Tahona
A huge volcanic-stone wheel, weighing a ton or more, that slowly crushes cooked agave in a circular pit. The original way to make tequila, and still used by a handful of traditional distilleries.
A tahona is a giant wheel of volcanic stone — often a ton or more — that rolls around a circular stone pit, crushing cooked agave to release its juice. Mules or oxen once pulled it; today it's usually a small tractor or a motor.
It's slow, labor-intensive and inefficient. That's partly the point. A tahona crushes more gently than a roller mill, and many producers ferment — and sometimes distill — with some of the agave fibers still in the juice. Tahona tequila is often described as earthier and more textured, with more cooked-agave depth.
Only a handful of distilleries still use one, at least for part of their production. La Fortaleza and La Alteña (Tapatio, El Tesoro) are the best-known examples. When a bottle says tahona on the label, it's a reliable signal that the producer is spending money on tradition rather than efficiency.
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From mature blue Weber agave to bottle in seven steps — harvest, cook, crush, ferment, distill, age, bottle. The choices a producer makes at each step are most of what you taste.
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