Meet Echo Park’s Tequila Master

Think you know what goes into making good tequila? Wait until you hear what Echo Park's tequila maestro has to say on the matter.

Two short years after launching Tequila Real de Mexico out of Echo Park, by way of Mexico, Jaime’s premium tequila is now the official tequila of the Silver Lake Jubilee and Sunset Junction.

As he tells us below, it all started with the family business.

How did you get involved in the tequila business? 

My family has been involved in tequila for over 40 years--in the town of Arandas, area of Los Altos (The Highlands), state of Jalisco in Mexico.  The family connected forces with the largest family of agave growers in all of Mexico, and a joint project developed with a true "single estate" tequila.  Since I have run successful businesses here in Los Angeles close to 20 years, after graduating from USC, I led the charge (along with a cousin--Fernando Hernandez) in bringing the product out to the market globally.

When did the tequila launch? 

Our U.S. market launch originated in Echo Park back in May of 2009. Our first event was at the Short Stop, which I consider to be our ground-zero of locations.  We soon spread out throughout Echo Park, Silver Lake and into downtown Los Angeles.

What makes Real de Mexico a “super premium” tequila? 

We compare it to a high-end, single estate wine, based on the following steps:

Simply "Terroir":
Product (agave) comes from the best agave producing region of all of Mexico, which is Los Altos. The best weather climate, altitude (6,500 sea foot level) and rich red soil. Our agave is what grapes are to Napa--simply the best. Our own estate of agave consists up to 4.5 million heads of our own agave plantations. We use a bio-dynamic agriculture technique to keep our product organic; we reuse all of our by-products in the fields.

Cooking:
We use a culinary approach while most brands use a fast food approach. We use clay brick ovens to retain the natural aromas and flavors (i.e. vanilla) and slow cooking for 72 hours. Most of the brands on the market use AutoClaves (metal ovens that are typically used for sterilization) which kill the aromas of the agave to complete their cooking in 8 hours. Even other super premium tequilas max out at 48 hours of cooking.

Fermentation:
We use a French champagne organic yeast and our fermentation process typically lasts from 10 to 13 days. This specific type of yeast allows us to ferment at a lower temperature so we don't burn off the natural flavors.  We also play classical baroque music during the fermentation process.  We use the sounds of Mozart or Vivaldi, which increases the activity of fermentation for 10 to 15% more alcohol output.

Distillation -- Selective vs. Entire Distillation:
Real de Mexico uses only the body (heart) of the distillation. That is why we don't have to go beyond the minimum required double distillation. Most of the competitive brands keep the entire body of distillation (head, body, and tails) which leads to triple distilling or more, to remove the additional impurities.

Aging - Brand New vs. Used Barrels:
Real de Mexico only uses virgin American white oak barrels from Wisconsin, which are lightly toasted to provide a light oak taste. Our goal is to keep our flavors from the first four steps mentioned above. Most of the competition uses tainted barrels from other spirits (i.e. whiskey) to mask the shortcomings in the previous four steps mentioned above.

How can we taste your tequila?

We plan to do a "Real de Mexico Tequila Industry Night" in July at one of our Echo Park restaurants, and also spice it up a bit by starting the first "Tequila Crawl" here in Echo Park. This would probably start at Taix and end up at the Short Stop.

Thanks, Matthew.  Until then, we’ll pick up a bottle at Bar Keeper.