Why ‘Additive-Free’ Tequila Is the New ‘100% Agave’

In 2012 Grover and Scarlet Sanschagrin launched the cellular app Tequila Matchmaker as an offshoot of their on-line weblog Style Tequila. Via the app, Grover and Scarlet have compiled manufacturing data on greater than 2,000 tequila manufacturers, creating an at-your-fingertips database for shoppers who care to know extra about how their tequila is made.

A number of years in the past, representatives of producers started to strategy the pair, asking for his or her manufacturers to be listed as additive-free on the app. Nevertheless, as skilled catadores (the tequila equal of a sommelier), Grover and Scarlet recognized inconsistencies between many manufacturers’ additive-free claims and what they had been experiencing within the glass.

“We realized this was essential data and customers of our app had been requesting it, so we developed a program for evaluating a model or distiller’s claims,” says Grover. 

These requests for data comply with a pattern towards transparency amongst trade professionals and shoppers alike. 

“Within the final 40 years, the patron curiosity within the tequila trade has shifted from mixto tequilas to 100% agave tequilas as a result of individuals really feel that may be a extra genuine product,” says Guillermo Erickson Sauza, founding father of Tequila Fortaleza. “The following step to authenticity is additive-free.” 

Not a New Phenomenon

The usage of components in tequila dates again lots of of years, says investigative journalist Ted Genoways, who has coated agave spirits for greater than a decade. The tequila trade noticed its earliest growth within the 1840s and ’50s with the development of a number of giant distilleries. Shortly thereafter, Mexico was plunged into the Conflict of Reform within the late 1850s, adopted by the French Intervention within the early 1860s.

“This era of strife left the fields uncared for leading to a blight that affected the agave for many years,” says Genoways.

The trade responded by introducing different sugar sources reminiscent of corn and cane sugar along with agave. Nevertheless, the ensuing tequila was riddled with unhealthy aromas and flavors as a result of blighted materia prima, or uncooked materials. Sugar and chemical components, together with liquid ether, had been used to masks off-putting aromas and flavors.

Tequila’s erstwhile status for inflicting hangovers was the results of these dangerous components. Huge agave growers and distillers banded collectively within the Eighteen Eighties to push for a top quality customary that required producers to create additive-free tequila from 100% agave, however their efforts had been fruitless. A world motion round meals security within the early 1900s led to the ban of some components, however solely those who had been probably dangerous to client well being and even deadly.  

Some agave merchandise now thought of conventional resulted from these early experiments with components. Tequila almendrado, an almond-flavored tequila-based liqueur, grew out of a few of the early makes an attempt at barrel ageing, whereas the addition of animal fat and fruits to the distillate, initially supposed to cover flaws, helped kind a brand new class of spirits known as pechugas.

“There’s quite a lot of romanticism round it,” says Genoways. “We like to think about these merchandise as conventional, however it actually is rising out of that very same lineage of protecting one thing up at a time when the agave simply isn’t the place you want to it to be.”

In trendy instances, using components has elevated with the implementation of extra industrialized technique of manufacturing.

“Many [agave] merchandise are made in a particularly quick, industrial, impartial manner,” says Grover. “The one selection [producers] have is to make use of components to deliver some kind of aroma and taste again to the distillate. So as an alternative of utilizing the method to generate pure aromas and flavors, they short-circuit the method by making a less expensive product after which use components to present it some character.”

What Components Are Hiding

At the moment the laws governing tequila manufacturing permits for 4 sorts of components, or abocantes—caramel coloring, oak extract, glycerin, and sugar-based syrups known as jarabes. These substances could also be used to create consistency, evoke barrel ageing, add sweetness and/or taste essences, or disguise defects within the product. 

By regulation, a producer can embrace as much as 1% by weight of those components of their tequila with out having to point so on the label. Which means a bottle labeled “100% agave” might nonetheless comprise a small quantity of components, and whereas 1% or much less could appear miniscule, it could have an outsize affect on the ultimate product. “The power and efficiency of in the present day’s components are so sturdy and concentrated that we now have by no means seen something near 1%,” says Grover. “In case you had been to make use of 1% it will not even resemble tequila as a result of [the ingredients are] so highly effective.”

The method to be listed in Grover and Scarlet’s just lately renamed Additive-Free Alliance entails analysis on a number of ranges, together with interviews of these working within the distillery, samples taken all through the manufacturing course of, and an intensive audit of logs saved on the distillery in compliance with governmental companies.

“You mainly must open all of your doorways to them, actually all of them,” says Sergio Mendoza, founder and director of Tequila Don Fulano.  

