Tequila, a Rich Heritage of Mexico
By Kami Kenna — June 23, 2025
4 MIN READ
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Tequila is a formidable global spirits category
In 2021, Mexico produced 527 million liters of tequila worth eight billion dollars (Szczech, 13). In 2022, tequila surpassed American whiskey in sales in the United States (Carruthers 2024). All spirits are agricultural products intrinsically tied to the land and the people who look after it. Maybe tequila has landed on your radar recently, but agave-based beverages go way back in Mexico’s history. In fact, Tequila’s beginnings date back to 400 hundred years but are rooted in traditions from 10,000 years ago.
Tracing the Roots of Tequila
Similar to Champagne or Pisco, Tequila has its roots in a specific geographic location. Meaning “place of work” or “place of tribute” in the native Nahuatl language, Tequila is the name of the dormant volcano where indigenous people collected obsidian stone to carve into tools and weapons. In due course, the surrounding valley, the town at its base, and the beverage also took the name (Szczech, 18).
Today, tequila is the most well-known regional mezcal. Spirits made from cooked agave are mezcals, from “metl” and “ixcalli”, mezcal means “oven-baked agave” in Nahuatl. The author of A Field Guide to Tequila, Clayton Szczech, affirms that “[m]ost Mexican agave spirits are known as mezcales, and tequila was born as a regional mezcal called vino mezcal de Tequila” (18). Over time the name was shortened to just Tequila. In 1974, the Mexican government established the Denominación de Origen Tequila (DOT) declaring it distinctly Mexican to ward off imitators. Tequila became Mexico’s first Geographical Indication and the first established outside of Europe. Since 1994, its norms have been enforced by the Consejo Regulador de Tequila (CRT), a non-governmental organization funded by the tequila industry. From plants in the ground to chemical makeup to bottling, tequila is the most regulated spirit in the world.
Agaves: The Essential Ingredient Behind Tequila
When Carl Linnaeus created the taxonomic system in 1753, he gave it the name “agave” from Greek meaning “noble” or “admirable” (Szczech, 22). Proper to the Americas, agaves are spiky succulents with more than 200 species or variants. Hearty and requiring little water to survive, agaves developed in the sundrenched regions largely devoid of water of Mesoamerica and Aridoamerica. Over millions of years, agaves developed the mechanisms necessary to thrive in arid environments such as foreboding thorns at the tip of each leaf, a thick waxy skin, and CAM metabolism, a process where they only open their stomata at night to prevent dehydration (Szczech, 27). Depending on the species, maturation times span from 5 years to 30 years or more. The agave is “mature” when inflorescence commences, which simultaneously signals its demise. The flower stalk, known as the “quiote”, rises upward, acting as a guide for its primary nighttime pollinators, bats. Seeds that develop from this sexual reproduction process carry forth diverse genetic codes. However, some species reproduce asexually by rhizome and by bulbils as well. To make tequila, the agave’s reproduction cycle must be halted. The energy generated in the plant’s core in preparation for reproduction must either be harnessed for tequila or sexual reproduction, but not both.
Pre-Columbian uses of the agave included food and beverage, fuel, construction, fibers, and more. Szczech states, “[t]he agave’s importance to the development of Mesoamerican civilization is arguably without equal in the plant world” (22). Throughout Mesoamerica, pit ovens baked agave cores, converting inedible material into a nutrient and calorie-dense, toothsome comestible. The process of hydrolysis during cooking cleaves complex carbohydrate chains into simpler ones suitable for consumption, transforming dense matter into sweet pulp. Some of the more fibrous pieces were pounded into cakes for preservation and portability and later rehydrated in water for drinking. In “Alcohol in Ancient Mexico”, Henry J. Bruman explains, “[a]nother widespread method was to soak the dry cakes in water until softened and to drink the sweet, turbid liquor that remained after the fibers were removed” (18). Left alone, the sweetened water would ferment naturally into an alcoholic wine. Bruman asserts, “… wherever a mescal distilling industry arose in the colonial period, an undistilled mescal drink was known in pre-Columbian times, which in turn was predicated on the roasting of a plentiful resource of mescal plants for food” (20). Before the arrival of Columbus, a traditional method of food preparation transitioned into the creation of a naturally fermented “agave beer,” which serves as the foundation for tequila production.
Looking into the origins of tequila draws us into the significance of the land, the people behind its production, and the distinctly Mexican traditions it embodies. Tequila exemplifies a legacy of cultural heritage, though faces mounting threats as globalization and industrialization exert their will.
How Tequila is Made: From Agave to Bottle
Agaves:
Despite there being more than 200 species of agave, only one subvariety is permitted to make tequila, the Agave tequilana Weber blue variety, or simply blue agave. It was selected during the last century for its relatively quick maturation time, five to seven years, its adaptability and resilience, and for its potential to give high amounts of fermentable sugars.
Harvest:
It takes great skill to harvest the serrated plants, a specialist, called a jimador, expertly removes the leaves at the required length speedily. Only the heart of the agave will go to the distillery for processing.
Cooking:
By definition the plant must be oven-baked, nowadays the ovens are above ground and steam injected instead of pit-roasted. Pit-roasting requires coal to heat and is what gives traditional mezcal the subtle smokiness that tequila now lacks.
Extraction:
The sweet pulp must be extracted from the agave’s fibrous scaffolding. Producers now have several technologies at their disposal. Traditionally, milling was done by hand. The most common mills in the industry are the tahona, a massively heavy stone wheel pulled by an animal or machine that squishes the pieces of cooked agave, or the trapiche (roller mill), which separates by squeezing.
Fermentation:
Fermentation is the part of the process where all of the flavors and aromas found in the final product are formed. Fibers are almost always absent from the fermentation process, though few distilleries continue to ferment with fibers or at least a portion of them. Distilleries have stainless steel tanks, wooden vats, or cement tanks for fermentation and they can be open or closed.
Distillation:
Tequila must be between 35% and 55% alcohol by volume, which typically requires at least two distillation passes since the ferment is about the strength of an ale, around five or six percent alcohol. Distillation is largely done in steam-injected stainless steel or copper alembic stills, or pot stills. When heat is applied, the alcohol vaporizes ahead of water in the mosto to be condensed and masterfully separated by the distiller.
CLASSES OF TEQUILA: There are five classes of tequila:
- Blanco (“white or silver”)
- Reposado (“rested” for a minimum of two months)
- Añejo (“aged one year” at minimum)
- Extra añejo (“extra aged” for a minimum of three years)
- Joven (“young” a blanco mixed with an amount of aged tequila)
CATEGORIES OF TEQUILAS: There are two categories of tequila: Photography credits:
- 100% agave tequila – 100% of the sugars come from the blue agave
- Tequila – at least 51% of the sugars come from the blue agave, 49% of other sugars
Works Cited:
- Bruman, Henry J. Alcohol in Ancient Mexico. Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 2000.
- Szczech, Clayton. A Field Guide to Tequila: What it is, Where it’s from, and How to taste it. New York, Artisan, 2023.
- Carruthers, Nicola 2024, IWSR: agave pricing ‘will not hit rock bottom until 2026,’ media release, accessed 15 April 2024, <https://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/2024/04/iwsr-agave-pricing-will-not-hit-the-bottom-until-2026/
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