Ruben, can you pronounce your last name for me? I don't want to butcher this. Aceves. Aceves, okay. Aceves. Is that a V or a B? Aceves? V, like in Victor, V. Okay. In Mexico, we don't talk the right way, like Spanish people, they do the V and this V. We pronounce all the same, so it's a V, like in Victor, Aceves. It should be in Spanish, like Aceves, no? If you're Catalan. You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, broadcasting worldwide from the Lincoln Park Education Center, Re-education Center, what do we call this room? Settle down on the re-education thing, that's got some historical connotations we don't want to be connected with. Sorry. Okay. Lincoln Park upstairs classroom. And also the viewing deck. Yeah, and the window at the top of the Lincoln Park store. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. Hey, I'm Pat from the Whiskey Hotline. I'm Brett from the Whiskey Hotline. Oh, a special Brett episode. Welcome back, Brett. The Brett episodes are pretty good episodes. Yeah. I'm not going to lie. We're here so that Brett can be on the show because he doesn't travel outside of Chicago City Limits and also because we have a special guest today. That's right, we do. We are joined today by Ruben Aceves from Tequila Herradura. Ruben, thank you for joining us today. Hey, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's our pleasure. What is your official title at Herradura now? My official title has been for 22 years, the Global Brand Ambassador. Is that a title you just applied for that job and just got it or were you at the distillery before that? Yeah, that kind of sounds like a BS job title, to be honest with you. Well, I was the International Rest of the World Sales before Brown-Forman came in in 2007. So when they came in, there was no need to have an International Sales Director. That's what they say. Since you have been with the family for so long, everything about Herradura, the history, I know I've been related with Herradura for more than 47 years. They say this is like the perfect ambassador. So they gave me, in my business card, it says International Director for Brand Development. At some point, that's too long and too like, just make it a global brand ambassador. So that's what I do. Brand development. That's a marketing suit term if I've ever heard one. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So we want to talk about Herradura the other day. Can you give us a rundown of the distillery, the history of the distillery? I mean, how many generations now has the family been making tequila? Well, the family, the original family left in 2007 when Brown-Forman came in, but when they left, because they had nothing to do with it anymore, and they still own the old buildings, the old hacienda that you've been there, Brett. Beautiful place. The distillery is still at the same place. It's been there for the last 152 years. So the first family had seven generations. Since 1870. 1870? 1870. So we're just 152 years only. It was seven generations up until 2007 when Brown-Forman acquired. I remember the first time I visited with you down there. It was sort of a microcosm of what has gone on in the tequila world. We're kind of in a boom cycle right now. But if you remember, I was down there, I believe, in 2002. And that was not a bust cycle, but that was a time when driving to the distillery and driving by fields, that had armed guards. No, back in the day when the shortage, you know, think about before the shortage, the agave was like 80 cents of a peso per kilo. Then like overnight in the next three months, it was like 18 pesos per kilo. So it was, people made more money by stealing a ton of agave overnight in a pickup truck, and you know, not even growing marijuana or anything. So, you know, the salaries in Mexico are so low that if you, back in the day, in those days, if you steal a ton of agave that night, it'll be like 18,000 pesos, which they would make like in six months. So it was bad. We had to have a lot of guards, you know, surveillance. We have 20,000 acres of agave. just imagine taking care of those. I know in between those, you divide it in seven, because the seven year old, which are the really mature ones, are the ones that people would willing to steal. Right. But you still have to take care of 3,000 acres. 20,000 acres just for the Herradura brands? Yeah, of course. It's not the industry. The industry easily is 20 times more. But that's a mind-blowing number. I mean, we talked to some distiller farmers here that are good size operations, and they comfortably farm like 700 acres. But it's corn. And it seems like wild. Yeah, you get a lot more per acre. And you only have your crap turns over every single year. Yeah. And agave, if you're doing it correctly, your crop turns over once every seven years. Wow. Have you thought about planting watermelons? Well, do you grow cover crop? I mean, from the... because does Brown-Forman, who actually manages all the property now? We do. We do. So when Brown-Forman acquire the company, most of the land, they acquire too. So the family still keeps a lot of their own land, and they grow berries, not watermelons, but they grow... Some people grow watermelons in that area. Yes, they are. But they grew a lot of berries. So they have a lot of acres growing berries nowadays, but we still do control, have 20,000 acres for those agaves. And then in that area of the Lowlands, that would make you one of the biggest growers, correct? Yes. I know the Partida family has a lot. Yeah, there's three Partida families, by the way. They are divided like in three different families. Some of them, they don't like each other so much. They have Tres Mujeres, they have Partida, then they have the other one that I don't remember right now. So, they do have a fair amount of acreage also with Agave, and there's Cuervo within that area, sausa, Oran Dines also within the Valley. Not exactly like the Lowland. There's a Highland, but this one is more like the Valley than the Lowland, but they're all there, and they're one of the big ones, because they also sell a lot of Agave, not only for their own tequila. Bear in mind that 90% of the tequila producers, they don't grow their own Agave, so they have to buy Agave from someone else, and Partida does sell a lot of Agave for other people. But Herradura has been around there for 152 years, so it's a 420-year-old Hacienda, and we've been there ever since for 152 years. Okay, I'll bite. What's a Hacienda? It's like a house, right? It's a big house. because it's a big plantation, a big house. So the terms to be considered true, really authentic Hacienda, which we happen to be the last one and only one within the Tequila, the true authentic last Hacienda in the world, in the planet, you have to be surrounded by walls. Within those walls, you have to have a lot of land. You have to be sustainable with your own water, provide housing for the employees, have a blessed Roman Catholic Church, the big house for the owner, a lot of land, a lot of animals. And of course, you have to be sustainable, of self-sufficient in making some sort of a business. You have to grow things and sell those things, trade with other Haciendas. So this Hacienda, which has been there for 420 years, it was not always a tequila Hacienda or a vino mezcal. Back in the day, tequila was called