In this post, we'll present an extensive history of tequila . Our initial intention was to keep it brief, but there was so much information that this incredibly rich history fascinated us.

It took centuries (if not millennia) for the agave plant, the raw material for tequila, to travel with the Mexican people along the long path to become the beloved, world-renowned distillate. This journey begins with indigenous myths and customs of pre-Hispanic cultures and continues for several centuries until it finally becomes the intoxicating delicacy we love so much: tequila.

Grab your Quetzalli , sit in your favorite corner, relax and join us on this incredible journey of Tequila.

Quetzalcoatl

A generous god with a serpent's body covered in feathers, he inhabited the Aztec pantheon. One day, he and other creator gods pondered what they could do to brighten the lives of humans on earth, so that they would not feel so alone; so that they would dance, laugh, and, of course, revere them, the gods.

Mayahuel

The Origin of Tequila

Quetzalcoatl's portion of the tree remained intact. Devastated within, Quetzalcoatl waited for the evil spirits to return and then, returning to his god form, collected and buried all the scattered remains and bones of his beloved. At the burial site of Mayahuel's remains, Metl, the mother plant, considered divine by ancient Mesoamericans, was born.

And it is through this plant called Metl, or Maguey, or Agave that we will arrive at Tequila .

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The myth described above is just one of several known about the agave, the "tree of wonders." This plant was so central to some pre-Hispanic cultures of Mesoamerica that numerous stories, myths, and legends can be found surrounding it. In the 16th century, Friar Francisco Jiménez wrote about it:

“It seems to me that this plant alone would be enough to provide all the things necessary for human life, since the benefits and vitalities derived from its use are almost innumerable .” 

But what is agave?

What is agave used for?

Archaeological remains demonstrate that agave has been used for over 6,000 years. Several of its species accompanied the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer groups to sedentary farmers (meaning they settled in one place rather than staying away from the gym).

Even in the pre-Columbian era, numerous techniques and tools were developed to get the most out of the plant.

The resistant fibers of the maguey, the name given to some species of agave, were used to produce fabrics, clothes, ropes, shoes, and paper; its robust stem was used to make stools; its thorns were used as needles, pins, and even as sacrificial instruments; the dried leaves could be used as roofing material.

But the part that really interests us is its sap. From its sap, sugar, vinegar, molasses, and the first alcoholic beverages recorded in the Americas were produced.

Aguamiel

There is no record of exactly when the alcoholic beverage made from maguey, considered sacred by the Aztecs and called pulque in some places, first appeared . What is certain is that the natives of Mesoamerica knew about this process long before the Spanish invasion and used this milky, low-alcohol beverage extensively in rituals, especially those involving human sacrifice (controversial stories for another occasion).

Pulque: grandfather of Tequila

In his second letter to King Charles V of Spain in 1520, the conquistador Hernán Cortés first mentions the widespread use of maguey to produce sugar and wine, which the indigenous people even sold. In 1524, the conquistador records that the fermented beverage was called " pulque ." The method of making pulque as we know it today is unlikely to have remained the same as in pre-Hispanic times. The fact is that maguey and the natives' knowledge and use of the plant impressed the Europeans.

And, if it's this distant relative in our beloved Quetzalli's family tree, we can say that its grandfather is vino mezcal . Despite its name, it's not wine-like at all and is considered by some historians to be the first distilled spirit produced in the Americas.

SPANISH COLONIZERS AND THE WINE THAT WASN'T WINE

It was customary among the Spanish to drink light wines with meals. In Europe, drinking water could be risky, as basic sanitation was not very basic in the 16th century, and contaminated water often caused various diseases. The problem was that wine grapes simply didn't exist in the Americas, and apparently, the Spanish didn't much like the fermented maguey . With the beverage supply depleted and no vineyards nearby, they began experimenting with this plant so central to indigenous life. And that's where mezcal came from.

However, the Spanish were not very pleased with the grandfather of tequila and, at the behest of Hernán Cortés , brought vines to the conquered lands for cultivation. The business was so successful that, in 1595, King Philip II of Spain had to ban the cultivation of vineyards in Mexico and other colonies due to the decline in Spanish wine exports.

Mexican workers toasting Pulque, similar to fermented maguay

It is during this period that records of the beginning of the production of agave and maguey distillates in the Jalisco region (which would later become the major tequila-producing region) are available. It is unclear whether this part of the story is true or not, but since we already began the first chapter of our history with the legend of tequila, we decided to keep this possible myth here.

Pedro Sánchez de Tagle, the second Marquis of Altamira—who had nothing of a marquis about him—arrived in the region in 1600 and, since he could no longer work in wine production, invested in agave plantations and the production of spirits from maguey . He became known as the "father of tequila," having been the first to build a tavern (the name given to ancient Mexican stills and distilleries) on his Cuisillos estate around 1610 and began the production of mezcal.

