How tequila is made

Tequila is made from blue Weber agave, grown mostly in Jalisco. Every bottle goes through roughly the same seven steps, but every producer makes different choices along the way — and those choices are most of what you taste.

1. Harvest. Agave takes six to eight years or more to mature. Jimadores cut the plant by hand, strip the leaves with a coa, and haul the heart — the piña — to the distillery. A good piña can weigh fifty to a hundred pounds or more.

2. Cook. Cooking turns the agave's starches (mostly inulin) into fermentable sugar. Traditional producers slow-cook in brick ovens (hornos) for a day or more. Others use stainless-steel autoclaves, which are faster. The fastest route skips most of the cooking entirely: a diffuser strips the sugar from raw agave with water and heat. Slow cooking builds caramelized, cooked-agave flavor; fast methods trade character for efficiency.

3. Crush. The cooked agave is crushed to release its sweet juice, the mosto. Most distilleries use roller mills. A few traditionalists still use a tahona — a giant stone wheel — which is slower and gentler and lets some of the agave fiber go into fermentation.

4. Ferment. The mosto ferments in open or closed tanks, in steel or wood, with cultivated or wild yeast. Open, wild fermentation is harder to control and tends to produce more complex spirit.

5. Distill. Most tequila is distilled twice, in copper pot stills or in column stills. Copper strips out sulfur compounds and adds richness.

6. Age. Blanco is bottled unaged or rested briefly. Reposado, añejo and extra añejo spend progressively longer in oak — see the types of tequila. Most barrels are ex-bourbon American oak; French oak and wine or sherry casks are increasingly common.

7. Bottle. The tequila is filtered, cut with water to bottling strength, and bottled. This is also the stage where additives go in, if any are used.

The quickest way to read a tequila is to start at step 2 and work down. Brick oven, tahona, wild fermentation, copper pot still: traditional. Diffuser, column still: industrial. Both can make drinkable tequila, but they don't taste like the same thing.