vino mezcal. So we were growing agave and making some vino mezcal, but we were growing a lot of other things and selling and trading with other Haciendas, many, many other things. It's like a feudal nation state almost. Yeah. Well, there, I mean, during the buildup in and around Mexican Revolution and government change also Hacienda del Cistero. I remember one of the parts of the Hacienda is a small, I mean, it's not even really a cathedral, a small church. It's a more chapel. You have to have a chapel to be considered a Hacienda. So it's like a little town. So people could survive inside the walls, always because they had water, they had electricity, they have houses, they have a job. Back in the day, they didn't even pay them with money. They would pay them with coupons and you would trade those coupons for food, for clothing, for things. On a national level, we call those coupons money. Back in the day, they were not money. They were only coupons. What's the water source? Is it a well? Yeah. We have five. We have five deep underground wells. There must be a water table through a lot of that land. The water table sometimes is very deep, sometimes is not. In that area, you have not had issues with rain or anything? Have the rains been okay? The rainy season there happens in between mid-June and early September, and it rains every single day. That's all the water the agave need for the rest of the years. We had a couple of issues since you came down. We had a couple of issues with snow. The weather is crazy all over the world now. The agave likes as hot as it can be and as dry as it can be. We had snow twice in the last 20 years, and it killed. One of the reasons why the agave shortage happened in 2000 is because we had snow, and overnight we lost half of the agave plantations, everyone. Wow. Like throughout different phases of life, so you're dealing with like a seven-year shortage there. Yeah. Yeah. If you lose your agaves, the seven-year-old, six-year-old, five-year-old agave, then you have to wait another three years for the four to be ready, and then you lose all the... Interesting. When the snow came, did the snow kill all ages, or did the snow just, was it worse on certain ages versus others, or it was bad on all ages? All of them, but the most vulnerable are the older ones. Yeah. And if you lose the one-year-old, you lose one year. But if you lose the six-year-old, you lose six years. Were you able, interesting, so was any of that able to be harvested and used? I mean, could people go out and harvest and rush and make a bunch of tequila with the frozen? He's shaking his head, folks. He's shaking his head and frowning. They were dead as they can be. No, we lost everything. There was a big, big, big, big, that's when the price skyrocketed from 80 cents to 18 pesos. Well, in another 150 years, we'll be able to grow agave in Northern Canada, and we'll just transfer the whole industry. Well, and for reference too, just for 18, because we're talking pesos, what was the exchange rate at that time? Was it 10 to 1? No. In those days, what was it? Like maybe 17 pesos. Yeah, because it was like $1,000 per night if you steal your ton of agave. Right. Like 17 pesos per dollar. So roughly a dollar per kilo, just for references. And how much tequila ultimately, if you have a kilo of agave, how much liquid is that can ultimately produce? The average size for an agave is around 70 pounds. Now, you need 12 pounds of agave to make a tequila liter. Okay. So roughly you get five liters out of every agave. So just imagine, it takes seven years to wait for that agave to give you five liters. Sure. It's nothing. That's why you have to have so many agaves. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah. All right. So, we should probably mention a few of the tequilas first. So, a lot of our listeners are going to be familiar with the Herradura line. We've carried it as long as I've worked in the business. You know, we have Blanco, Reposado and Yeho, of course. You guys also had a Cristalino, one of the earlier ones. We're calling it a Cristalino now because Diageo, you know, trademarked Clar or whatever. But the first on the market was probably Maestro Dobello. And then that Don Julio Clara came out. And then Julio 70. Julio 70, yeah. And then we had this one. And this has been on the shelf ever since. And so, what's that mean? You're saying Clara, but that's like it looks silver. It's not a Blanco. No, it's, it's aged and filtered. I'll let Ruben explain. Yeah, what this is, if you read it, it reads Añejo. So, it's called Herradura Ultra, Ultra. And it's an Añejo. Can you read that? Añejo. Yeah. Lower level. You can't pronounce it that way though. No, right. Herradura Ultra. Ultra. Añejo. Añejo. So, what it is, is that you age a blanco tequila, you age it, and it becomes an Añejo. So, Añejo looks like this. So, what do you do? You pour this Añejo into this big container filled with activated charcoal powder. Charcoal. And then when you pour the tequila through here, there's a pipe underneath, and the outcome of that is this. So, it looks crystal clean like a blanco, but it's actually an Añejo. And if you taste it, I don't know if we will do this. Why don't we go ahead and taste. Oh, yeah, for sure. So, it looks like a blanco, but it tastes like an Añejo. So, Maestro de Bell did this on the first time, and I have no idea why they did it. Then Don Julio came in, but it was an accident. It was a big, big time accident that Don Julio never thought it would happen. Really? And then they ended up, you know, having to bottle this clean Añejo they had because, you know, this accident they had. So, they began selling this, and the consumer has nicknamed this tequila Cristalinos, Cristalinos. So, for the CRT is not a legal expression because, it's pretty easy to regulate reposados, pretty easy to regulate Añejos and extrañejos. There's rules, specific rules for that. For this, there are no specific rules, because you have on one side, Dobel, which is a blend of extrañejo and reposado. You have 18 months on Julio, we have 25 months at Herradura. So, it's difficult to rule that. But if you taste it, you know it, smells like an Añejo, sweeter than an Añejo, you'll get notes like for coconut, peach, prune, a lot of agave, a little bit of vanilla, a little bit of honey. Yeah. So, if you sip it- A lot of cooked agave. But it still has a little bit of like green vegetables, but that coconut tropical is just like a massive amount of that coconut. And like peaches and stuff. Yeah. Exactly. So, all that comes through the process and through the activity of the sharp filtration process. Herradura, it's based in the valley, what you call the lowland, the valley. So, that area is a very heavy volcanic activity area. So, there's a lot of spiciness and earthiness and vegetal notes for this type of tequilas. You guys, this is really good. Yeah, it's a good one, man. Oh, it's so fruity. And so, we've had this on the shelf. It's in a black box and we've had it on the shelf for, God, what, 10 years, 12 years, something like that? Yeah, since it was released. Yeah. How much is this bottle of liquor that I'm holding in my hand that is completely delicious and bowled me over? $59.99. Not bad. It's a beautiful tequila, beautiful tequila. It suits everyone's palate. We have tried and it doesn't matter