True or not, the important thing to clarify is that the history of tequila's development ceases to be permeated by legends of origin and creators around the end of the 18th century, when documentation about the drink's production actually emerges. In the 1742 book " Historia de la Conquista de la Nueva-Galicia ," Don Matias de la Mota y Padilla comments on the growing popularity of mezcal wine, which was already more popular than pulque. He also mentions that the production of mezcal distillate began to concentrate, for the first time, around a few families, a legacy we see to this day in the tequila production model.

MEZCAL WINE IN TEQUILA VILLAGE

As we've seen, mezcal spread throughout colonial Mexico through small, local production facilities. It wasn't until the second half of the 18th century that larger enterprises began producing and marketing the product. The first of these, as documented, belonged to the Cuervo family (yes, the family behind José Cuervo tequila), in the city of Tequila.

Tequila was a village founded in 1530 by Franciscan friars. The city is located in the state of Jalisco, on the west coast of present-day Mexico. During the early centuries of the colony, until well into the 18th century, it was a small town with small rural properties. With the exploitation of agave to produce mezcal, land ownership gradually began to concentrate in the region.

It is known that the first lands belonging to the Cuervo family in the town of Tequila date back to 1758, when José Antonio de Cuervo obtained a license from the Spanish crown to farm the lands of Tequila. Some historians say that José Antonio de Cuervo was already producing mezcal wine for sale on his properties.

Two wills by José Prudencio de Cuervo, one of José Antonio de Cuervo's sons, demonstrate the evolution of production on the family's properties and provide clues about the agave-related activity. In the first of these wills, written in 1787, he mentions, without much emphasis, the ownership of 50,000 planted " cabezas de mezcal ." In his second will, dated 14 years later in 1801, there is a huge quantitative leap in the number of planted agaves: 336,407 " cabezas de mezcal ." Yes, you read that right: three hundred and thirty-six thousand, four hundred and seven plants (imagine how many Quetzalli plants that much agave could produce!) . This is where the true strength and interest in this production is revealed.

La Rojeña Factory, the oldest distillery in Latin America

Statue of Crow, a symbol of the José Cuervo Family and Tequila

These documents may indicate the early interest José Prudencio and his family had in agave. Between 1785 and 1795, the production and sale of alcoholic beverages in the colonies was prohibited by the Spanish kingdom in an attempt to encourage Spanish exports. In 1795, the first license for the economic exploitation of mezcal wine in the region was issued, and, unsurprisingly, it was granted in the name of José María de Cuervo, José Prudencio de Cuervo's brother.

The industry proved very profitable. By 1805, José María's "Taberna de Cuervo" (Cuervo Tavern) was producing 400,000 " cribas " (containers) of mezcal distillate per year.

In 1812, it was inherited by María Magdalena de Cuervo and her husband, Vicente Albino Rojas, who significantly increased production, expanding distribution beyond the Jalisco region. By the mid-19th century, Vicente Albino Rojas had over three million planted agaves spread across his properties. The distillery he founded, La Rojeña , still exists today in the city of Tequila and is considered the oldest in Latin America.

With this, dear reader, you can imagine that the mezcal produced in Tequila will gain a lot of visibility and strength over time, until it truly becomes our beloved tequila.

El Jimador , the worker responsible for harvesting agaves used for tequila production

The crazy 19th century and the expansion of the Tequila market

Mexican history was quite turbulent during the 19th century, with countless wars, rebellions, coups d'état, and foreign interventions that marked the region's political and economic history. Mexican independence was achieved in 1821, after nearly 11 years of war against the Spanish metropolis. Turmoil began in the Spanish colonies with the advance of Napoleonic troops into Europe, which resulted in the abdication of Spanish King Ferdinand VII in favor of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1808 (the same moment the Portuguese crown quickly fled to Brazil, you know?).

During the Mexican War of Independence, the mezcal market suffered from instability. Many distilleries closed, but mezcal wine remained an important commodity for troops on both sides of the war.

After independence, Tequila's mezcal wine began to consolidate its position, conquering domestic markets and gradually exploring the tastes of foreign markets—mainly due to the various (unseemly) interventions by France and the United States in the territory. In 1854, Ernest de Vigneaux, a French prisoner of war in Mexico, wrote that "Tequila gives its name to mezcal brandy, just as Cognac gives its name to French distillates."

By the middle of the century, the city's name was already being used to identify the mezcal wine produced there, but it took a few more decades for "Tequila" to be generally adopted in industrial and commercial spheres, becoming definitively popular.

The first record of mezcal in the US dates back to 1852, imported from the Mexican port of San Blas, near Tequila.

