While exploring the second largest city of Mexico, we just found out about a small town nearby called: Tequila…that’s right T-E-Q-U-I-L-A!!! Of course we had to go there! 😁
Going to Tequila
We took the “Tequila bus”. 🚌 On our way we already saw fields of hundreds of thousands agave plants. When we finally reached Tequila we walked through some streets and got to know the “Pueblo Mágico”.
The town’s center is a small colourful mix of shops, bars, restaurants, of course one big church and tequila shops. The town hall offers a large patio with a big and colourful mural on the opposite wall. After strolling around a bit it was time to head to one of the many distilleries.
Casa Sauza
We decided to visit “Casa Sauza”, where we wanted to get to know more about the famous drink. Unfortunately there was only a Spanish guided tour. But as it was about tequila and we already gained some pretty competent language skills in Spanish, we thought “why not”! 😅
The agave field
The tour started with a short ride outside the town to a small botanical garden with a agave field. The guide told us about the many diffrent types of agave. But for making tequila they only use the blue agave. We even got to plant our own little plants. From planting to harvesting everything is still done by hand. A harvester, “Jimador”, showed us how to harvest the agave. He cut and trimmed the agave leaves with a sharp curved tool. Then extracted the heart of the agave, which looks like a pineapple. Only the heart is used to make tequila. The Jimador can chop down hundreds of agave plants in a day, by hand!
The distillery
After that we headed to the distillery to get to know the process after the harvest. But first we had to get a shot of tequila! 😋 In the distillery it was very loud. Therefore it was pretty hard to understand what the guide told us. But we had our first shot, so it was fine. 😅 After cooking the hearts of the agave, the juice is extracted. The taste of the agave juice was, let’s say interesting…After the juice is beeing fermented and distilled you finally get tequila. We tried the “fresh” tequila before the aging. For that the distillery has its own aging cellar with hundreds of barrels.
Depending on how long the tequila ages, the more color and tannins the final product has. To taste the diffrent aging types, we got another round of shots. You could really taste the differences. Especially the difference to the cheap and crappy tequila we used to know at home. 😅 After the last round of shots in the distillery, the tour was about to be finished. But not without one last drink mixed with tequila at the bar! 🥃😁
Happy but quite hungry, we had a little lunch before we headed back to Guadalajara with the “Tequila bus”. With a blurry memory on a merrily daytrip we were looking forward to some relaxing time at the coast…