if it's baby boomers or millennials or black, white, men, female. Everyone is liking this tequila. It's just that those people who at some point back in the day, they were slamming the gold tequilas with lime and salt and they hate tequila for life. This is like a new entry level again into tequila. This is a great expression for tequilas, the cristalinos, the herradura ultra cristalino. Some of the other ones that I'm aware of, I believe, I think you named some of them. They are aged less and they are more expensive. Will you go up to something like... I'm thinking of our Casa Drogones. That's very expensive. This is really, really good. It's a different story. You're supposed to say that it's delicious, but we think so too. No, no. I did say it's delicious. Everyone is liking it. Nobody tries that tequila and doesn't like it. And then the last, because you said that it doesn't really... CRT doesn't classify it. If you were forced to classify this, would it be classified as a niejo? The only condition for these cristalinos, it has to be either reposado, a niejo or extra niejo, so real aging. After you do that, then you can cut the color up, and it will be a cristalino. The difficult to control those is that, like, we have El Gimador, which is a sister brand of Herradura, beautiful tequila also, two month reposado cristalino. We have Antiguo, which is another sister brand by Herradura also, beautiful too, four month reposado cristalino. And now we have Herradura, 25 month, a niejo cristalino. So twice as old as it needs to be as well for it to be a niejo. Our Herradura Silver, which is supposed to be non-aged, we age 45 days. Our reposado is supposed to be two month, we do 11. Our niejo is supposed to be 12, we do 25. So Herradura is always way beyond the industry standards, as I'm sorry. You just answered my question. Okay. What kind of wood are you using? What's your wood regimen for aging reposado and on your own extra on your own? Every single tequila we age, from Herradura Silver to Gimador Reposado, which are the last age, it's always white American oak. And we happen to be the only tequila distillery that produces and owns its own cupridge. Yeah. So we make our own barrels. Wait a minute. Is that the BF Cupridge? Yeah, the Brown-Forman Cupridge. The Brown-Forman Cupridge. Okay. In Kentucky. Yeah. And the Cristalino makes sense too. I mean, Brown-Forman obviously knows a thing or two about charcoal filtration. Yeah. You were at the distillery with us and we saw the charcoal being made at Jack Daniels one day when we were there. A fire. Yeah. It was awesome. It was a really big fire though. Isn't it cool? It's something else. You don't see anything else like that at any other distillery. That's a different purpose though. Very different purpose. So, are you using all, well, plus it's a different wood because that's- Yeah. What's the charcoal? You said charcoal dust. So, what kind of wood charcoal is being used to filter Cristalino's? Cristalino is a coconut fiber. Coconut fiber? Coconut fiber. It just has to be activated carbon. I mean, exactly. Okay. But you cannot do it out of any type of wood. Yeah. This is activated charcoal powder. The one for Jack, the fire you started, it's maple little cubes. And that's charcoal mellowing, which is a different process. A very different process. And then on the American oak, how much of it is brand new when you start and how much of it do you reuse? Well, it comes new from the coverage, but since our recipe is not a mandate because the majority of tequila distilleries, they buy used barrels from Bourbon and they keep on reusing them for years and years and years because you're not supposed to replace them ever. You're not even supposed to char or toast. So we toast and char in a different level for every tequila. They come new and we reuse them for nine years. So a big chunk of them come new because we're replacing all the time. But the other part of it, it's not new because we reuse it. For this, we use it only twice. For this, we use it only once. And for Herradura Reposado, nine times. For Herradura Añejo, four times. For Gimado Reposado, fifty times. It all depends on how long you use it for, divided in nine years. And then it's just a blending process, right? You're pulling barrels to have consistency in each of the different levels. You're going to be pulling barrels of various different amounts of usage. Yeah. And combining them together. When we need to bottle Herradura Reposado, so we go to the Barrel Keeper. We need to bottle Herradura Reposado. Herradura Reposado has to be 11 months. So he says, those 2,000 barrels there, they are 11 months right now. So we bring them down, we blend all the liquid from those 2,000 barrels. Then a team, me included, of 36 tasting panel people, we taste the tequila, 90% of us have to agree that is within color and flavor profile. If it is, then we bottle. This is the blending of a lot of barrels. If it's not, then you wait. No. If it's really bad, then you sell it to somebody else. No. If there's a little bit of a lack of color, then we blend with Añejo. If there's excess of color, we blend with Blanco, and then with that, we balance the flavor profile. It's a very, very complicated, strict process, and a lot of sipping. Quality control, you mean. Of course. Speaking of quality control, what should we try next? We should go to Selección Suprema. Wow. Selección Suprema, it's a 49-month-age extrañejo. And there's a couple of interesting thing about this Selección Suprema. The first extrañejo ever produced, so there was only añejo. And the rule for añejo, it's 12 months, and that's it. Since we produced the first Reposado ever in 1974, so we knew consumer liked the wood tequila. So we said, what if we stress ourselves and age a tequila as much as we can? We tried, began doing this like in 1978. You're responsible for brown tequila. I'm responsible for promoting all tequilas from Herradura. But I mean, you're saying Herradura is responsible for the creation of brown tequila. Reposado tequila, was any tequila aged before this Reposado? Well, no wonder it had such a bad rep from everybody in my parents' generation. Well, that was gold tequila maybe, which is different. Aged tequila or brown tequila, it's real color coming from the oak. Sure. Gold tequila is caramel color added. Yeah, right. Like if you add Coca-Cola to your sparkling water, it looks like whiskey. The first Reposado ever was made by Herradura. Since we knew people like that, we said, let's push ourselves and see how long we can go. We tried 60 months, 65 months, 70 months. After we tried a lot of things, in those days, we did try French oak. We didn't like it. We like American oak better. The one that we all like the best with a better balance, it was the 49-month-age tequila. We talked to the CRT and said, listen, this cannot be called the Estranjero. Like with Cognac, it's not BSOP, it's XO. This is like XA. That's what it says here, Estranjero. When did CRT classify Reposado? How long were you selling aged tequila before CRT actually classified Reposado? 