Historical records also show exports of small quantities of mezcal to Spain, England, and France between 1873 and 1874. In December 1870, the Chicago Tribune published an article that read: "There is a superior type of mezcal, produced near Guadalajara and named after the town where it is made, 'Tequila.' It is more expensive than the others and is also sold in Mexico City and other places, making it a good choice for gifts to friends."

The Jalisco region and the village of Tequila also held an advantage over other locations in the production of the distilled mezcal: by the mid-19th century, a consensus emerged that blue agave, native to the Tequila region, was superior in mezcal production. The first international recognition of the quality of "Tequila mezcal" production came in 1893, during the Chicago World's Fair.

It's clear that the mezcal boom produced in Tequila was well underway by the end of the 19th century. The spread of railroads across North America helped the product's flow, allowing it to spread more easily across the continent; the number of blue agave fields and distilleries expanded in the region; growing production adapted to new, optimized manufacturing methods, which further improved the drink; by the turn of the century, new glass containers were adopted for marketing, and eventually, it became common knowledge that Tequila mezcal was superior to other mezcals.

From the search for Mexicanness to the normalization of Tequila

The dictatorship that lasted from the end of the 19th century until the first decade of the 20th century, under the command of General Porfirio Díaz, brought a certain political stability and economic development to the Mexican upper classes, but with disfavor and neglect of the working and indigenous lower classes.

During this period, there was a movement toward the Europeanization of Mexican customs, in which English brandies and French cognacs were adopted as symbols of refinement and civility. The country's powerful, at this time, considered the various types of mezcal to be drinks of the "rabble." The reaction to Porfirio Diaz's regime came through the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910 and lasted ten years.

Fueled by the revolutionary movement, the search for a Mexican national identity began, paving the way for tequila to become the national drink par excellence.

Tequila held a trump card over other products : its roots conveyed the perfect image of indigenous ancestry, which considered maguey as a sacred plant, combined with the European touch that transformed pulque , bringing with it the synthesis of what would become an "authentic Mexico," a country born of mestizaje. Without idealizing this process, tequila also carried within itself (as we have seen) a charge of superiority over other mezcales, thus, it related less (symbolically) to indigenous populations and the poor in general.

Artistic and literary movements, driven by a sense of social transformation, began to shape the character of Mexicanness . In a seminal 1916 novel about the revolution, titled " Los de Abajo ," the writer Mariano Azuela describes his main character, a Zacatecas peasant who becomes a revolutionary, as follows: "To the champagne that fizzes in the dim light of the lamps, Demétrio Macías preferred the clarity of Jalisco tequila."

A few decades after the revolution, in the 1930s and 1940s, when the name "Tequila" was already well established , the Mexican film industry also contributed significantly to instilling stereotypes of Mexicans in the country's imagination—including a taste for tequila. Around the same time, tequila consumption also became popular in the US, and the domestic market for the drink expanded as a result of World War II, which virtually eliminated imports of tequila from European countries.

With increasing force, tequila producers moved to regulate and protect their precious product. Fraud was not uncommon. Foreign intermediaries profited from adulterated products, which were sold in barrels, in addition to clandestine production within Mexico itself.

In the late 1940s, the Mexican government issued the first quality standards for tequila production: "The Official Mexican Standard for Tequila Quality" (NOM) defined the beverage as a mezcal produced from the Agave Azul Tequilana Weber Amaryllidaceae family, grown in the state of Jalisco and on land with similar environmental conditions. This standard has been updated and revised throughout the century. The last recorded modification was in 2012 (NOM-006-SCFI-2012).

The regulation proved ineffective in curbing illegal products, leading to increased pressure from industry leaders. In 1966, the Mexican government signed the Lisbon Agreement on the protection of appellations of origin, administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), paving the way for tequila to obtain its Appellation of Controlled Origin (AOC) – a process that was consolidated in 1977, granting tequila international recognition and certification as a product originating only in specific regions of Mexico.

Coming to the end of our long history, we now have the understanding that tequila can only be called tequila if produced by authorized producers in the state of Jalisco and in some municipalities in the states of Nayarit, Michoacán, Guanajuato, and Tamaulipas. According to NOM-006-SCFI-2012, tequila must still be made using a specific method from the fermented and then distilled sugars of the heart, or piña , of the Agave tequilana Weber A. Azul variety, which must comprise 51% to 100% of the spirit. In addition to its long name, NOM-006-SCFI-2012 contains 23 pages of details that regulate and establish the exact parameters for the distillate of Agave Azul to be called tequila.

Luckily, you don't need to read all of this to enjoy Quetzalli , which is certified by the independent regulatory body, the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT) , which has existed since 1994. Our favorite drink, besides having no preservatives, dyes, or chemical additives, is made with official real tequila.