Tequila Distillery: An Unexpected Journey

In my last post I talked about how we rode the El Tapatio tour bus in to Tlaquepaque and were ushered in to a van.

How we ended up going there was this.
MI: "Do you want to visit a tequila distillery?"
BT: "YES!"
MI: "OK!"

Agave

This van was slightly larger than a minivan. They didn't have the AC on until they started the car. Interestingly there were some local kids that piled in to the van after they finished playing with a giant iguana. I'm not kidding.

We drove a few blocks away to the Tequilas del Señor distillery. Why it was behind a guarded iron gate I'm not sure but the inside was really nice!

The tour guide looked at BT and me. We stood out like sore thumbs amongst a group of Mexicans.

Tour guide: "So where are you guys from?"
Me: "Los Angeles"
Tour guide: "Hmm ok. Welcome! We're going to watch a video. It will be in Spanish. Is that ok?"
Me: "Not a problem."

In to a room we went. I still wasn't sure why there were some unattended kids with us. After the video that was most likely filmed in the late 80s it became apparent that Mr. Tour Guide either knew the kids or was related to them.

"Ok let's go in to the factory now."

He quickly explained to us in English about the tequila making process. The tour was pretty awesome because we were lead around and shown the step by step process of what generally happened. One of the local kids had taken it upon himself to help guide the tour. I'm sure in the US this would have broken several laws.

Here's how the tequila is made.

The agave plant is grown in these fields. When ready harvesters (jimadores) with spades will chop the spiky leaves off leaving what looks like a funky pineapple.

Agave pinas on the truck

The funky pineapple is thrown in to a steamer. The steamer breaks down the starches in the plant which creates sugar. We got to taste the agave from the steamer and it is as sweet as candy. Except it was the yummy kind of sweet because it was natural sugars.

Steamed agave

Sweet hot mess

Doesn't look appealing but very delicious

The agave pulp is then mashed up where the pulp is reused as compost. The factory had a really cool and original German made agave masher. They still use it to this day.

German masher

The juices are then fermented to produce tequila. A twice over distillation process will yield the clear or silver tequila.

Tequila fermenting

 Aging it in the a barrel produces the reposado tequila or the anejo tequila.

Ssshh. I'm getting old!

After that we were lead in to the tasting room which was in the back of the aging room. Three of us threw down some pesos to partake in the 6 tequila tasting. I surprisingly remained sober. Must have been the heat.

Left, silver tequila; Middle, reposado tequila; Right, anejo tequila
Notice the darker color the more it was aged

Naturally the tour ends at the gift shop. Mr. Tour Guide was also the cashier. It was almost like being in an episode of Pokemon.

I almost thought the van to go back in to the town was going to be driven by Mr. Tour Guide, but another group of people had come and he had to give another tour.

The van this time was driven by the very pregnant wife? of the tour guide. We also asked and were given a bag for more samples of the steamed agave.

Gotta love Mexico. 

http://www.tequilasdelsenor.com.mx/

Warning: Spanish!