How Is Tequila Made? The Definitive Guide

This article is a part of Agave Spirits Week, a week of content celebrating tequila, mezcal and other distilled spirits crafted from agave. Click here to check out the rest of our Agave Spirits Week content, which focuses on the best distilleries to visit in Mexico, the best agave spirits of the year, unique agave cocktail recipes and more.

Before it finds its way into a margarita or a chilled rocks glass at your local speakeasy, tequila begins life in the sunbaked fields of Mexico. But how is a humble plant turned into a world-famous export responsible for billions in revenue year after year? Today, we’ll take a quick dive into six key factors that distinguish tequila — once a regional form of mezcal without a trace of recognition to its name — as a force to be reckoned with.

Location

The world-famous town of Tequila, home to 45,000 residents and millions of Blue Weber agaves. (Photo: Photo: Shutterstock/zstock)

For well over a century, tequila was referred to as “vino de mezcal de tequila” — essentially, a specific form of mezcal popularized by the eponymous town of Tequila, itself located in the shadow of the 3,000-foot Tequila Volcano. Jose Cuervo and Cenobio Sauza, two names that continue to dominate the market in the 21st century, popularized their form of the spirit throughout the Americas in the early 1900s.

Thanks in part to the efforts of the Cuervo and Sauza families, tequila became Mexico’s first Denomination of Origin product on December 9, 1974. However, it took another two decades — around the time that the NAFTA agreement was signed — for the U.S. and Canada to recognize tequila as a spirit that could only be produced in Mexico. This coincided with the creation of the Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT), a non-governmental organization that continues to preside over the industry to this day.

According to the CRT, a spirit can only be called “tequila” if it’s made in one of five states: Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit and Tamaulipas. Though this area encompasses a vast swath of the country, the reality of tequila production looks a little more specific in practice. Jalisco is single-handedly responsible for over 95% of commercially available tequila on shelves, processing, fermenting and distilling nearly 20 million liters per year.

Agave

A jimador trimming agave stalks in the fields of Jose Cuervo. (Photo: AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)

There is only one plant that can be used to produce tequila: Agave Tequilana, better known by its informal name, Blue Weber. Native to the states of Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Aguascalientes and Nayarit, the plant is unusually rich in sugary agavins that make up the bread and butter of distillation.

Like all agaves, Blue Weber can be replanted with clonal shoots. Trim a stalk from the towering plant and place it in the ground, and a genetically identical flora will sprout in its place. It’s a form of asexual reproduction that’s turned Blue Weber into an ever-present sight across the landscape of Jalisco. Travel a few miles outside of Guadalajara to find neat rows of agave stretched to the horizon and beyond, contrasting against the mineral-rich soil in vivid shades of blue and orange. Look a little closer, and you’ll spot the agave cropping up everywhere else imaginable: Between the divots of the road, in backyards, gardens and potted decorations. If the soil is fit for agave, then Blue Weber you will find.

That ubiquity is not without its downsides. Since clonal shoots replicate the same plant each time they’re used, the fields of Mexico are dominated by a monoculture of genetically identical crops. The Blue Weber used to produce tequila is thus highly susceptible to disease, common suspects including fungal blight and the agave weevil, a subspecies of beetle capable of piercing a plant’s core with its burrowing snout. A handful of producers have worked to remedy the issue by using seeded agaves. Around five to ten years into its lifespan, Blue Weber produces a flowering stalk called a quiote that can reach as high as 15 feet. Under natural circumstances, the seeds inside those flowers are pollinated across the area by long-nosed bats, insects and hummingbirds. However, the majority of farmers don’t allow their Blue Weber to flower, as the quiote absorbs much of the sugar necessary for distillation.

Whether seeded or clonal, Blue Weber is typically grown for around six to seven years before it’s ready for processing. Farmers who specialize in harvesting agave, known as jimadors, use a bladed tool called a coa to reduce the plants to their oval-shaped core. A mature Blue Weber piña can weigh as much as 100 pounds at peak maturity, resembling a cross between a pineapple (from which it derives its name) and an artichoke. Agaves grown in the cool highlands tend to boast a sweet, fruit-forward profile, while lowland agaves are known for their herbaceous bite.

Ovens

Trimmed agaves placed into an horno at the Tequila Los Americas distillery. (Photo: Hermosa Tequila)

Once a piña has been trimmed and chopped into manageable halves, thirds or quarters, there are a few ways that producers can cook the plant.

Among the most respected is a brick oven, otherwise known as an horno. A modern evolution of the centuries-old “roast it in a pit” method, the horno is a gargantuan steam-powered tool that can take up the size of an entire room. Agaves are loaded into the oven, sometimes by the hundred, and allowed to bake for one to three days (some brands boast that their agaves are cooked for up to a week, though this may be a tidbit of marketing bravado). The heat breaks down the sugar and carbohydrates within the agave, reducing them to a roasty, aromatic core with a bronze-orange hue. This is the cooking technique used by many cult-favorite, additive-free brands, including Fortaleza, Patron and Tequila Ocho.

Another popular choice is the autoclave. These stainless steel tubes are an efficient alternative to the horno, reducing the average processing time to as little as eight hours. The machine acts as a giant pressure cooker capable of achieving blisteringly high temperatures in a relatively short amount of time. Agaves cooked via autoclave tend to have a more sanitized flavor with dialed-back charred and caramelized notes. That said, plenty of brands are known to use the method to fantastic effect, including Cazcanes, Fuenteseca and El Tequileno.

