Sylvie's Travels Home

The 4 amigos left at 8am in our brand new and comfortable van. It was nice to discover new vistas on the way. We arrived in Tequila just before noon. 

We went to our hotel called Solar de Las Animas. The rooms were not ready so we left the car there and went to the square and found a place to eat. We thought it would be fun to do a tour in a barrel shaped truck around town….It wasn’t. The guide spoke only Spanish and was speaking so fast that even Pogo couldn’t understand. When she wasn’t speaking, the driver was blasting American party music and our middle aged guide was dancing around the pole.…We couldn’t see anything really out of the windows and never had time to take pictures. Our first stop was by a field of agave where you could take a picture sitting on a horse in front of it. There were a few stalls selling knick knacks and tequila.  The second stop was to show us where people used to do their laundry back in the days but I decided to go take a picture of a mural I had spotted instead. Meanwhile the driver stopped twice to go spit. We thought he was puking because he bent down and disappeared in front of the truck. Gross.  We drove quickly by many distilleries and were finally dropped off by the square.  I would not recommend that tour.

We walked around town a bit then went back to the hotel to settle in our room and take a nap. We had a gorgeous view of the church from the window and a view of one of the hotel’s many gardens from the balcony.  We met back at 4pm at the beautiful rooftop bar. We had a drink then left to go to our next tour starting at 5pm.  

I had looked yesterday at Airbnb experiences to see what was available. I had found one about visiting a small family distillery but it was available only at 8:30pm. I emailed them to see if they could do a private tour for the 4 of us at 5pm. I wanted to go to the agave fields during daylight.  They agreed to meet us from 5 till 7pm.  We were there until 9pm… José, as in José Guadalupe Nuñez Rodriguez, the owner, couldn’t have been more welcoming.  He used to be the mayor of Tequila and worked hard to have it become a Pueblo Magico.  He didn’t speak a lot of English so had asked his friend Monica to be the interpreter. He took us first to the agave field, explained the process of growing and harvesting.  We walked around a very small portion of his 600 acres property, on the outskirts of Tequila with an incredible view of the volcano. We could still find obsidian glass from the last time the volcano erupted 200K years ago. They had a variety of fruit trees all over the property like lime, lemon, avocado, mango and mandarin as well as pistachio trees. They also had a few cows, chickens, horses and dogs.

We learned that they usually wait until the agave plants are 6 to 10 years old before harvesting them. The leaves are all cut off and the “hearts” or pinas are then steamed, baked and juiced.  The syrup is then fermented and distilled.  We found out that it takes about 6 to 8 kilos to make a liter of tequila and since pinas weigh usually between 30 to 90 kilos, each plant can make at least 3 to 4 liters of 100% agave tequila. 

We tasted his 4 tequilas: blanco, reposado, anejo and extra anejo.  We all made a local drink called cantarito which included squeezing fresh grapefruits, oranges, limes and lemons then we added tequila and squirt, a soda that tasted a little bit like fresca.    You could tell José was so proud about his all natural tequila called La Puntual, which his family started in 1847.  He answered dozens of questions from us, always with a smile. We, as well as Mario and Josée, bought a bottle of anejo, which was our favorite. Pogo asked him to sign the bottle.  This is a unique and special tour that I would definitely recommend!

We came back to the hotel, went for dinner and crawled into bed at 11pm.