1974, we launched it and they classified. There was no CRT then. It was only the Tequila Chamber. For Estranjero, we launched it in 1995 and the CRT classified it up until 2006. Right, it was a while. So if you happen to have all Selección Suprema bottles, it says, Estranjero. Now the news since 2006, they say, Estranjero. So the first Reposado and first Estranjero in the industry was launched by Herradura. So what do you think about this? It's like a lot of the similar notes of the last one, but just amped up. It's also very, very fruity and caramel. But when you get into this and when this is, when Estranjejos are done, well, some Estranjejos, you said you went through a whole process and went out as far as five or six years. We've had the opportunity to try tequilas that have been aged 23 years, I think is the oldest one we've had commercially available. But this is, these are the tequilas that done right are really crossing a bridge to whiskey. I mean, this drinks, this is really elegant. It drinks like an elegant whiskey. I was gonna say elegant too. It doesn't, but it's not as overly wooded as I think you would expect a lot of tequila at four plus years to be. No, but it's got the leathery pipe tomato, cedar notes that sort of fucks it up. And that's why we chose the 49 months. And so people say, why not 48, which is four years? Why not 50? Why 49? It's not about the number, it's about the balance, the elegance, the finish. It's not as sweet and fruity as Ultra. It's more oaky and more towards the whiskey area. And it has an amazing, nice balance. But that stuff is still shining through too. And it doesn't, but yeah, it doesn't lose the agave. I mean, this is, it does not lose the agave, that spice, that herbaceous spice. People who don't like tequila, and you pour them this because they're whiskey drinkers or cognac. You can say, okay, try it. You don't like tequila, but try this. They will realize it's agave, and they will say, okay, this tequila I can like, I can enjoy. There's no way to trick that it's a whiskey or a brandy because the agave is there. That's the nice thing about this, that you can still enjoy the agave. It's a beautiful, amazing, amazing tequila. Beautiful tequila. So, the Ultra is $59.99 and this one is $359.99. So, it is delicious tequila. It's fantastic tequila. Three additional $100 is a pretty big step up. Well, I mean, it's worth it. It's worth it. And it's expensive to age a tequila that long. I mean, you lose a lot to evaporation over that period. because you're warehousing and storage. We talked earlier when you talk about growing agave, just how generally hot it is in that part of, in Jalisco state, in that part of. Jalisco, what does your warehousing look like? Do you have any kind of heating or cooling in the building or just all open? just a regular, typical Mexican construction style with bricks. Bricks made out of mud. And that's it. No air conditioning, no heating, no sprinkling water, no nothing. So we just let the weather do what it has to do. So 40% liquid loss. That is ridiculous. In this one. It's pretty ridiculous. At four years too. You get that in bourbon in 20 years. So when I hear there's a 20-year-old tequila, it makes me think like, so maybe they have like an air conditioning in this warehouse. That's exactly what they have. It's so cool. One thing you didn't know about this, once the bottle is empty, you want to throw it away, remove the cork in here, and this is like little 50 ml shot glass with the same shape of a bottle. The same shape of a bottle, and then you can remove that once it's empty, and you can fill it. It's a- See, for your extra few hundred bucks, you're getting a shot glass. Get a little shot glass. It's cute. It's like the jelly jar wine glass. It's pretty cute. For paid subscribers to barrel a bottle, you can actually get the video of us drinking shots out of this. X-Nay on the premium subscriber. We haven't rolled that feature out yet. It's coming right after we get our TikTok back. All right, Ruben, you've also brought what looks to be a special treat, a herradura. I don't recognize. That wasn't the special treat. Well, this was a very special treat. Everything's a special treat. Don't get me wrong. Every one of Herraduras, it's a special treat in its own way. You know, in its own way, because in Mexico, we do drink tequila before lunch, silver, with lunch, reposado, after lunch, añejo, extra treat. You can go cigar, fireplace, do something like this. Big time dessert person, ultra, so that all of them are extra treat. This is the new thing coming to town. It will be here in September and we call it legend. Herradura itself, it's a legend. 152 years being successful in the business, always launching new things like the first reposado, the first extrañejo. So we launched the first tequila, aged in grooved barrels, heavy toast, heavy char, grooved barrels. That way the tequila can get deeper into the oak, in those groups inside the barrel. This is, I'm sorry that I'm pouring myself first every time. Look at the color of this tequila. Jack did this, right? The Jack Daniel Sinatra Select has grooved barrels. Since Jack Daniel Sinatra was a big deal, so we said, why don't we do the same thing with tequila? So we decided to launch this legend. It's a 14 month, not 49, it's 14 months. It's a baby. Añejo, it's a baby compared to Selección Suprema, but with a grooved barrel. So do the grooves cut through the char to get closer to natural wood, or is the char to post groove so it just increases the surface area? It increases the surface area because you grooved and then you toast and char. And then you toast and char. Exactly. So that the tequila gets deeper into the oak and look at this color. It's even darker than Selección Suprema. So it is. because it's only 14 months, and now you'll get a different style. So they all came from a beautiful blanco herradura. But as you toast and char in a different level, and as you do for different amount of months, you get very different finish. Is there going to be enough of this? I feel like we're about to hype something that the nerds are going to super geek out about. This is really good, and it's right in the wheelhouse of flavors I love most. It's like vanilla and coconut and lactone oak and this is awesome. There are also other experiments. I mean, this isn't the only one. This is just the newest. I mean, you have released. What other special releases in the past? Other things that Herradura has done. There was like a double oak, wasn't there? There's a double oak reposado. Double oak reposado. When we became 150-year-old, we did a special edition of double oak and did the 150th anniversary. Ultra is like a recent thing. It's been five years only on the market. Okay. Then we have the double barrels. Double barrels is also a nice thing going on, that you get to choose your own barrel. We did one of those, right? I think you did. I think the double we did. The double barrel, which is like a single barrel for you only. So out of that barrel, you have 240 bottles. They're all here for you and no one else has that tequila. It's your unique own Binny's tequila. We don't release a whole lot of things because the one thing that we release has to be very, very unique, very, very special, like this. So it took us some years to release this. Now it's been on the market only in the US, not in Mexico, only for the US and not even in the entire US yet. I think it's only like in eight or 10 states coming to Illinois in September. Okay. But it's been very successful in states which it's already at. Talking about like a hundred bucks, like a hundred and twenty bucks. We got a sales guy in the corner of the room. Is this timeline accurate probably, September? September in market, October in store. Okay. And what price do we anticipate this landing at? I think it's 130. 