Drinking Tequila at the Source: A Visit to Tequila Ocho’s New Distillery

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.”

In 2008, the duo launched Tequila Ocho, using 100% agave, even though the laws in Jalisco have been diluted over the years to allow as much as 49% cane sugar. And while the market was chasing darker colors and consistent, neutral flavors, they would celebrate the uniqueness of each batch, putting the name of the specific field where the agave was harvested on the bottle—something that we tasted ourselves.

Estes died in 2021, but one of his sons, Jesse, was present to celebrate the opening of the new distillery and joined us in the barreling cellar for a tasting. We tried three recent blancos, or unaged tequilas. The first, my favorite, was from La Mula, a field just southeast of Arandas. It was gentle on the palate with an array of subtle fruit flavors. The second, from Cerro del Gallo, was more mineral, “like throwing rocks at you,” according to Camarenas. The third, from La Estancia, was more viscous with buttery notes.

We tasted six different bottles of Tequila Ocho, including three blancos.

I ask Camarena if he had a favorite field. After joking that they were all like his children, and then smiling to the daughter sitting next to him, saying he has different favorites at different times, he settles on a batch harvested in 2010—Los Mangos, from a field near an orchard to the south. I buy one of the few remaining bottles to later crack open with friends back home. It indeed packs a bold explosion of tropical flavors. For a spirit made from mostly cloned plants, you can definitely taste the land.

And even the aged bottles—the reposado, añejo and extra añejo—are much lighter than expected, the oak framing the agave flavors rather than overpowering them. Only the collaboration with Brooklyn whiskey maker Widow Jane lets anything but the agave into the spotlight, and even there, the vanilla and tamarind we tasted in the raw piña are present.

Inside the distillery, the agave plants we watched being harvested—and pathetically helped with—are being loaded into giant ovens by a conveyer belt. These will spend 72 hours steaming before the liquid is moved into giant open wooden vats, where it will ferment using the wild yeast in the air, wafting in from the fresh deliveries of agave piñas. The tanks heat up naturally as the yeast—as many as 200 million organisms in a single drop of liquid—convert the sugars to alcohol. The process is much like that of his grandfather’s. “When my grandfather started producing tequila 85 years ago,” he says, “there was no such thing as commercial yeast—it was the natural yeast. Maybe we are just too stubborn to change. We keep on doing it the same way that it was. Instead of trying to manipulate and accelerate it, mother nature knows how to do its job. Let it do it. Don’t interfere—or interfere as little as possible—and it will happen. We have learned to be patient seven years waiting for that agave to get here, so one more day, one more week, doesn’t make a difference.”

The agave first spends 72 hours in the ovens.

In fact, when it came time to decide on the shape of the copper stills, he chose his grandfather’s design over that of his chemist father, who had taken great pains to design stills that purified the end product. “I like my father, no question about it,” he says. “It’s good to have chemical integrity, but I also want flavor and boldness.”

The new facility also sports a bottling station, a cocktail bar, a “library” of older releases for sale, a gift shop, a large restaurant and a courtyard complete with stage. The original plan called for a hotel, but demand for more production has already claimed that extra space.

So for now, travelers wanting to take the Tequila Ocho tour, which runs Mondays through Saturdays (the only ones working at the distillery on Sundays are the yeast) will have to find lodging elsewhere in Arandas, a two-hour car ride northeast from Guadalajara. The final stretch is a little bumpy, and the locals call it “The Love Highway” after the story of a senator who reportedly had it built to visit a mistress. The road gets particularly busy in January and September when the town of less than 80,000 people swells in size as revelers descend for New Year’s and Independence Day celebrations. Camarena jokes they should change the town’s name from Arandas to Parrandas (“parties”), as the place becomes one huge cantina. For Independence Day in particular, the festivities get started in Arandas long before the rest of the country as anyone can bring their horse to town for five Thursdays leading up to the September 16th celebration.

If you plan on coming during either celebration, you’ll need to book your accommodations months ahead. Our stay is in Hotel Hacienda Vieja, a beautiful boutique hotel a short drive from the distillery. Most of the rooms available in the town are surprisingly affordable. And, of course, the bar is stocked with plenty of tequilas, all made right here in the highlands of Jalisco.

Josh Jackson is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @joshjackson or see his bird photography, including several amazing birds from Jalisco, @BirdsATL.