History of tequila

Agave before tequila

People in what is now Mexico were eating agave and weaving its fibres long before anyone fermented it; remains of that use go back around 9,000 years. At least a thousand years ago they were fermenting its sap into pulque, a milky, beer-strength drink that the Aztecs associated with Mayahuel, goddess of the agave. Agave also gave them rope, cloth, mats and paper.

In the valley around Tequila, the Teuchitlán culture farmed the land between AD 200 and 900, and their ruins still sit among the agave fields.

Mezcal wine

The Spanish arrived in 1521 with a taste for brandy and no easy way to get it. Distillation, possibly helped by stills brought by Filipino sailors on the Manila galleons, was applied to cooked and fermented agave, and by around the middle of the 16th century the settlers were producing vino mezcal, mezcal wine. Over the next two centuries the version made around the town of Tequila, west of Guadalajara, became known simply by the town's name.

Cuervo and Sauza

In 1758 José Antonio de Cuervo was granted land near Tequila, and in 1795 King Carlos IV of Spain gave his son, José María Guadalupe de Cuervo, the first licence to produce tequila commercially. That licence is usually taken as the start of the tequila industry.

In 1873 Cenobio Sauza bought a distillery in Tequila, renamed it La Perseverancia, and the same year became the first to export tequila to the United States. He is also credited with settling on the blue agave as the best plant for tequila, a choice the rest of the industry followed.

The late 19th century also changed how the spirit was made. Distillers moved from roasting agave in earth pits to cooking it in above-ground, steam-heated ovens, which gave it a cleaner, less smoky character. In many ways, this is the point where tequila stopped being a regional mezcal and became the spirit we know today.

Rules and recognition

Distillers began adding cane sugar during an agave shortage in the 1930s. A 1949 standard required tequila to be made only from blue agave, but the rules were relaxed in the 1960s and the limit on other sugars eventually settled at 49%.

Producers set up the Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT) in 1959 to fight fraud, and in 1994 it became the official body overseeing the appellation. On 9 December 1974, Mexico declared tequila a protected appellation of origin, the country's first, and over the following decades the name was protected abroad, including in the European Union from 1997.

Shortage and boom

The industrial planting of the late 1980s brought disease, a frost in 1997 brought a shortage, and by the early 2000s tequila was in short supply just as demand for 100% agave was taking off. In 2006 UNESCO recognised the agave landscape around Tequila as a World Heritage Site, the same year the extra añejo class was created. Premium tequila has grown enormously since. The turning point is usually put at 2017, when Diageo bought Casamigos, the brand co-founded by George Clooney, in a deal worth up to a billion dollars. The sale showed how much a tequila brand could be worth, and a wave of celebrity-backed brands followed.