Mijenta Tequila is Our 2023 Excellence in Sustainability Producer of the Yr

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

“Model data 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 just 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 complete course of.

In line with the Distilled Spirits Council of the USA, the whole international market share for tequila was estimated at practically $10 billion in 2022. Firstly 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 infinite model launches, have compelled the drinks trade to have severe discussions concerning the way forward for tequila and mezcal.

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

In 2020, on the top 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 trade veteran, was positioned to supervise your complete manufacturing. The model emerged with a totally realized ethos in place, which included a philosophy to make sustainability a precedence.

“The primary purpose was to create an genuine, conventional tequila like those I used to like after I began consuming…to create a improbable product,” says Coronado. “However we’re an organization that believes in doing effectively by doing the best factor. We have now to be chargeable 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 components. Mijenta has met full carbon neutrality whereas reinvesting a part of its earnings again into the neighborhood, 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 a giant firm however [we’re] making an attempt to do the best factor…questioning what [is] on the market that may assure traceability, neighborhood 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 made out of recycled glass, and its labels are created domestically from agave waste. 

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

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

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

“Ten years in the past Arandas was a ghost city. Tequila wasn’t promoting, there have been no jobs, everybody wished to return to the north,” says Coronado. “The wealth is 1734976859 spreading and [is] not simply managed by a couple of manufacturers, a couple of households, and that’s an excellent factor. The creation of 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 neighborhood and defend the planet, all whereas producing award-winning tequilas. 

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