeah, just pass around the high proof. It has a very similar character, but it's more focused and peppery, I think, a little more intense. I would love to see this in cocktails. Well, that's a great point with high proof tequilas. I mean, we have a handful on the shelves and they're kind of under appreciated because they are, if you're making cocktails, I mean, you want that proof and you want that. You don't want to hide these like great tequilas behind a bunch of juices and sugar and stuff. So that's a great point. I love this. I really love this. Really nice. The aforementioned fruit is a little quieter and like a dusting of cocoa powder across the whole thing. And it's just great. Yeah, it does have that kind of powdery texture on the back, but it's so unctuous and round up front just like the other one. This one, I think, because it will be more concentrated, it will take a little bit, a while to like up and up. Because it's more, I will say, bulkier tequila like that. It's also that I enjoy the mouth. The mouthfeel of it, it's great. It's something that we get a chance to try it every time. Almost every time that we are distilling. So we have to put it out in the bottle and share it. It will start like a family project, fun project just to have overproofing tequilas to family and friends and see how they react and all that. Do they react like we react? Yeah. No, they were like, this is dangerous. It's like you're sipping it and drinking it, it doesn't sip like an overproofed tequila. So I was going to ask that, you're calling it high proof, but what is the proof? It's 90 proof. 90 proof. Okay, it's totally reasonable. Yeah. I was supposed to say 80 on the first one, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So this is $40 and I think a lot of times consumers when they're looking at high proof tequilas, sometimes the prices double from the regular, so they skip it, but this is awesome. That's a nice proof and it's super affordable for just sipping or great in cocktails. Yeah, and I just, I do really think it focuses that spice note and I feel like there's more herbaceousness on the back too, like a minty almost and big leaf like lift to it. This really needs to go with citrus and salt. Yeah, yeah. Is the difference just literally proofing down the same distillate? Yeah, it's proofing down. The way we proof down is not just of all at once. You know, Mexican regulations, just to give a whole context, you're not allowed to bottle anything about 110. Okay. That's why they say still strength is 110, but you end up having a tequila at 120% mostly. So you always have to proof it down. And the way we proof it down is we take like three or four times proofing it down just to get it nice and balanced and live in the tank, make time for it to start, you know. You're painting a picture. I get it now. You're proofing it down and then somebody's like, hey, we have to proof it down again. And you're like, do we have to, though? Yeah, yeah. Do you ever just take a little bit of that 120 proof for yourself, keep it at home? Like a flask of it. How could you not? Right. Yeah, we can do that. I mean, it's when it starts getting out of the pot still the first time, you know, it's like 78 or 80, maybe 160. Yeah. So it's fun just to do it. But I mean, it's numbing. So it's not enjoyable. So we meant to whatever comes with El Mexicano, we meant it to be shareable, enjoyable. And, you know, that's that's that's how we feel about tequila. Will you nail it on these two so far? Yeah. Just past the Reposado around, so tell us age, approximate age, or the barrels used. So the Reposado is going to be aged in 80% American, 20% French, but it's a new oak. New oak? Oh, new oak. Yeah. It's new oak, and also we toast the barrels, we don't char them. Just toast them? Yeah. We wanted the tequila, the blanco to be a really nice marriage with the wood, not just the wood on top of a blanco. It's kind of like our expertise with the wood is for so long, only reposado, so definitely my father's favorite one because he grew up with it. The wood is apparent here. It wears the oak aging, the toasted new oak aging. Did you know that new barrels are expensive and that you can reuse them? Anyway, just making sure that you knew that. There's a lot of bourbon barrels on the market. It wears its barrel aging, luxurious fur coat, this fluffy, super comfortable garment on top of the structure of the blanco. It's, well. Yeah. Just a little touch of vanilla. The vanilla, it's like orange cream, orange creamsicle because the citrus is there, but it's like roasted pineapple, something like that. Yeah. I think you also get just like a hint of that French oak spice on it. Just at the end, just to clean up the palate, the tannin that it has, like tannin, natural tannin. The French oak is going to be an addition from the third generations into the family's recipe. Ah-ha. Your fingerprint. Yes, exactly. My father was the first, I will say, tequila producer to start using new oak for tequila because you know. It's expensive. Right. Yeah, it's expensive, but it's worth it. If you're going to compete in tequila environment, it's hard. We were just yesterday, All Things Agave. It's 75 tables. Two-day event, Binny's Beverage Depot. Yeah. All Things Agave. It's Midwest's premier agave, tequila, mezcal, etc. tasting, and it's a two-night event, and it happens every summer. Yeah. Sure does. That's pretty great. Which was last night, which