130 something, yeah. This is really good. This is your whiskey guys need to get in on this. This is the whiskey drinkers to Cuba for sure. So you can tell the flavor notes, the sensorial out of this one, it's very different than Selección Suprema and of course very different than Ultra. This is far more complex, okier, whiskey style, drier, not as sweet fruity but drier. But there's still like a birch beer, there's like a birch beer, cocoa berry, root beer sort of character. Sarsaparilla? It's sarsaparilla. No, you know what Ruben, I was thinking of the Coleccion de la Casa releases. Coleccion de la Casa we released in 2012, the Port Casque finish. Yeah. Oh yeah, I remember that. 2013 Cognac Casque and then 2014 we did Scotch out of two different Scotch companies, Barrels. Port was one company, Cognac was one company, Scotch was from two different companies, we cannot disclose the brands. So we got Barrels from them, we finished our Herradura Reposado, two extra months for Port and Whiskey, three extra months for Cognac. Now, could you call it an Inejo at that point? Or does it have to be in one Barrel for 12 months? Exactly. Okay. Exactly, so they were all Reposado. That's a great question. So it's not the addition of, it's the first Barrel. Okay. But dictates, so it was 11 months Reposado, then finished for two extra, remains a Reposado. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Barrel finished Reposado. Well, yeah, so that was a special edition, back in 12, 13 and 14, not anymore. They were good, they were different, but not like big, big, big deal. They were amazing tequilas, but not like people would drink like, you know. But it goes back to your roots where it's one more object lesson that you're best off in American Oak. We didn't really talk about how these agaves are getting from these hundreds of thousands of acres or whatever into the bottle here. So all this agave gets grown for what? About six, seven years? Seven years. Seven years. And then it gets processed at the distillery and it has to get cooked first, right? The process is, of course, checking that the agave is mature after seven years because it might not be completely mature after seven years. So you should wait a little bit. So it's around seven years. You can check if it has enough maturity. Like in wine you measure, in grapes you measure the bricks. Bricks, yeah. In this case, you measure azucar reductores because it's a starch. Once we cook the agave, then you can measure bricks because now it's sugar. Okay. Say that again. Azucar. Azucar reductores. So that sounds something like sucra meaning sugar and reductive sugar. It's a piece of the molecular structure in a starch. Okay. So it's sugars to be once you submit this to a hydrolyzation cooking process. So the cooking process can be done in two different ways. The brick ovens which you've seen or the pressure stainless steel pressure cookers, like a big microwave oven. That's not good. Autoclave. Autoclave. They're not good. So we do the brick ovens. You do it gently. You caramelize all these starch into beautiful sugar. And how long does that take? 26 hours. So in a brick oven and that's just like hot steam gets injected into it, right? And so it cooks for about 26 hours. Then it has to get crushed and processed. Squeezed, crushed and blended with water. The fermentation, which is the next step after that, will not happen if the agave juice is not blended with water. because it chokes out the yeast essentially, right? It will be very difficult to ferment. So the yeast, it chokes out. They will say, it's too much. It's like you're trying to drink milk out of a cow. It's not easy to drink milk out of a cow. It's too heavy. And then when you guys ferment... You don't know what Greg does on the weekends. I'm going to take your word for it. A couple of things in that process. When you're doing fermentation, is it just liquid or do you leave any bagasse in with? No. It's all just strictly liquid. So bagasse would be the fibers and everything from the crush. Some people do that. Some other distilleries do that. Back in the day, pretty much everyone did that. We don't. We've never done it. So our juice is completely bagasse fiber free. There are 18,000 gallon capacity big tanks. We fill them with agave juice and a little bit of water. It's like a radio of 60% agave juice, 40% agave juice, 60% water. That's why your question about the water is important because the agave, there's a lot of water involved in everything, so the water has to be a great quality. You let it sit in these tanks for four days and it's a completely spontaneous fermentation. So, we don't have completely spontaneous natural occurring yeast. No inoculation. Natural wild airborne natural occurring yeast inside the hacienda. And it doesn't taste like a foot. I just always, it blows my mind that little guys can do this, yet alone, enormous industrial operations, not that it's not an artisanal enormous industrial operation, but that you just like rolling the dice, you know? I can see how snow. You couldn't put heradura anywhere else. I mean, that's part of the thing. That's part of the sense of place is you couldn't put heradura anywhere else. If you moved the distillery five miles away, it would taste different. That's why we, the way we keep all the fruit trees inside the hacienda, the way we keep the plantations outside the hacienda, it's very controlled. So we have 16 different types of fruits and we need to have the same percentage proportion of type of fruits. So the yeast from each fruit tree is the same, so they always ferment the same way. So it's not that, okay, we don't like oranges anymore. Cut all the orange trees and bring bananas. The whole thing will change because now- Do you have any jackfruit growing? No. Oh, that's a shame. We have 16 different fruits. I think I can name you all those, but not that one. But that's a big deal, keeping all the fruit trees healthy inside the hacienda. Any oddball fruits that would get our- We have a resident fruit enthusiast who's a podcast host. Yeah, he's a fruitophile. He's not on this episode. Well, some of them are indigenous fruits from Mexico, like Arrayán. Do you have Membrillo? Membrillo. And then we have also tamarind, which is an indigenous tamarind. We have guava, not indigenous, but we have banana. And then the citruses, we have lemon, lime, grapefruit, lima, orange. Then we have pomegranate, we have banana, we have mango, tons of mangoes. And then we have nispero, we have a lot of them. Somewhere in the universe, there's this energy flowing right now and Roger is quivering slightly. But it's a big deal to have a 100% naturally-born wild yeast. That's amazing. I want to know about the brick ovens. Yeah. So, are they like automated? No, how do I make? No. So, here's the, okay, so we went to Jack Daniels, right? And we saw the tanks where the spirit drips through the filtration process, and it's really rustic. It's like, well, where's the rest of it? because this is really inefficient. And they're like, oh, we made another building with a whole bunch