From TequilaGringo:  We were a little fired up about this one because we simply love their blanco.  A great blanco doesn't necessarily come out of the barrel great (and vice versa) though.  The time with the wood alters things a lot and sometimes that's for the better, sometimes it's not.  So we knew not to get too nutso about it.  Arette's anejo arrives with a yellow/gold color and has a slight chocolate/caramel to the nose, maybe a little earth.  Smooth, soft, cool mouthfeel. Taste was pretty unique, with a bit of spice, some orange peel and med-high heat. Long, flavorful finish. Oh well, once again a great blanco does not a great anejo make. Read more »

From TequilaGringo: Luna Sueno's blanco offering arrived and it was apparent immediately that these guys know how to make a tequila look really tantalizing.  It comes in a sleek (dare I say, beautiful?) black box.  The bottle is hand blown, which gives it a very authentic feel, and hearkens back to old Mexico, we like that.  We're suckers for that.  Perhaps the most unique quality of Luna Sueno is the quality (we can be witty with our plays on words yes?).  Most tequilas are distilled twice.  We've seen a few triple distilled.  This is the first cuadruple destilado we've come across.  Each distillation removes impurities - two is usually enough but to strive for a fourth is to strive for absolute purity. Read more »

From Tequila Gringo:  Sure it came in a fancy wood box, a nice bottle with a great label, and sure only 624 bottles are produced each year, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be good (but it was). Read more »

From Tequila Gringo: Here's a great old school tequila.  Stone crushed, just how they used to do it.  Much more laborious than the way most tequilas are made today, but damn if the old way didn't produce a better tequila.  They take  8 yr old agave plants (8-10 is pretty typical) and cook for 33 hours.  Then it ferments for 3 and a half days in wood barrels.  From there, it goes into nice hand blown glass bottles with a pina looking top that's made from ground marble.  Old school looking bottle is perfectly fitting for this production process.  The nose is pretty remarkable for a blanco with some fruit and earth, and we found the taste to be very unique for a blanco as well.  It's a low-land tequila, which nat Read more »

From TequilaGringo: Great bottle.  What makes a great bottle you ask? It has guns molded into the back.  As if that's not enough, the cap is heavy, so you can smoothly spin it off with a flick of the thumb.  It pours very nicely.  (It also has markers on the back for each shot worth of booze, but I find them pretty useless.)  The nose of this tequila has a full bodied, sweet agave to it.  Taste follows with more sweet agave, and some very slight hints of black pepper and a hint of vanilla.  Medium/light heat.  Mouth feel is thin.  This is a delicious blanco, wonderfully complex with a finish that seemed to be just about the right length for us.

NOM 1123.  Tasted 08/01/2009

TequilaGringo.com: Let's just start with, "wow".  We were already huge huge fans of the five year, so we came into this with high hopes.  The bottle is a very similar design to the 5 year, but with silver accents where on the 5 year there's gold.  Each bottle is also numbered and signed in a classy way.  We found that it had a familiar nose, similar to the 5 year.  Taste followed with delicious caramel, perhaps just a bit stronger than the 5 year we'd grown accustomed to (though that of course could simply be the barrel our tequila came from).  The finish, amazingly smooth.  This tequila won the double gold at the 2009 SF Spirit Awards, and with good reason.  Treat yourself to a little something special a Read more »

From Tequila Gringo:  We rather liked this tequila.  We first sampled it at last year's Tequila Expo in Tijuana.  We found that it had a light heat, and a nice agave taste.  It actually won "Most Popular Tequila of the 2007 Expo Tequila". Read more »

From TequilaGringo.com     The nose on the tequila from this fantasticly designed bottle is very much agave.  On sipping it, we found the mouthfeel to be thin, and the finish to be hot but clean.  A solid tequila that you'll like, but may not be moved to fall in love with. Read more »

From TequilaGringo.com     Had this at a tasting at LA's El Carmen.  Any place that has Mexican Wrester masks is ok by us!  We thought this was a good tequila, but not a favorite.  The taste brought forward caramel, almost cloying at first.  Finishes smooth, but our take was that it was sort of a one note tequila. Read more »

TequilaGringo.com Review:     Tequila Tierras is a new tequila to the market that won a Gold medal at the 2009 S.F. World Spirits Competition, so we were pretty excited when their samples arrived in the mail.  The blanco does not dissapoint.  The nose brought in a very fresh, clean scent with notes of pepper and citrus.  The mouth feel was silky, something we like in our tequilas.  But the taste is what earned this tequila a spot on our best blanco list.  It had the very real tequila flavor we prefer, and had a mixture of both citrus and vanilla blended in, not something you often run across.  The finish was a good length and easy with a very light heat. Read more »

TequilaGringo.com Review:

Agavero is a special liqueur, and a Tequilagringo favorite.  So naturally, we were thrilled when the bottle they sent for review arrived at our doorstep. Read more »

From Tequila Gringo:

We really liked this tequila, and for the price it's a winner.  We picked up nut and some wood and found the consistency to be almost creamy.  It's smooth with only a little warmth, making it a great starter tequila.  If you're looking for a good gift tequila to bring to a party, this might be it - it's unique bottle and easy going taste are sure to make the receiver pleased as punch. Read more »

From Tequila Gringo:

When we took a whiff of this, we were taken aback a little.  You don't smell many tequilas like this.  We picked up a lot of spice in the nose.  The taste had a lot of spice as well plus some nut - very unique!  Nice long finish too.  Most importantly, it just tasted great.

From Tequila Gringo:

This one didn't impress us as much.  We had it in a flight with Corazon's blanco and Anejo, and this one failed to stand out.  It has a typical tequila taste, was smooth with a medium heat.  We thought it was just all too typical to make our best list - but a solid choice if you're faced with a Patron/Cuervo looking bar.

Tequila Gringo Review This one drinks like an anejo more than like a repo, is marketed sort of like an anejo, but my understanding is that some of it is aged 9 months, while other batches are aged over a year (you must age it over a year for it to be an "anejo") depending on how many times the barrel has been used before. Regardless of age, their process has created a winner. We REALLY enjoyed this tequila. It's one of our favorites to smell frankly, and the taste is not to be missed. We picked up vanilla, and mostly enjoyed it because it tastes like tequila with it's agave flavors coming in, where some other high quality tequilas almost don't. Add this to the list of great bottles that can be had for around 50 bucks. Read more »