Extraction:
tahona vs mill
Cooked agave has to be crushed to free its juice. The romantic stone tahona and the efficient roller mill give subtly different results — a real difference, but a smaller one than the marketing around "tahona" suggests.
Crushing the cooked agave
Between the oven and the fermentation tank sits the crush. Click through the methods:
"Tahona" is a genuine craft signal and a real (if subtle) textural difference — but it’s become a marketing badge, and a tahona can’t rescue badly-cooked or diffuser-processed agave. Rank the production levers honestly: agave quality and cooking method move the cup more than tahona-vs-mill does.
Spot the claim
Find "tahona" on a shelf
Notice which bottles advertise tahona or stone-crushed — and their prices. It’s a premium signal.
Stay skeptical
Treat it as "this producer likely cares," not "this is guaranteed better." The blanco taste-test still decides.
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- What is aguamiel? Bagazo?
- What is a tahona and what does it give?
- What is a roller mill?
- How big is the tahona-vs-mill difference, really?
- Why do some producers blend both?
Fermentation
The step most drinkers ignore and where much of tequila’s aroma is actually created. Yeast, tanks, time — each a fork between wild complexity and industrial consistency.
Where the aroma is born
Fermentation isn’t just how tequila gets its alcohol — it’s where a huge share of the aroma compounds are created. Click through the choices that shape it:
Notice the pattern repeating: wild yeast, open tanks, and slow cool fermentation build complexity; cultured yeast, closed tanks, and fast warm fermentation buy consistency and speed. This efficiency-vs-character fork runs through every production step — cooking, extraction, fermentation, distillation. Learn the pattern once and you understand the whole chain.
Hunt the funk
Taste for complexity
In an agave-forward tequila, look for layered, slightly funky, "alive" aromas — much of that is fermentation.
Compare to a neutral one
A flat, one-note tequila often had a fast, controlled, cultured fermentation (or a neutral distillate to begin with).
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- Why is fermentation a flavor step?
- Wild vs cultured yeast — the trade-off?
- Open vs closed tanks?
- How does fermentation speed affect flavor?
- What does fermenting with bagazo add?
Distillation
The final shaping step before the barrel. Where the distiller decides how much flavor to keep and how much to strip — the last place the efficiency-vs-character trade-off plays out before aging.
Refining the spirit
Tequila is distilled at least twice, and the choices here decide how much agave survives into the bottle. Click through:
You’ve now walked the whole chain: agave → cook → crush → ferment → distill. At every step the same fork appeared — keep character (slow, traditional, batch, low-proof) or maximize efficiency (fast, industrial, continuous, high-proof-then-filtered). A great tequila makes the character choice repeatedly; an industrial one makes the efficiency choice and then rebuilds flavor with additives (Session 13). This is the engine of the whole category.
Read the distillate
Judge the blanco again
A clean but flavorful, warming blanco kept its character through distillation. A watery, neutral, or harsh one was over-stripped or poorly cut.
Note the proof
Check bottling ABV. Many great tequilas sit at 40–46%+; some mass ones are cut low. Higher (well-made) often means more flavor retained.
Questions
Flashcards
Lock it in
From memory:
- How many times is tequila distilled?
- Pot vs column still — the difference?
- What are heads, hearts, and tails?
- What produces a neutral, additive-needing spirit?
- State the efficiency-vs-character fork in one sentence.