Mijenta Tequila is Our 2023 Excellence in Sustainability Producer of the 12 months

Juan Coronado’s ardour is infectious. A profession in hospitality that spans past 20 years hasn’t diminished the co-founder of Mijenta Tequila’s palpable enthusiasm for the drinks business, spirits manufacturing, and model improvement.

“Model information is one thing that I’m obsessive about…[and] processes,” he says. “I feel in my subsequent life I’m going to be a chemical engineer. I’m a curious man.”

However ardour is simply a part of the equation that makes a brand new model profitable—particularly a tequila model that’s taking up the herculean job of placing sustainability on the middle of its whole course of.

Based on the Distilled Spirits Council of the US, the whole international market share for tequila was estimated at practically $10 billion in 2022. At first of 2023, tequila was predicted to dethrone vodka as the most well-liked spirit within the U.S., making agave spirits the fastest-growing spirits class within the nation. 

Nevertheless, the potential environmental ramifications of an agave enterprise growth, with report gross sales and limitless model launches, have pressured the drinks business to have critical discussions in regards to the way forward for tequila and mezcal.

Agave manufacturing can have a serious affect on the setting in addition to on the small communities the place the manufacturing takes place. It has develop into extra vital than ever for producers to have a sustainability plan on the prepared, notably bigger producers and newer manufacturers coming into the market.  

In 2020, on the peak of the pandemic, Coronado launched Mijenta Tequila with former Bacardi CEO Mike Dolan and designer and activist Elise Som. Maestra Tequilera Ana María Romero, a revered business veteran, was positioned to supervise your entire manufacturing. The model emerged with a completely realized ethos in place, which included a philosophy to make sustainability a precedence.

“The primary objective was to create an genuine, conventional tequila like those I used to like after I began ingesting…to create a unbelievable product,” says Coronado. “However we’re an organization that believes in doing effectively by doing the proper factor. We now have to be liable for each motion and each intention we put on the market.” 

Mijenta is clearly strolling the stroll. Earlier this 12 months, the model grew to become the primary tequila producer to earn a B Corp certification, which evaluates an organization’s efficiency relating to social and environmental elements. Mijenta has met full carbon neutrality whereas reinvesting a part of its earnings again into the group, and creating significant partnerships with non-profit organizations. 

“The B Corp [certification] took place with [a] imaginative and prescient of eager to do higher,” says Coronado. “[We’re] not an enormous firm however [we’re] attempting to do the proper factor…questioning what [is] on the market that may assure traceability, group progress and wealth, and sustainability.”

Mijenta locations an emphasis on accountable agriculture practices by selling biodiversity and by no means utilizing pesticides or herbicides on its agave. The model’s bottles are produced from recycled glass, and its labels are created domestically from agave waste. 

“Tequila has a number of byproducts,” says Coronado. “We began utilizing the bagasse [a fibrous byproduct of agave production] to create paper with an area [women-owned] firm. We deliver [the bagasse] to these women they usually do their magic, after which we purchase that paper again, ship it to the printer, and print our labels.”

Mijenta’s packaging can also be eco-friendly. The bins for each the blanco and reposado expressions are made solely from post-consumer recycled paper, and the Añejo Gran Reserva field is produced from paper that’s licensed by the Forest Stewardship Council. 

Neighborhood is on the coronary heart of Mijenta’s mission and is even in its title. “Mijenta” is derived from the Spanish phrase “mi gente,” that means “my individuals.” 

“Ten years in the past Arandas was a ghost city. Tequila wasn’t promoting, there have been no jobs, everybody needed to come back to the north,” says Coronado. “The wealth is 1735096563 spreading and [is] not simply managed by a number of manufacturers, a number of households, and that’s an excellent factor. The creation of an excellent robust financial system of those agave cities is unimaginable,” he says. “The funding of native enterprise house owners into their very own infrastructure is making these adjustments.”

Mijenta goals to strengthen its group and defend the planet, all whereas producing award-winning tequilas. 

“It’s vital to ensure the prosperity of this enterprise,” says Coronado. “The class is rising and with that progress, the norm needs to be revised, and we’re going to get higher at this.”