more of these. You know, I'm just imagining a whole bunch of brick ovens with a whole bunch of sweaty guys that are like, you know. And they get loaded in by hand, I would assume, right? You know, there's a conveyor belt kind of helping. That's exactly right. And that's why... You said it pretty well, because when it becomes very complicated to do, people say, we need to find like a quicker way, efficient way to do things. When you do that, the whole recipe changes. So instead of just going to a much modern way of doing things, we keep on building ovens so they can be cooked on the same way. So we have 15 ovens. Each one of them has 40-ton capacity and it's loaded by hand. So you send five guys into the oven. Imagine like in this room, we will fit like three ovens, 40-ton capacity. It has a window in the front, a window in the back. So in the front, you send five guys into the oven. It's not heating yet. Yeah, right. Send them inside and you put the conveyor belt and then you send one agave one by one by hand into the oven. And they have to be placed the right way inside the oven. You cut them in half. So you cut in half an orange or an agave. So that's the round part and the flat part. Yeah. So the flat part has always been facing down. So they place them facing down always and they fit 40 tons of agave hand by hand. You can imagine. You shut the door, bring the steam in, you wait 26 hours. It's like 95 celsius temperature, 120 something Fahrenheit, very hot. After 26 hours, you open both doors. Let it cool down, nine hours. After nine hours, a brave guy goes into the oven to say, okay, we can handle the temperature. Okay, guys, everyone jumps in. Everybody get in the oven. It's cold enough. Otherwise, we're running out of guys. Yeah. So, they start bringing the agave out of the oven, and it takes another three and a half, four hours to bring all the 40 tons of agave out. You're painting a really romantic picture, but Brett has photos. That's a different distillery, but it's the same principle. This looks like sock had happened here. Yeah, it does. I mean... Yeah. Is it similarly charred inside your oven like that? Very similar. Wow. I mean, that's a scary basement room. And if you notice, the floor has some channels. Yeah. So, the first liquid that comes out of the agave, it's a bitter liquid. Bitter honeys. Through bitter honeys. So, through those channels, there's an exit that way, and you lose all those bitter honeys. So, you just let them run away. Let them run. Once you know, after one hour, almost two, that they're gone, you shut that one off and then you open that one in the other side. That's where the good juices are coming out towards the tanks at which you want to capture all the self-squeezed agaves syrup that is coming. That's like just piled agaves and as they heat, they leak this liquid. Yeah. because the steam is always coming from- because the steam is always coming from the bottom part, and you have 40 tons of agave. So these ones, the weight of these are squeezing the ones on the bottom. So they get squeezed on its own, and all the agave that we get from there, we need to capture. It's good agave use. Once you finish that, then you bring the agaves out and then you squeeze them in a machine, a trapiche. because at some point, you talked about a diffuser, we don't use a diffuser for herradura. So trapiche is the old-fashioned way of smashing or squeezing or pressing the agave. So not a typical roller mill. It is a typical roller mill, that's a trapiche. That's a trapiche. The one you saw, we climbed and we saw that. And you're adding a lot of water also, so the water also washes off the juice, the sugar from the agave fiber. And then when you get all this beautiful juice, you blend it with the original juice you got from the oven. The original juice from the oven has zero water and tons of sugar. The juice you get from the milling process, you got a lot of water also, and you have to blend that one also like at a 60-40 ratio. And once you blend that, then you start the fermentation process. Wow. It's a very complicated process. Very artisanal. Four Herradura still is very artisanal. Sounds laborious. And how long does it have to ferment then? Four days. Four days ferment. And then it gets pot distilled from there for Herradura? Pot, yes, of course. Twice pot stills, yeah. They're like, it's 2,200 liter capacity pot stills. The still, for the first time, it goes three hours. Second time, six hours. Both times you cut heads and tails, remove those, which is something no one does. Most people, they do, all people, they do cut heads and tails either on first or on second. Most likely on second. We cut heads and tails in both. And do you remove that or you redistill? Does that go back into the first? 85% of the energy we need for running the ovens or running the pot stills, we make our own energy out of the heads and tails. Interesting. Wow. So we invest a lot of time in being sustainable, green, clean. And then do you just, do you have to compost the agave? Fibers and shreds and stuff after the mill then? Yes. So we, yeah, you get a lot of fiber, a lot of bagazo. And we have a six month process blending that bagazo with soil and with organic leftovers. Six month process with humongous tractors in a big area back there, and we make our own compost. So every plantation to be will be covered, like a carpet. Cover that plantation with that compost before bringing the baby agaves to be planted. So again, nothing goes to waste. And everything that we do also is the footprint. It's a big time for us. How long have you been there? 22 years. But related with Herradura, my grandma back in the day and me drinking Herradura, 47 years. And he's 49, guys. Yeah. Drinking every single day Herradura for 47 years. Actually, I did 6 years with Herradura and now 16 years with Brown-Forman. How are you dealing with constraints to growth based on the fact that you source... You don't purchase agave from anywhere but your own. We produce our own agave. You produce your own agave. We control every plantation that we need yet. So where do you think at that point in time you max out with the amount that you can produce? I mean, have you hit the point in time with that amount of agave available that you can't open up any more countries, you can't expand any more, or you still have room for expansion? No, the only thing is that you have to plan seven years ahead. Let's say, okay, we want to go to Bangladesh and we have everything covered. I'll say Bangladesh wants to begin with 100,000 cases. Where do we get those? So we have to plan ahead. So there's plenty of land. There's plenty of space. No need to expand the denomination of origin or the Apelación Controle, the area in which you can legally grow agave. There's plenty of land still. If you manage things the right way in between agave producers and tequila producers and the agave syrup producers, which they are taking out of agave now, there's plenty of land. You only have to just manage the right way. So we don't have a problem with that. The only thing is that every time you want to really increase your... Someone comes in and you, okay, so you have this business in Bangladesh and you want us to present you 100,000 cases. We never planned for that. So we can do that tomorrow. That's why legend is coming up until