doesn't mean anything if you listen to this now, but we will have it again next year, so it's worth attending 77 tables, and you get to taste many of these great tequilas before you buy them. Yeah. I will say 250 different labels there. So you have to do the extra mile if you want to stand out above all the 250 labels of tequila and the other 1,000 labels of whiskey, or you could just get some dumb celebrity to sign on. Hall, from Hall & Oates maybe? I don't know. He doesn't have a tequila yet. Somebody, one of those actors from Freaks and Geeks, who's in a bunch of other shows with Abitale maybe? I'd approach David Lee Roth. I think he's got some sort of time. I don't think he has any brands. Okay. Sammy Hagar. We're pitching celebs here, any of these. No, we want the rock stars on the celebrity to be Agave, Water and Yeast. Oh, that's it, yeah. Yes. I really queued him up for that. I had to take it out of the park. Yeah. Yeah, right. Well, those are great. Those are fantastic. Those are great. We're looking forward to you. You're in Añejo and Extra Añejo for sure. So do you have some Añejo laying down already? We had some Añejo that we did a few years back, and Extra Añejo is only available in Mexico for now. It was kind of like a special project that we did. It was only, I would say, 5,000 bottles of it. And similar oak regime, still new oak. New oak. We're proportional friends. Yeah, but now that we are launching into a bigger market, we need to be able to have enough liquid. Got to ramp up. Yeah, exactly. So are you going to stay in the family wheelhouse with just the Reposado, or is there more coming? No, there's just going to be more things coming up, but it means, you know, everybody thinks about Añejo just 12 months, and in the barrel, just bottle it, that's it, you know? But I mean, it's a... We don't want it to be an overwooded Reposado, so we have to dial in exactly if... It might take 18 months or 24 months to get it dialed in, just to get the barrels seasoned right and be ready to... Well, using New Oak, you have a lot of control over this, you know? You can really dial in the toast and everything. Somebody else hasn't toasted and charred the barrel, so for you already, so yeah. So I mean, you can really dial in your oak profile. Yes, of course. We are in a really close and great relationships with the Cooperages, so we know exactly what we want. I mean, it's great for us nowadays because my father, he tells a lot of stories. I'm knocking at the door in Kentucky, you know, I want the New Oak. I don't want the used bourbon one. But now, we have that chance of being able to go straight to the Cooperage and tell them exactly what we want. Okay, question. Industry rumors, who do you think is the most hungover after all things Agave Night One? Not going to take a shot at anybody? No? Okay. I mean, everything that happened was really well behaved. It's nothing crazy. And afterwards, everybody went back to bed. Yeah. Well, I don't know about that. They left the Binny's location, so that's the important part. Do whatever you want once you go. If tequila doesn't work out for you, you could get a job as a diplomat. Oh, great. Thanks. And it's really fun and easy to work like this because it's family. It's what I do. It's my lifestyle. Nobody told me what to do, what to say, so that makes it way easier. Sure. Yeah. Do you want to make a cocktail? I did suggest lime and salt. Do you have a favorite cocktail? For me, I will stick to the old Mexican paloma. That's great. Maybe we should make a paloma. No, but you know what? It's actually make it with reposado. It just, everybody does it with blanco, but for me, in reposado, it's great. It has this vanilla, you were saying? Maybe we should make a margarita and a paloma. Really? We're just turning this into a party. All right. Jim, you want to grab stuff? While you're out shopping, we can hear the back half of the PDF, the stats. We talked about the oven, right? We talked about the cooking. Yeah, autoclaves. Autoclaves. Yeah. But then, we didn't talk about... Yeah, fermentation, it's, I will say, within the whole industry, there's a lot of medicine, but I mean, fermentation, for my experience, it takes up 80% or 85% of the actual profile. So of course, it matters where you get your agave from or how you're cooking it and everything, but it comes up to fermentation. So fermentation is where you get the aromas and flavors. So are you pitching a yeast or is it natural yeast? We are pitching a yeast that we import from France. And you've chosen it for its profile, its aromatic profile? Yeah, it's aromatic profile. As far as it throws? Yeah, exactly. It's a yeast that lets, I will say, in wine terms, the fruit be really present to it. So you don't want any other yeast that throws in some crazy, funky aromas that you don't want, because you want, of course, the agave to be present there and to be clean also. So that's why we chose this one. And your ferment is largely juice, so you don't include fiber or any... No, no, no. We want it to be as clean as possible, just to get this great cook agave aromas out of it. And I mean, just cook agave gives a lot of character to a tequila. But you're throwing a lot of things. I found out it's somehow a mess because it's bacteria that just grows all over the place. And if you're fermenting, you don't want bacteria. You want the good guys. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you're talking the wrong people about good guys. And then all pot still distillation, is that right? Yes, everything's all pot still. And that is something that is, you can tell when something is in the spirit is distilled in column still or pot still. This obviously shows way too much character to become column distilled. Yeah, so it's pot still, two times the still. Of course, we do all stainless steel, pot stills. OK. What we get from the nature, which is fermentation, we use like, don't mess it up. The next step is let it be and just make the right cuts to it. And everything should turn out delicious. Does that mean like no copper, like nothing pulling anything out? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We don't have to pull anything out that we didn't put before. So we try to give it as simple and as tasty as possible. Not a big sulfur issue with agave? No, no, no. Like there is whiskeys sometimes. I mean, the sulfur thing is about spitting up fermentations. So if you are doing a 24, 36-hour fermentation, you have to add a little bit of sulfur. And they run hot and they run messy and you have to take it out. Yeah. Yeah. How common is pastel distillation or 100 percent pastel distillation in tequila? I will say not a lot. Not a lot. I will because if you are doing huge volumes, they will try to cut gusts of it. So they do column still. I will say 70 percent of it is going to be column still. So that's why we have the numbers on the distilleries. You have to check it out who is making what. Who is actually making some of these labels. You could add one more category and just have tequila vodka. Tequila Vodka. Agave Vodka, it's column still. Yeah, but why bother to be 7, 8 years? Totally joking. I agree. You want that character to come through. It's silly to strip it away. And it makes it different from other spirits, actually. Indeed. Yeah. That really shows the craftsmanship and the care you take. It shows on the final product for sure. How are the bats doing? I think my kids told me they're doing fine. It's they have a lot of bats around. So it's at night. We are at the distillery and at the ranch. My father have a house there. So it's a it's cool for kids. My kids age are 10, 8 and 6. So they have fun watching. Yeah. All things like that. Cool. Pollinators. Yeah. I know there was issues. Yeah. I mean, it's they all blame it on agave producers. But I mean, nobody talks about other crops growing in the area. And we're just talking about that. It's of course, everybody sees when whenever it talks about, you know, deforestating for agave, they think like the beautiful forest that you have outside. Like here, it's like, no, in Narandas, in the Highlands, it's drier, way drier. Sure. Little scrubby. Yeah, de-scrubbing. De-scrubbing doesn't sound that. Yes, exactly. Greg, you don't have to tie your pickup truck to the scrub to pull it out. You probably run over it and done. I hope your dad supplied you with a sufficiently long rope so that tree didn't fall on your truck. It was mostly rope. Yeah. Okay, let's check it out. Producer Jim ran into the store and grabbed a bottle of the single most tasted product on Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast for sure, by far. The product that we have consumed more of on this podcast than anything else. And it is, of course- Lime juice. Tree for Tree Grapefruit. What's your Paloma recipe? I will say, yeah, a grapefruit, soda, fresh or squeezed lime. Squirt or Fresca? A squirt or Fresca, yeah, but fresh or squeezed lime. I would like it with a pinch of salt because you have to maintain hydrated with electrolytes, of course. Exactly. That's why everybody felt so good after all things agale. Yeah. Yeah, you keep everybody hydrated. Yeah, that's great. I mean, personally, I would do it a reposado or blanco depending of... If you want it sweeter, I will say go to reposado because it gets the butterscotch of- Well, we got to try it your way. Can we do the reposado? We have to, right? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Jim's not even on this episode, but he's over there smashing up limes for us. Yeah. Where are Roger's meaty hands when you need them? Yeah. This guy can juice a lime with his paws. He's a beast. Not this guy. Not this guy. He's using a lime squeezer juicer like a civilized human being. Normal human being. Sorry, Rog. Does he even cuts it open or just like... Oh, he cuts it in half and goes like this. And how does he not have all these little cuts? I always discover all these little wounds on my fingers. That can be painful. Well, that guy makes enough tiki drinks in a year that he's probably got just, you know, my own mother club. Yeah, right. Okay. So, I mean, also a great way to enjoy it, it will be like soda, just club soda. Club soda and reposado? Reposado or blanco? I usually do more club soda and blanco than I do reposado. People kept calling that ranch water. You call it ranch water? We just call it tequila and soda. That's so much more sense. So smart. Seriously, ranch water sounds like the melting ice as they're taking the salad bar away. Right. Yeah, but I mean, it sounds much cooler. It's much cooler to call it ranch water. That's sophisticated. Yeah. Do you pair your tequilas with any foods in particular? Yes. Actually, we did a pairing two days ago. We did the high proof. I'm going to go from dessert to entry. That's the way we like to work. Yeah, exactly. Desserts. We like to pair our high proof with chocolate, with dark chocolate, at least 70 percent cocoa. It's great. Then reposado, something with a little bit more fat or cheese, like fatty cheese to it. The tannins helps a lot to clean out. The blanco is just great with ceviche. I mean, I love ceviche with fish ceviche or with prawns. Something just like pure and fresh, clean. Oysters, huh? Oysters would be good. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think oyster is a great idea. What are we doing right now? Where are the oysters? Jim, can you get us some oysters? Jim's over there shucking. The reposado is so good. It's really good. What about other local foods just out of curiosity? I mean, the time of Aranda's where we make our tequila, it's worldwide known for its tacos. So, every place you go anywhere in the world, if there are some good decent pastor tacos, the pork that they serve, there's going to be a guy from Aranda's or from the Highlands behind it. So, yeah, it's, but there will be that and birria, yeah. But there's like a, the Jalisco style birria will have a lot of, we love to do a lot of tomato sauce and everything, and chili, even, even it's a- Wajillos. Yeah, wajillos. Yeah. You know, refried beans with that. Yeah, yeah. Handmade tortillas. Yeah, yes. Of course, yes. Of course, that. This is ridiculous. Why didn't we order lunch? Honestly, I just had lunch. I'm hungry again. So you're going to give us a read on Jim's Paloma. Paloma, yeah, right. Jim, anything secret here? This is fever tree grapefruit, a little bit of fresh lime juice, and a little bit of salt, and a little bit of this reposado. It's great. Easy. Easy, easy drinking, delicious, refreshing. Now we're getting a lot of sun out, so- Yeah, it seems more tequila, Jim. Very nice. Yeah, but it's nice. It's easy to make. I mean, tequila shouldn't be hard to drink. Right. I've never found it very difficult. Yeah, it's hard bouncing back is the problem. Yeah, it's just that tequila is a fun drink. We as Mexicans love to share it, of course, and there's a lot of things that they use a lot of special glassware to do certain kinds of tequila and everything. But once you have your bottle, your hands is yours to enjoy. Enjoy it as you want. I was in Texas a couple of weeks ago and I tried it with Dr. Pepper. It was not my drink, but it's okay. Dr. Pepper. Well, they do make some of the best Dr. Pepper in Texas. What? Yeah. It's cane sugar. It's a Texas thing. Yeah. I mean, it's- The old Dublin Dr. Pepper. Dublin. Just like everyone in the States loves to drink Mexican Coca-Cola because you still use cane sugar and we use corn syrup and it's vastly superior. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, that's- I mean, yeah, cane sugar Dr. Pepper is much better. I love it. What's the cocktail that's like tequila, coke, and lime? There's a name for it. Cuba Libre. No, that's with rum. Oh crap. They call it Batanga. Yeah. I've seen that pop up in some places around here. Yeah, but Batanga is also again tequila and coke. Yeah. It's also a really popular drink. Back in the, I would say, 60s in Mexico, Bacardi was a big, big, big brand, so they all did Cuba Libres. Sure. Tequila in the 70s was not a cold drink. It's something that if you were drinking tequila, either you had a distillery or you weren't able to buy a brandy or rum. So, they started like a, I will say a Pursman Cuba Libre, but now it's finally, we got to appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Indeed. Thank you guys for that. Tequila is very popular here in the United States right now. Last cocktail, making its way around the table. So now we have a classic margarita, and what tequila did you use? Repo. You used the Repo. All Repo all the time. Chris, can you spell out the recipe? Sure. This would be two parts tequila, one part lime juice, and half a part triple sack. Pier Foran Dry Curacao. Which we do like. We do like that. And of course, salt. You really can smell the Reposado, and it's there and it's present. Cheers. Sometimes we have cool jobs. It's a cool podcast to get to drink, and next time I'll bring the birria tacos. Oh, yeah. We will welcome you with open arms. They're all ready. Tequila and birria tacos. That's great. Chivo, though. Chivo. Yeah, chivo. Yeah, it's great. Classic margarita enhanced by the voluptuous Reposado that we're trying here. It's pretty delicious. It dances so well with the cutting acidity of the lime. It's really good. Nice job, Jim. All right. I'm going on break. You guys be good here? Yeah. Yeah. Is it taco time yet or what? We're going to go get some tacos. If you like Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, as much as we like getting tacos, leave us a review or reach out to us at comments at binnys.com. Thank you for coming on our show. Yeah. No, thank you for having us. Really appreciate it. Really good tequila. Very good. Yeah. I keep discovering good things. And just to review, the Blanco is $35 right now. The High Proof Blanco is $40, sorry, and the Reposado is $40 as well. So these are super affordable. Yeah, great deal. Just awesome. Reposado is $40? Yeah, it's $40. Okay. Cool. Great. Going to have another bottle in my basement. It's a good $40 repo. Absolutely. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. Back in your feed real soon. Something great. Until then, Barrel to Bottle, Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg. I'm Chris. I'm Dan. I'm Léon. Keep tasting.