When: July 24
National Tequila Day on July 24th celebrates Mexico's most internationally famous spirit — a drink with a strict legal definition, a complex production process, and a flavor profile that ranges from gentle and floral to smoky and intensely complex depending on how it's made. Most Americans have only tasted the bottom shelf, which is a genuine shame.
Tequila can only be made in five Mexican states from one species of agave — blue Weber agave — that takes 7–10 years to mature before it can be harvested.
The blue Weber agave plant grows for 7 to 12 years before it's ready to harvest. All that time, it stores photosynthetic energy as fructans — complex sugars — in its core, the piña, which can weigh between 40 and 200 pounds when mature. A skilled jimador — the laborer who harvests agave — uses a razor-edged tool called a coa to remove the plant's thorny leaves and cut the piña free from the soil. An experienced jimador can harvest roughly 80 piñas in a day. The piñas are roasted in brick ovens or autoclave tanks, which converts the fructans to fermentable sugars, then crushed, fermented with yeast, and distilled, typically twice. The legal definition of tequila requires blue agave from specific regions of Mexico — Jalisco and parts of Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit, and Tamaulipas — and at least 51% agave sugars in the fermentation. A tequila labeled "mixto" uses the remaining 49% from cane sugar. A 100% agave tequila uses only agave sugars. The difference in flavor is significant:...