September, October, because we have to plan ahead for a long time. That's a complicated thing. But no, we're planning and growing in a very healthy, steady pace. If you're going to seven years, then you're getting some plants that are springing, kiyotes, right? Kiyote, oh yeah. So they're springing kiyote. Are you utilizing that to replant other parts of the vineyard? In other words, using seed and pollination? Or is everything that you're replanting clonal? No. Everything that we replant, every single plant of agave, when she is three years of age, she produces in between three to five baby agaves. We call those hijuelo. Actually, when the kiyote grows, the kiyote is like a big flower in the middle of the agave that grows pretty high up, beautiful flower. As soon as we see it's growing, we cut it off. because if you leave it alive, the agave will die. So kiyotes nowadays, they're almost extinct. Back in the day, the agave would do pollinized by the Mexican long-nosed bat. It's been hundreds of years that not anymore. So you remove the baby agaves, the hijuelos from the agave when she's three years of age, so she can grow healthy and on her own. Otherwise, she'll be feeding too many babies and the agave will grow small. We remove the baby agaves from her and we take them to a nursery for about a year until they become bigger size. There's three sizes for baby agaves, three sizes for hijuelos. The lime size, the orange size, and the grapefruit size. That's the size of the little pina. So we like the ones that are grapefruit size. Once they're that size, we plant them. And plantations take every year in May, before the rainy season, in June, so they can get a lot of water as they're planted. So every single plantation that we do, it's out of baby agaves, hijuelos, from our own plants. And there's a planning, okay? So how much are we growing next year? And we talk to every single state, every single country, every single salesperson everywhere. So, okay, we plan we're growing 10% next year. So we're planting more and more agave. So you're not allowing any kind of pollination to happen? because there is, I mean, we're talking a bat-friendly project. I mean, there is a... There is a big effort with the bat-friendly thing. So there's a lot of people. We are even doing some. But if you think that the industry will survive with that, no way, and not even close to, you know, maybe 20 years, I don't know how many, but we are involved in that, you know, bat-friendly growing agave. because the Mexican bat, which happens to be like a very long nose, you know, like the little, the hummingbird, you know, like a very long nose, so they're almost extinct. So there were some people saying that we need to save them. So by leaving the quiotes grow, you're helping the Mexican bat, agave bat, to reproduce. So it's happening, but in a very slow pace. But I mean, just, I think the part of the argument is it's also, but it's also good for the agave. It will be good. It's good for the agave, because with pollination, you get a little bit more genetic variation. It's a little more genetic. It allows protection to develop. Absolutely. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do. I'm saying that it's going to take a long time. It's a very long time. Actually, nowadays, if you go to everyone's plantations, you see more quiotes around. because the typical thing to do is just cut them up, otherwise the agave will die. If you have an agave plantation with 10,000 plants and you have three quiotes, you can let it live. It's three. But if you have an agave plantation with 10,000 agaves and 9,900 of them have quiotes, you got to cut them up, because otherwise you're losing all your agave. So it's happening. And I think it's a great thing. But it's not going to be big in a while. So, speaking of industry trends, across the whole liquor industry, but very much in tequila, we are seeing an explosive proliferation in celebrities who are hitching themselves to specifically tequila and mezcal. As someone who is not a celebrity, I assume. I am not, I am not. What's your take? I mean, do you think this is going to impact the business? Well, I think it's good that the business grows. I think it's interesting that celebrities are getting into it, as long as they get into it like for the real love for tequila. Not only for the, I don't know, the being better celebrities only because they own a tequila brand. Some people are there because they truly love tequila. A couple of them have done a great job. Some others not so great, but we'll see. But I think it's fair that anyone can get into tequila, as long as they respect the true nature of tequila. The sad part of that is that you find that there's, I think like 85 percent of tequila brands, they don't have their own distillery. Right. We've noticed that there's a limited number of producers and a whole lot of brands. You can make the number. Maybe you're better in math than me, but it's 1,700 brands and 160 distilleries. Meaning that, and if you take people like Cuervo, like us, we don't make brands for anyone else. So then the percentage grows. Someone did the same question yesterday, and I was trying to explain to them the meaning of the NOM, four-digit number, which is your license number. So we were checking on this tequila match, finding all distilleries and all brands. And we found one distillery that makes 152 different labels. That's not good, with all the respect to everyone, to my point of view, you know. So it makes a big difference that you want to make, get into the tequila industry, build your own distillery and make your own tequila, cook your own thing and make your own recipe. And it's like having a restaurant with a lot of tables, but buying food from the restaurant across the street. Yeah, or the restaurant supply company where you get the big frozen bag of macaroni and cheese that you have to boil. So it's nice that people are getting interested. Do you think that there's, like in bourbon specifically, there is a big cohort of bourbon fans who see past the branding. I mean, and people know that there are certain huge industrial distilleries that are producing very good product and then it's what you do with it after that. Do you think that there's room for that in tequila or no? Well, that's the only reason why they are different because if you have 152 labels from one distillery, they all get the same use. They all get bottled at the same place. They all get out of the same barrels. If it's a blanco, not exactly. If it's a blanco, it is a blanco because that's what you get, that's what you produce. They all get the same use. They're allowed to get that use from that distillery to their own facility to age in different type of barrels, size, age, and they can be battled somewhere else. It doesn't matter. As long as you grow your agave, produce your tequila, bottle your tequila, age your tequila within the designated area, it doesn't matter where within the five states, it's okay. What they do is they take their blanco tequila from the distillery and they take it to a aging facility and that's what the finish makes a difference. because if you have A, tequila from distillery one and B, tequila from distillery one, blanco, they taste the same. It's the same tequila. It's the same tequila. But they finish in French oak and you finish