From TequilaGringo: One of the great things about tequila is that it's perfectly acceptable to get way out there with bottle designs.  There are modern ones. Read more »

From Tequila Gringo: We were thrilled when Juan Carlos Contreras reached out to us about his fantastic anejo.  Not only is Juan Don Pilar's Brand Ambassador, he's also the son of Don Pilar.  I have to say, he sent the nicest note you can imagine.  During our back and forth, it became clear immediately that Juan was a great person, and since we had heard great things about his anejo we were starting to think something pretty special was going on down on their ranches in San Jose de Gracia. We hadn't had it yet, but our chance was about to arrive.  Read more »

From Tequila Gringo: Tres Manos has been on our hit list for a while and we finally got to try some at the Tequila Event at the Winehouse in West LA.  Triple distilled.  Triple filtered.  (Do you get much out of the extra distillation and filter - unclear, but presumably there are fewer contaminants, better purity.)  Barrel info is all on the bottle.  An extra anejo, but it doesn't say it on the label due to some strange ruling it was grandfathered into.  But let's get to the tequila itself.  Very sherry-like (especially on the nose).  The taste continued the sherry theme, but also was somewhat floral and had a delicious peppery finish.  Great stuff.  A 3 yr old tequila at 70 bucks is pretty good value as 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: Oh wow.  We had this at West LA's Winehouse, and we absolutely loved it.  Their rep tells us it's organic, but they don't quite have the approval to say it yet.  The rep said, "Either you love it or you love it a lot" and we agree!  It's aged in charred sherry barrels which really made this not only unique, but delicious.  The nose was nice, light, with maybe a hint of cinnamon.  The taste followed up very well, you can certainly taste the sherry barrels, but it also has a "just right" amount of caramel that gives it a wonderful complexity.  A big full body.  If you like bourbon, you're going to like this - plain and simple.  9 stars and on TequilaGringo's best Reposado list. Read more »

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 TequilaGringo: Wow.  We had this in a massive flight, having tried it against many of the other tequilas at the 2008 Expo Tequila in Tijuana and it came out our favorite.  It has a nice hint of honey to it, and finishes amazingly well.  Bad news for all you americans, not available in the US.  You're going to have to overcome silly swine flu fears and get yourself down to MX to pick up a bottle.  We did - it was one of the few we brought back from the Expo! And yes, the bottle top does have one last shot of tequila in it for you.  nice.

TequilaGringo.com Review:     Justin Timberlake has come out with a winner.  I must say, I was a little biased against this tequila from the start (unfairly so) just because I thought it didn't really seem "mexican" or authentic.  When the bottle came I started to change my perception.  It's a better design in person than in the pictures.  Then we poured a little into a tequila glass, and had a whiff. 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:

We're becoming big fans of tequila Ocho.  After a good tasting of the anejo, we decided to give the repo a shot and were pretty darned happy with it.  On first smell, you'll pick up unmistakable citrus, and when you taste it you immediately find more citrus and some smoke.  The long finish is complex with notes of cinammon and maybe some choclate, and that's when we started to really like this tequila.  Pale gold in color, paler than most repos. Medium heat.

TequilaGringo Review:   We really enjoyed this blanco.  It smelled of strong citrus, and the taste followed that up with an easy low heat, complext with citrus and maybe a little nut.  Long delicious finish that we really liked a lot.  Easily one of our favorite blanco's.

TequilaGringo Review:

This tequila is a pale yellow.  Smells of light citrus, honey, and generally sweet.  On tasting it, we picked up a trace of caramel and a generally "tequila" taste that we really like.  It's definitely a complex tequila with a long finish.  Not for the faint of heart though, as it has a medium to high heat.  Ocho claims that their single estate tequilas prove terroir exists in tequila.

From their official site: Read more »

From Tequila Gringo:

We found the Dona Carlota repo to have a nice, light, and fragrant nose.  It smelled of spice to some degree, but we finally figured out that it was more like a potpurri!  It has a soft taste that was really floral.  VERY easy finish, and it maintained the taste throughout the finish.  This is a great starter tequila, and would be interesting in any tasting flight of anejos because it's so unique.

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.