Last but not least comes the diffuser. If you’ve heard about these before, there’s a good chance it was in a bad light. Though the equipment is used by countless prominent brands on the market, it’s rare to find the diffuser advertised front and center on a bottle or website, largely due to its negative reputation among the tequila-knowledgeable crowd. The diffuser is capable of extracting large quantities of sugar from agave through a combination of hot water and hydrochloric acid, sidestepping the steam technique found in more traditional cooking methods. Production of diffuser tequila has skyrocketed in recent years, due largely to the machine’s industrial-grade capacity and its ability to process underripe agaves. Critics argue the diffuser results in a final product lacking in characteristic tequila flavor.

Extraction

A tractor-pulled tahona at work in the Los Abuelos distillery. (AP Photo/Tracie Cone)

There are four techniques used to extract liquid, known as mosto, from roasted agaves. It’s not uncommon for distillers to make use of more than one.

The tahona is the most iconic, at least from a visual and folkloric perspective. This is a frightfully heavy, two-to-three-ton volcanic stone wheel that’s pulled in circles over a pit of agave, slowly but surely crushing out juice from the pulp. Many distillers who use this time-intensive method power their tahona with a motor that revolves around the circumference of the pit. Some, like Siete Leguas, still use a team of mules. Others still, famously including Felipe Camerena’s El Pandillo distillery, have innovated fully mechanized tahonas that have less in common with a stone wheel than a spiked steamroller.

The screw mill resembles exactly what it sounds like — a screw — albeit one far larger than anything found in an IKEA set. The device squeezes and pulverizes agaves with a bladed edge and is typically used in conjunction with either a tahona or a roller mill.

The roller mill is one of the most popular extraction methods among large-volume brands. In essence, the machine processes its agave much like a screw mill, running agave piñas through a set of five rollers before rinsing the pulp with hot water to release fermentable sugars.

The above-mentioned diffuser handles both cooking and extraction at once. Unlike other methods, the diffuser shreds its agaves first, before spraying them down with a treatment of hot water and chemicals.

Fermentation

Wooden vats at the El Tesoro distillery. (Photo: El Tesoro)

Fermentation is the first building block of any alcoholic product. Whether you’re making kombucha in your home kitchen or working toward an obscenely boozy batch of hazmat-proof whiskey, the science bubbling under the hood remains the same. Sugar-hungry yeast is introduced to a liquid, converting glucose molecules into ethanol and carbon dioxide. The process yields juice hovering around 15%-20% ABV, which is eventually increased with the aid of distillation.

Tequila makers ferment their mosto in either wooden, stainless steel or cement tanks. Each is said to imbue slightly different results, with stainless steel widely agreed to be the most efficient and wooden vats (specifically pine) being more porous and difficult to clean. The differences in material, however, pertain largely to the speed of fermentation and not the flavor.

Far more important is the yeast strain. Though bread yeast has historically been the yeast of choice, producers have begun experimenting with some pretty cool possibilities in recent years. An increasingly popular option is Champagne yeast, used by brands like LALO and Volcan de Mi Tierra to imbue fruity, citrus-forward flavors. Cachasol, a recent venture from an alum of Dogfish Head Brewery, is pushing the gauntlet even further with the inclusion of IPA yeast, resulting in pronounced crunchy green vegetal notes. There are also a fair few brands that allow open-air natural fermentation, wherein airborne yeasts comingle with the batch.

Last but not least come the fibers. Agaves extracted via tahona or screw mill tend to leave behind quite a bit of fibrous material, referred to as bagaso. These wet clumps can be repurposed for countless purposes, finding their way into agave straws, textiles or even bricks. Alternatively, producers can add the fibers directly to the fermentation tank, adding an extra blast of roasty goodness.

Distillation

El Tesoro’s copper pot stills. (Photo: El Tesoro)

Still type isn’t nearly as important in tequila production as it is for a spirit like rum. Nonetheless, there are a handful of distinctions to be made — and more than enough die-hard agave nerds to argue over the particularities.

Many modern distilleries boast a legion of stainless steel pot stills with a copper coil hidden inside. This option provides a clean, if slightly diluted, alternative to a fully copper pot still, which yields spirits richer in complexity and characteristic agave flavor. The most cost-effective technology of all is the column still, used by most of the same brands responsible for popularizing diffusers. While pot stills loosely resemble a top hat with its brim stretched too high, column stills have more in common with an oversized pencil teeming with gears, knobs and doodads. Column stills yield a more neutral spirit and are ideal for distilling large quantities of agave at once.

No matter the still type, the process within adheres to the same rules. Following two rounds of distillation, the liquid can be separated into its heads, hearts and tails. Heads, the first to rise in the still, are chock-full of methanol, aldehydes and esters deemed unfit for human consumption. Tails, meanwhile, are mostly low-alcohol remainders like water and oil. Distillers trim each of the components to leave behind the heart, the ethyl alcohol-rich core that you’ll find inside a bottle of tequila.

The final step in the prolonged journey from field to oven to fermentation tank is a splash of dilution. Since tequila spills out of the still anywhere from 55% to 75% ABV, producers usually cut the batch to proof with water to achieve the industry-standard 40% ABV. Bottles labeled “Still Strength” omit additional water, while high-proof tequilas are cut with less.