Drinking Tequila at the Source: A Visit to Tequila Ocho’s New Distillery
Photos by Josh Jackson
The jimadors are using their coas, long poles with a razor sharp circular blade on the end, to slice off the stiff, spiny leaves of the Blue Weber agave plants (Agave tequilana) like they’re made of butter. It’s harder than it looks—a fact I now know from experience. I gave it a try, carving each long leaf off the piña, or heart of the plant, trying to mimic their swift, short jabs, and gained even more respect for the men who had spent the past three hours harvesting more than 100 plants each. I might have been there three hours just trying to finish off one.
We’re on one of the smaller fields within sight of Tequilera Los Alambiques, the brand new distillery for Tequila Ocho. As we watch the jimadors load all the harvested agave plants onto a truck, co-founder Carlos Camarena explains why it is important for him to grow his own agave, a strategy unique among tequila-makers.
“I’m an agronomist,” he says, “and tequila is the consequence, but it starts with the fields. My grandfather used to say, ‘If you have first-quality agave, you have a chance to produce first-quality tequila.’ If your process is not right, you destroy that chance, but at least you had a chance. But if you begin using a second-quality agave or a third-quality agave, the question is, ‘Can you really produce first-quality tequila out of that?’ And the answer is no.”
Camarena points with pride to the spots of blood red liquid some of the jimador’s cuts have made. “I want my agave to bleed,” he laughs, indicating the spots that show the plants are on the verge of becoming overripe. His chemist will report that these plants are much larger and have a much higher sugar content than the industry average. The pressure is for farmers to harvest early so they can quickly replant. Camarena will leave a percentage of his crops to flower—making them useless for making tequila, but helpful to both the genetic diversity of the agave and the conservation of the agave plant’s main pollinators, the lesser long-nosed bat.
“We are part of the Bat Friendly Project with the National University of Mexico,” he says. “All of the blue agave in Mexico are clones. Because of genetic uniformity, the main risk is that we could be hit with a virus or other disease.” Once the agave flowers, all the sugars become nectar for pollinators and the plant is useless for tequila, so jimadors regularly clip the stems to preserve the sugars in the piñas. To bats, who migrate from their breeding grounds in the southern U.S., that used to mean a sea of blue agave but nothing to eat, landing it on the endangered species list in 1988. Through efforts like the Bat Friendly Project, populations have begun to recover. “It’s a win-win situation. We provide the bats with food, and in exchange, we want the bats to bring some new pollen and eventually to have plants that are naturally resistant.”

Carlos Camarena at one of his agave fields.
Camarena’s family’s relationship with agave goes back generations, to his great-great-grandfather Pedro, who in the early 19th century brought the first plants from the Valley of Tequila to the highlands. The locals thought he was crazy—those who helped plant them thought they were going to get paid a second time to dig them back up and others stole them thinking they were pineapples. The family’s first distillery burned to the ground during the Mexican Revolution.
His son Felipe would build La Alteña distillery in 1937 in Arandas during a glut in the agave market, in order to save his harvest from rotting in the fields. According to family legend, his plan was to sell the spirits if he could or drink it all if he couldn’t. Several notable tequila brands would be produced there, including Tequila Tapatio, where both Carlos and his father would serve as master distillers.
But Carlos dreamed of treating the agave fields like winemakers treated their vineyards, bringing a sense of terroir to the world of distilled spirits. He approached Tomas Estes, a restauranteur from Southern California who helped tequila gain a foothold throughout Europe—and became the official tequila ambassador for the EU—about partnering on a new tequila brand that would focus primarily on the agave flavors. “We had a bunch of ideas,” Camarena says, “each one crazier than the next.”