Jose Cuervo Tour

Hi! How is everyone doing? It's been awhile since I've blogged. Guadalajara may not have been the prettiest city we've been to but there was lots to do and we stayed pretty busy.

We did the Jose Cuervo tequila tour in the city actually named Tequila. Great little town and

several other distributors were nearby that offer tours of their plants.

All I can say,

Jose you are a friend of mine.

I like to drink you with a little

salt and lime....

Woohoo! Great tour.

It all starts with the

Blue Agave plant.

It actually takes

8-12 years before

harvesting.

If harvested too soon, it is said that there wouldn't be enough sugar to do the job.

The leaves are then chopped away by hand by a Jimador. The leaves are not exactly useless, when dried out factories buy from the Cuervo plant and make paper and different types of clothes with the dried leaves.

The heart of the Agave plant lies below the ground....much like a pineapple. In fact they call the core a Pina.

These are said to weight 70 pounds each

and can weigh up to 200 pounds.

It takes 15 pounds take make

one liter of tequila.

We were able to sample

the raw pina.

Sad to say it had

absolutely no

flavor.

The next process is

roasting which takes

approx 34 hours.

The agave will appear

charred once extracted

from the roasters.

During the roasting period the starches will turn into sugars. After the roasting process, the pinas are run thru a shredder. It looks like bark.

We were able to sample

a piece of bark.

WOW! Tons of

flavor and so

good but no

alcohol at this point

After shredding they then run a machine that presses all the juices out of them and store them in wooden barrels. From this point yeast is added and during the fermenting process the yeast turns the Agave sugar into alcohol. Alcohol content can be 70 to 110 proof.

You basically have to 2 types of tequilas minus that Mezcal stuff. There's 100% Blue Agave and then there's 51% Blue Agave w/other additives. Both types are then broken down by Blanco/Silver, Oro/Gold, Reposado and Anejo. All depends on their distilled/aged process.

Gold is the type of tequila that should be used in Margaritas. There's no reason to waste money using the Reposado or Anejo.

I had no idea the boxes in which some of these tequilas are sold in are collectors items. You can actually buy them on EBay. There are some that are really pretty.

Each sold separately

Put them together

and wha-la...

How cool is this?

There lots of different

boxes sold.

Hope you found this as informational as we did.

Take care - Bonnie & Bob