Category: drinks with

A few months back I had a very long lunch with Francisco Alcaraz, Paton Tequila's Master Distiller and Blender at the restaurant Kokkari in San Francisco. Alcaraz is not only the current master distiller, he created the recipe for Patron.

Alcaraz studied chemical engineering at the University of Guadalajara then went to work as an inspector for an organization that was sort of a precursor to the CRT, the tequila regulatory commission. After that he went to work in a distillery and as a tequila consultant.

Alcaraz developed the recipe for Patron at the distillery Siete Leguas (another brand still producing delicious tequila), where Patron was made from 1989 until 2002 before building their own distillery. Siete Leguas had both the traditional tahona (a giant grinding stone that crushes baked agave before fermentation and distillation) and a mechanical shredder (roller mill) that accomplishes the same thing, though these produce tequila with different flavors (and the topic incites long tequila nerd arguments). Patron uses a combination of tahona-crushed and shredded agave in its recipe.  

Other differences from Siete Leguas' recipe include the type of yeast used and the source of the agave.

The agave for Patron all comes from the Highlands of Jalisco, but it is not estate-grown. (That would be a darn big estate!) Alcaraz says they have contracts with seven large growers, and they do buy other agave on the open market. Another brand told me that they were required to buy some agave from small producers, but Alcaraz says that there is no requirement. There is, however, an incentive: The government (not sure if local or state) subsidizes part of the price of the agave to support these smaller farms. 

Furthermore, Patron has long-term contracts with their growers to ensure that they will not be susceptible to the frequent agave market shortages that take place in cycles. (Another way they're preparing for future shortages is to store extra tequila in large stainless tanks to be bottled when needed.)

After agave is delivered to the distillery, it is slow roasted in brick ovens (compared with faster autoclaves that some brands use), fermented in wood fermentation vats, and double distilled. Contrary to industry gossip, Alcaraz says that Patron distills all their own agave, and it is all made at their facilities.

Beyond the regular Patron range, they have two super-ultra-mega=-expensive premium options: Gran Patron Platinum and Gran Patron Burdeos. For the Platinum, they use agave with the highest sugar content, triple distill it, and age it in a large new, uncharred oak tank for one month.  The Burdeos is made from the same raw material as the Platinum, but is aged one year in American oak, then redistilled, then aged 10 more months in French oak, then finished in an ex-Bordeau wine barrel for two more months.

Alcaraz says he doesn't drink tequila out of the Riedel Tequila Glass
not because it's not good, but because it's too good. He says it makes tequila taste better than it is. "If there is something wrong I want to taste it!" he said.

He also said something I've never heard before: that tequila improves in the bottle. That's a surprise, but one I don't think I'll ever be able to test- not only do you have to have a long and great sensory memory, I can never wait around while there's a bottle of tequila nearby.

Drinks With… is a regular Alcademics category where I share what I learned when meeting with industry notables.

Last week I asked Alcademics readers what I should ask Francicso Hanal Alfaro, Cuervo's Maestro Tequilero and Araceli Ramos, Director at La Rojeña, the Cuervo Distillery. You answered here and on Facebook. I didn't get to ask all your questions but I learned some really interesting stuff.

Alfaro lives in Mexico City and is also one of the people who helped decide on the Riedel tequila glass that I use nearly every day.

Pre-Spanish Distillation?

I first asked about the theory beginning to be espoused by Steve Olson and others that distillation predates the Spanish coming to Mexico. The theory is based on some findings of a very old still and some chemical analysis. It doesn't sound like anything conclusive has been proven by archeologists though. But one contributing theory that was brought up at the Agavepalooza session at Tales of the Cocktail is that as the natives were drinking pulque when the spanish arrived, and if you distill pulque you get rubber instead of delicious tequila. Thus it would take a longer time to develop the technology to distill tequila from the hearts of roasted agave plants than the actual time from the Spanish arriving in Mexico to tequila showing up. The technology couldn't have developed that fast, says the theory.

Though Alfaro wasn't familiar with this pre-Spanish theory, he said that natives in the tequila region (as opposed to the areas where they were drinking pulque- uncooked, fermented juice of certain types of agave) were consuming vina de mescal- mescal wine. "Mescal" he said means something like "the thing that is cooking," and thus vina de mescal refers to baked/cooked agave that is then fermented into wine. So if cooking and fermenting mescal is pre-Spanish also, then the theory that it couldn't have been developed between the time the Spanish arrived and the time tequila was known to exist would not be valid. (This is not to say Alfaro was speaking directly to this theory, he just added his thoughts to my question. Hopefully this will advance the conversation.)

Where Does your Agave Come From, and Are you Hurting Small Agave Farms and Families?

Cuervo gets agave from three different types of source. Most is estate owned. The next most is leased land- other people own the land but they own the agave and tend to the land. (Much "estate-grown" tequila from other brands is on leased land.) Third, they buy agave on the open market.

The important point that I hadn't heard before (my kingdom for a few hours with the CRT) is that they said they have to buy some agave from small farmers by law. A recent paper said that because more brands are buying land, they are putting small farmers out of business. (See the question Neyah proposed in the comment here for more information on why this is important.) Yet as I wrote a while back, the reason brands are buying up land is because of the gluts and shortages in the agave market when left to small players- Alfaro brought this up as well. I really would like to know more about this law to better understand the issue.

Cuervo employs 3500 jimadors (the folks who harvest the agave). They also own most of their land in the Tequila Valley (lowlands), but also some in the highlands and some also in the neighboring state of Nayarit. Some of it is in the area close to Puerto Vallarta (thus very low in elevation) and Alfaro says the agaves grow to be huge there.

Though all the talk in tequila these days is about terroir, Alfaro emphasized that no matter where they grow their agave, they use the same fertilizer and even irrigation to keep it consistent between areas. We didn't get into this as much as I wanted as we ran out of time to talk.