Katy O’Donnell has spent her career explaining spirits to people who think they already understand them. This time it was my turn.
When it comes to tequila, I am Jon Snow. I know nothing. Well, almost nothing. I do, however, know a lot about whiskey and a little about spirits. Some, and I mean a small some, of that will translate for today’s conversation.
Katy O’Donnell gets that, and was gracious enough to shepherd me into a more knowledgeable place.
She spent years at Sazerac, some of them as the national brand ambassador for Buffalo Trace, which helps her translate my whiskey talk into something more useful here. Now she is the Vice President of Brand Development for Tequila Tromba in the United States. Her new nickname for herself is blanco baby, and over the course of almost an hour I got to understand why.
The thing that broke my brain
In the bourbon world we often see rising proof as evidence of care. In most cases in the US, whiskey will increase in proof as it is aged. This also means that someone is likely tasting it along the way and identifying that this will be a well aged whiskey and lets it go. It’s a product of patience. It’s a mark of care. And as a result there’s a bunch of me-looking dudes with blown out palates and ridiculous assumptions on what proof means.
Tequila is a fantastic respite from such idiocy.
Katy explained that in any aged tequila, getting the spirit above the mid fifties is difficult, and well, not even the point. Distillation is typically double distilled (hey, a phrase I understand) in alembic or copper pot stills (more jargon I know), which usually does not push proof up the same way a column still would (both words and concepts I understand). Then comes aging (man, I know all about tequila now).
Jalisco, where it is hot most of the year, requires a different aging concept. Tromba ages underground. Inherent heat protection, and as a result the proof isn’t going to increase. If anything it will decrease.
So in this case, decreasing proof becomes the mark of a well cared for spirit. Confusing, right?
She also made a fair point. In Mexico, the tequila you drink is often around 38 percent. Culture built around consumption of tequila is to actually enjoy drinking it, and high proof is going to limit that for a big portion of the consumer base.
The question nobody had asked her
What about chill filtration? Whiskey nerds on a single cask trip recently asked Katy this.
She had never been asked that since her beginnings in the agave world.
Ultimately the answer was yes, for two reasons. Tequila carries skepticism around additives and production quality, and crisp, clear, and clean is a sign of quality. Easier to understand now. The goal is to make something pristine, and chill filtration is another way to achieve that.
We in the whiskey world often get bunched up around the same conversation, but there’s a high degree of regulation on what can go into bourbon. The rules around tequila are different, and as such, whatever they can do to prove that their liquid is unadulterated, they’ll do it.
A kitchen, not a distillery
Tromba was launched in 2009 by two Australians, a Canadian, and two Mexicans. It’s the beginning of a joke where the punchline is great tequila. The Aussies and the Canadian met a man in Guadalajara whose father was a serious tequila distiller, and that father, Marco Cedano, had spent decades making other people’s brands and wanted one of his own.
When his partners came in, Cedano set the terms in five words.
No gringos in the kitchen.
Tromba does not own its distillery. Katy compared it to a commissary kitchen. They come in, they clean the equipment, they produce under their own standards using Cedano’s own cultivated yeast strains, and then they leave. It is not a case of hiring somebody else’s master distiller to make your liquid. It is the distiller himself walking into a borrowed room.
Cedano is 75 now and stepping back. His right hand, Lilia Quintero, came out of university as a chemical engineer specifically wanting to learn from a master, cold-called him for an internship, and has been with him for twenty years. The recipe goes to her. That is a better succession story than most whiskey brands can tell.
Planting agave you can never sell
Blue Weber is the only agave that can legally become tequila, and it is also the one that makes money, so it has crowded out other species across Jalisco. Two weeks before recording, Katy was out in the fields planting rare and near-endangered agave in small sanctuaries. Those plants have no commercial future. They exist to feed pollinators, hold soil, and put biodiversity back into ground that has been growing one thing for a long time.
Sustainability is frequently a word doing marketing work, and if you look behind it you usually find a revenue line. Planting something you have promised yourself you will never harvest is a different category of thing.
There is a practical version of this too. The fiber left after the cooked agave gets milled, the bagazo, goes to a sister company that turns it into straws, cups, and cutlery that biodegrade.
Go taste something
Katy’s actual advice, and I think it is right, is to stop being loyal to one bottle. Find a bar doing one ounce pours. Try four things. Let your own palate build the map instead of borrowing somebody else’s.
Full conversation is live on audio, on YouTube, and right here.
