We’ve talked about tequila here before briefly, but Bill Bumgarner gives an excellent overview of what makes a good tequila good and a bad tequila bad.  An excerpt:

“Good tequila is almost always a tequila that is made from alcohol distilled from 100% blue agave. Specifically, the species Agave Weber Tequilana. This plant of the class Liliopsida (Lilies) has nothing to do with cactus. Blue agave is grown primarily in the Mexican state of Jalisco.

More specifically, Cuervo gold is a Tequila Mixto, Joven Abocado or, more precisely, young and adulterated tequila.

By Mexican law, adulterated tequilas are at least 51% blue agave. The other 49% is generally comprised of the absolute cheapest, nastiest, sugar cane based liquor. If you are familiar with big city corner bodegas, the cheap rum in the plastic bottle on the bottom shelf behind the counter. “Bum rum” we called it in NYC.

Adulterated tequila would not have any color. To give it color and take a bit of edge off, Cuervo (and others) add caramel. This ultra-nasty combination of cheap cane sugar alcohol and low quality agave distillate is the reason for the vicious hangover. Those massive nasty sugar molecules break down into all sorts of evils that take your body a long time to metabolize. Hence, a Cuervo/adulterated tequila hangover is a trip through hell.”

Definitely worth a read.

via :: Dethroner

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 3:21 pm and is filed under General Drankin', How To Drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “What Makes a Good Tequila”

1. longstaff says:

   June 21, 2008 at 10:59 pm

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2. longstaff says:

   June 21, 2008 at 11:01 pm

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   June 22, 2008 at 1:22 am

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5. 2003m3 says:

   November 7, 2009 at 11:18 pm

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