THE HARVEST

“How do you feel?” Aceves asks me the next morning, on the drive to the Herradura farm and distillery, about 30 miles north of Guadalajara in the tequila-producing state of Jalisco. “How’s the hangover?”
When I tell him that I have no hangover, and – in fact – feel as fresh as a buttercup, Aceves is visibly pleased.

“You see? You had – what? – five or six glasses of reposado last night. And no hangover. Because you don’t get a hangover from fine tequila.”

For Aceves, tequila is a lifestyle choice. He drinks it daily, but in modest amounts, much as a temperate Frenchman drinks wine. Midday, he’ll typically imbibe a glass of blanco, or white tequila – the minimally-aged stuff that barely meets the inside of an oak barrel and pairs nicely with sandwiches and other lunchtime fair.

“It’s good for you,” Aceves says, referring to his daily tequila regimen much as a nutritionist might describe a glass of carrot juice.

Aceves and his bosses at Brown-Forman – the U.S.-based beverage giant (Jack Daniels, Finlandia) that acquired Herradura in 2007 – aren’t just trying to improve Herradura’s brand-recognition in the States; they’re trying to rebrand tequila from the ground up.

Or the soil up, as the case may be. Spread out over 14,000 sun-baked acres of Mexican high desert, the Herradura plantation reveals rows upon rows of blue agave – the spiky succulent plant that resembles an aloe on steroids and provides the tequila industry with its very lifeblood.

Penetrating deep into the Herradura plantation via an unmarked network of dirt roads, we find a large crew of agave harvesters, or jimadores, laboring quietly under a bright but agreeable winter sun. With a few powerful, expertly-timed thrusts from a razor-sharp tool called a coa, the jimador nearest me shears off the rigid leaves from an agave and quickly exposes its pina – the sugar-rich, pineapple-shaped core that will be loaded onto a truck and delivered to the Herradura ovens.

Aceves reminds me that all premium tequilas are distilled exclusively from agave, unlike the popular, low-priced “gold” brands, which are mixed with nasty, impurity-laced sugar alcohols (up to 49%) and contain artificial coloring.
Moreover, Herradura takes special care in the quality of its harvesting. The jimadores are trained to harvest the agaves with extreme prejudice; removing as much of the husk and connective tissue as possible even at the expense of losing some of the pristine pina meat.

“Other tequila distillers don’t do this,” the Pope insists. “Which is why they have cogeners and other impurities, which also cause the hangover.”

WHACK! The jimador cuts down another savage agave, and liberates its soul.

THE DISTILLING

The Herradura tequila distillery is located within the towering brick walls of Hacienda San Jose del Refugio, a two-centuries-old fortress originally built by a Spanish priest. Within the sprawling enclosure, one will find servant’s dorms, a chapel, lush parks and livestock. It’s a city, really.

The hacienda also houses the machinery of Herradura production. Walking across a football-field-sized lawn, we surreally come upon the three-story factory ovens where the agave is steamed at 1200 degrees Fahrenheit to extract its nectar.
Approaching the ovens, one is immediately assaulted with the smell of cooking agave – and it’s heavenly. An arousing mélange of roasted yams with burnt honey. With pinas piled high by the thousands, and the hissing concrete ovens spewing steam and vapor, it makes for an awesome display of sensuality and scale.

Most of the agave nectar is drained from the ovens themselves, but what remains is extracted through a milling process that shreds the cooked agave and collects the sweet liquid in recessed holding tanks. From there, astoundingly, the nectar is transported across the hacienda via a system of suspended stainless steel pipes that resemble the People Mover tracks at Disneyland.

On foot, we follow the pipes to the 30-foot open-air fermentation tanks where the sugary agave juice is converted into a sort of mild tequila cider, known as mosto. Swaddled in platforms and metal rigging, the tanks seem alive – bubbling and churning and radiating thermal energy generated solely by the process of yeasts eating up those natural sugars and farting out carbon dioxide. And tequila, of course.

Much like a lambic, Herradura tequila is mobilized by whatever yeasts happen to float in from the countryside – in this case, airborne yeasts from wild citrus trees on the plantation.

“We’re the only tequileria that doesn’t add foreign yeasts to the fermentation,” Aceves says, invoking another Herradura commandment. “And it makes our flavor profile different than other tequilas.”

From the fermentation vats, the proto-tequila cider is piped to a neat row of distillation tanks, where it’s purified, concentrated and turned into tequila proper. At this point, Aceves imparts a kindness that will be the highlight of my day: He pours me a small glass of 100-proof raw tequila, just minutes removed from the seven-hour distillation treatment. It could be the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted – sweet, crisp and savory, with notes of butter, honey and citrus that urgently dance across my tastebuds like little wild-eyed lunatics.

This is nothing you can buy anywhere, which strikes me as deeply tragic.

“I would BUY this,” I tell Aceves.

“Lots of people would buy that,” he responds evenly, offering no further elaboration. He’s the Pope. He doesn’t need to.

THE AGING

After spring water is added to the raw elixir, fixing it at bottle-ready 80 proof, the tequila is barreled and warehoused. Herradura and its sister label el Jimador (the best-selling brand in Mexico) are aged in white oak barrels imported from Kentucky.

Aceves says that Herradura never uses charred or pre-used barrels in its aging process, which runs counter to the popular technique of recycling wine and whiskey barrels for their adjunct flavors. (Ironically, Jack Daniels barrels – purchased from Herradura’s American parent company – are particularly popular with rival tequila makers.)

The rationale, one would imagine, is that you don’t mess with perfection. Herradura Blanco is aged for 45 days – just enough to give it a slightly wheat-y tint and clean flavors of citrus.

Herradura Reposado (“rested”) gets 11 months in the barrel – nine months more than the two months required by law for all reposado-style tequilas and enough to coax out some of those yam-and-burnt-honey aromas I remember from the ovens, along with some bewitching vanilla flavors.

Finally, Aceves lets me taste Herradura’s Anejo (“aged”) offering. It has the molten amber color of a Los Angeles sunset – the result of two years of oak aging – and tastes of nutmeg, tobacco leaf and dried apricot. And it’s impressively smooth – none of that gag-inducing cheap-tequila taste that’s permanently programmed into the stomach memory of anyone who has suffered at the hands of Cuervo Gold poisoning.

“It doesn’t even taste like tequila, does it?” Aceves asks, somewhat rhetorically, like a monk reading from the I Ching.

Sitting amidst flower petals in the late afternoon shade, I must admit that it does not. But we’re not finished yet. As a coup de gras, Aceves whips out a decanter of Herradura Selecion Suprema, which is aged for a whopping 49 months and runs for a cool $350 a bottle in the States.

Talk about a tequila reeducation. Evolutionarily-speaking, Selecion Suprema bears as much resemblance to the average blanco tequila as a Bengal tiger does to a house cat. It’s heavy-cream-smooth, and brandishes a dizzying arsenal of flavors: vanilla, toasted oak, carob bean and who knows what else.

“Do you taste something else?” Aceves asks, manipulating me now. “It’s rose petal. Do you taste the rose petal?”

I honestly don’t, but I hold my tongue, because I know it’s part of the Herradura gospel – the same belief system that views tequila as a sacred tradition warped by greed, food coloring and fat cantina hombres with whistles.

He’s the Pope. And I’m happy to be baptized.