Grover and Scarlet additionally buy bottles from retailers to check what’s being offered to shoppers with what’s being supplied on the distillery. If there are vital modifications in taste profile, samples are despatched for laboratory evaluation.

“We’re within the strategy of incorporating extra laboratory evaluation, however it’s the a part of this system that has been extraordinarily costly for us,” says Grover. “We take up the bills of this system for the primary 12 months as we don’t need the associated fee to get in the way in which of somebody collaborating in this system. Within the second 12 months, if the model has seen worth in collaborating in this system and want to renew, there’s a really helpful donation.” 

Educating Customers on Additive-Free Tequila

Scarlet and Grover’s mission is actually gaining traction—Tequila Matchmaker presently lists over 100 manufacturers as a part of the Additive-Free Alliance, and extra are requesting to be evaluated. However are shoppers within the mission?

“We’ve seen an unimaginable rise in curiosity for additive-free tequila amongst our clientele inside the final 12 months,” says Eileen Elliott, director of operations at Social Wines in South Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Individuals are being educated about components in tequila by way of social media and podcasts. We additionally place bottle tags with the Additive-Free Alliance decal to point which manufacturers are additive-free. Since our agave assortment inside our wine store is 90% additive-free, the ratio of tags to [no tag] completely encourages questions from greater than half of the friends purchasing the gathering.”

The curiosity in additive-free tequila can also be impacting what we’re seeing in bars across the nation.

“Additive-free is totally essential for us when making selections, particularly as tequila’s prominence continues to develop,” says Ryan Lotz, beverage director for Traveler Road Hospitality in Boston. “Anybody shopping for tequila is making a choice to help or not help particular components of the class and to assist shield its tradition and significance. I believe it’s essential that nobody take the place their greenback goes calmly when contemplating the preservation of the class. For me, additive-free means the manufacturers don’t have anything to cover behind, that they’re doing issues the best manner, and they’re serving to to shepherd the class.”

Maxwell Reis, beverage director at Mírate in Los Angeles, ties the newfound curiosity in additive-free tequila to the expansion of the mezcal class. 

“I believe shoppers have realized that mezcal is a lot extra unadulterated, that even at its core the vast majority of mezcal manufacturers in the marketplace which might be problematic are thought of problematic not due to components, however due to issues reminiscent of practices round sourcing uncooked materials,” says Reis. “So persons are coming again to tequila from mezcal, and searching for that purity, and it’s beginning a much wider dialog.”

For Clayton Szczech, creator of A Area Information to Tequila, the significance of additive-free tequila lies within the instructional part for shoppers. 

“There are individuals stepping into tequila not likely understanding what a distillate from fermented cooked agave juice tastes like,” says Szczech. “The usage of components has created a false baseline for a lot of shoppers. Let’s begin the dialog with tequilas which might be coming as shut as attainable to having three substances—agave, yeast, and water—as a baseline.” 

“Grover and Scarlet and different individuals have finished quite a lot of work to coach individuals’s palates in that manner and I believe that’s actually essential,” he provides.  

Mendoza says using components robs the patron of crucial side of tequila: the agave. “The shoppers don’t get to expertise, establish, and fall in love with the pure bounty and great thing about mature agave, which is basically what makes agave spirits so distinctive,” he says. “The necessity for utilizing components and altering the pure course of arises as a result of we now have misplaced a connection on the supply, within the uncooked materials, which alone makes nice tequila.”

Considering Past Additive-Free

Whereas agave specialists all say that components are an essential a part of the dialog round transparency, they stress that the additive-free label shouldn’t be the one indicator of high quality. 

“It’s attainable to have a low-quality tequila that doesn’t comprise components,” says Grover. “Our function is to not play choose and jury about that are high quality tequilas. We’re right here solely to point whether or not components are current or not.” 

Salvador Rosales Trejo, grasp distiller of Tequila Cascahuín, says it’s essential to keep in mind that labeling phrases are, on the finish of the day, used to market a product.

“Sustainability, artisanal, and additive-free are all phrases which were equated with high quality,” he says. “To start out, these phrases had been used to assist educate the patron, however alongside the way in which they started to be misused for advertising functions. I really feel {that a} philosophy of high quality ought to be primarily based upon a model’s transparency, traceability, and producer ethics. The class of tequila ought to be specializing in supporting its pure and human assets to be able to place it the place it ought to be.”  

Szczech presents an identical sentiment. “I believe something that helps shoppers in prosperous international locations actually take into consideration the truth that commodities have a historical past, they usually have social relationships embedded in them, helps us to get past the fetishization of commodities,” he says. “If components are a technique into that dialog, then I’m all for it.”