I had the opportunity this week to taste tequilas with Jose Valdez, the Maestro Tequilero ("Master Distiller") of Partida Tequila, a 10-year-old producer in Jalisco state's Tequila valley. While the abundant tobacco and dark chocolate flavors of Partida's añejo tequila (aged 18 months in American oak) were delightful, the real joy of our sit-down was listening to the master casually let slip some of his secrets to making (and drinking!) this occasionally misunderstood spirit.
First, a quick primer on the four basic types of tequila: Blanco is not aged, reposado is aged at least two months, añejo is aged at least one year, and extra añejo is aged for three-to-five years. Thinking you're savvy, when choosing among tequilas, you might instinctively gravitate towards a new reposado or añejo, but that's not always the best course of action.
"When I want to try a new tequila, I like to try their blanco," Valdez said, referring to it as the purest expression of agave. "The blanco is the base of the rest. Sometimes in the reposado you can hide something, and in the blanco, it's hard to find."
Impurities aside, that's not to say that reposado — which Mexicans tend to favor even as Americans drink more blanco — isn't where the magic lies. Its aging process yields flavors of vanilla, banana, coffee, and chocolate in addition to a blanco's base citrus notes and spices. Over the years, Partida's reposado has undergone a transformation to make it more sessionable. Using a beer analogy, Valdez compared his initial formula to Guinness, with its "strong personality."
"But when you have one or two tequilas with that personality, it becomes boring and you don't enjoy it that much," he said. "So we decided to be more in the middle."
While some producers may cheat and fudge things, diluting their agave with sugar or even introducing glycerine to give it body, Partida takes great pains at every stage of the process, using stainless steel tanks that sacrifice a bit of tradition in favor of punctilious quality control. The company sources only agave that's at least seven years old, with a minimum of 26 percent sugar, and harvests it at just the right time. (Like avocados or bananas, agave has a sweet spot for ripeness, which major producers don't always heed.)I asked Valdez why tequilas are never aged for 10 years or longer, the way you find with good scotch. Apart from the cost, which is prohibitive, a tequila eventually becomes woody and cognac-like after four or five years, to the point where you can no longer tell it even came from agave.
"In Guadalajara, the climate is very different than Scotland," Valdez said, where "you need a longer period of aging to get color. A person from Scotland told me, 'One or two years aging in Tequila is like 10 years in Scotland.' Rum is the same: Sometimes you get faster aging because of the weather. Extra añejo, which is more than three years, should be no more than five years. After five years, it's a piece of wood and alcohol."
And you should never judge a tequila by the first sip, because your palate has not yet acclimated to the alcohol, and you won't obtain that drawn-out smoothness that's a hallmark of the good stuff. That first sip, in Valdez's words, is just "a wash."
"The second is the one where you can tell," he said. "A good tequila, you can drink it and it's OK, it doesn't burn, it doesn't bite you, and the flavors stay in your mouth for a minute, two minutes."
That lingering characteristic is no accident. In fact, everything about tequila should be slowed down. Agave plants take years to grow and, once harvested, that's it.
"I learned from my father that this beverage has to be respected when you drink it," Valdez said. "Because it takes seven-to-10 years to grow the plant. Plus the production process, plus the aging, it takes 10-13 years to get the bottle of tequila done. A good product, you prefer to drink it slowly and take the time."
Comments are closed.