in American oak, that's what makes a little bit of a difference. But you happen to find many of those with the same NOM number and they're blanco, taste them, they will taste the same. You're seeing a little bit of that. You drive from Guadalajara to Amatitan now, there's 25 new tequila distilleries on the roadside. They're building new distilleries? Yeah, which is good. So you want to build your own brand, build your own distillery. Well, when I visited you 20 years ago, how many distilleries were there in Amatitan at that time? You think of three or four? Three or four, one of them being Partida. Partida, Herradura, did sousa have a facility there? No, sousa is in tequila. In tequila town. The other one is Revolucion, I think it's Revolucion. It was on three or four. Sure. But now on the road, you see 20, which is good, no? I mean, it's not only tequila. Bourbon is the same thing. It's only a handful of bourbon distilleries and a lot of bourbons. Wine, the same things, not only Mexican. That's one of the big secrets that nobody talks about, especially if you're buying wine at a grocery store. There's like three or four wineries that is making most of that wine. Right. So don't blame it on the crazy Mexicans doing tequila that way, because it happens in all other- Oh yeah. Every bit of the alcohol in the street does the same thing. But it's growing. So it's nice to see now that you have a lot of options of distilleries roadside going to Amatitan. I haven't been on the highlands in the last two years for obvious reasons, COVID, but I can imagine there should be another 20 going to Amatitan. There's a ton now. I was in the highlands right before COVID hit and right on the roadside, you see these huge industrial distilleries, big column stills sticking out of the buildings, just producing bulk juice for grocery stores. Right, just to Patalan. When you're getting toward Don Julio and stuff. Up to Tanika, Batania, and around the crossroad. It's like, somebody's signature tequila. So there's like grain to glass distilleries these days. They're springing up, they're growing very intimately, they're green, but still it's distillation. It's a little different than wine, where there's a couple production steps separating the earth from what's in the glass. And as long as people are respectfully farming in a sustainable way that we can keep doing this for thousands of years, and then, you know, crafting something that they care about in a meaningful way, instead of just slapping a label on it, it's Yes. Right? Yes. Right. That's the idea. That's the idea. So when you see tiny distilleries going to Amatitan, that's good, because now people are investing behind their brand. When you see industrial facilities going somewhere else, not good, because then you're getting all these... All these made up brands. Yeah. Well, and running through diffusers, harvesting agave way too young, running through diffusers, which, you know, less quality, and that hurts the whole industry, because the more those brands get dumbed down, the more people are going to try them, Well, then it's for guys like these, for producers like these, that's a multi-generational, multi-century stalwart to keep making good stuff, and keep spinning up interesting new takes, like the Ultra, and like this, the one with the- Legend. Legend? Legend. The one with the grooved barrels. Yeah. Which is really good. The one thing we need to see, now that I'm guessing something wrong for anyone, maybe it's 10 years from now, 20 years from now, how many of those survived? Right. We've been around for 152 years, many others, you know, 20, 50, I don't know, but maybe 20 years from now, we'll see, because now it's just the boom. It's tequila, it's trendy everywhere. Everyone wants to get into it, but maybe what it happens to, it happened to Brandy in Spain. Brandy is this big in Spain. It's their local spirit. Brandy is not even the biggest spirit in Spain. They lost the attraction to Brandy in Spain. So now it's Irish whiskey or gin. No gin. Gin, so it's, in Mexico, we shouldn't allow that to happen. In the US, thank God, so far, it's growing. I think like 15 years ago, tequila was like 6% of the industry. Now I think it's like 18% of the industry. So keep it going, that would be great, but we don't want to go reach a peak and then start losing. So we'll see. I don't wish any bad for anyone, but now it's booming too much. Then the consistency, we'll see. Well, I hate the word innovation in the liquor industry because it usually means like putting blueberry flavoring in something. But there has been tremendous innovation in the tequila industry in the last 20 years. Yeah. So keep it coming. The flavors have not worked a whole lot. You can check your numbers. I don't think you sell a lot of flavor to tequila. We don't sell a lot of flavor to tequila. Like in establishing something like Reposado, and then pushing Past and Yeho into new territories. Yeah. We're trying, but we don't do things like too quick because there's not a whole lot to innovate. The innovation for the tequila industry, it's happening on moving from the mixtues to the 100 percent agave tequila. That's a good thing. Yeah, that's a good thing. Back in the day when you came down, maybe 70 percent of the tequila was mixed to 30 percent was 100 percent agave. Now it's the opposite. Yeah. That's also why we have a little bit of a crisis with agave because back in the day you need only half of the agave to make a tequila liter. Now you need 100 percent agave to make tequila liter. Now it's 70 percent, 100 percent agave, 30 percent mixtues. And mixtues are going, you can see your numbers too. People are going away from mixtues. So that's a great way to understand that the tequila, the people involved in tequila is really caring for producing better tequila. So mixto means that you can combine 100 percent blue agave liquid or distillate with other distillate. Most of the time, cane, right? I mean, either other forms of agave or sugar. It has to be 51 percent of the alcohol from agave juices and 49 percent from anything else, whatever you want. It can be potato, it can be corn, it can be sugar cane, it can be whatever you want. It can be a blend of both and you don't have to explain that. That's why people are going away from mixers because in reality, 49 percent of what you're drinking, you have no clue where it's coming from. You want 100 percent of it. It's just alcohol. Yes. It's neutral spirit. Ruben, thanks a lot for your time today. This is really eye-opening. Sharing these awesome tequilas with us. I'm looking forward to seeing that legend in the stores. Listeners, check out Herradura Ultra, widely available at Binny's near you. Same thing with Selección Esprima. Legend coming in hopefully September or October. Pat, Brett, and Joe will excitedly take your phone calls when you're looking for a bottle. There we go. Thanks again for tuning in this week. If you enjoyed this content, do us a favor, leave us a review on the podcast platform of your choice. This one that you're listening to us on right now. Yeah, whatever it is. We'll see you next week. I'm Pat. I'm Brett. I'm Greg. Ruben, thank you so much for having me. Now say, keep tasting. Keep tasting, but like as a statement, not a question. Keep tasting, of course. Keep tasting. Herradura. I'm Ron Burgundy.