Tusk’ave Tequila · Single Barrel

The Craft

Bottling

The last step, and the one we do slowest. Everything below is our own bottling floor, photographed as it actually runs.

No stock photos

This is the actual room

Most spirits brands show you a mood. We would rather show you the floor, the equipment and the people, because a single-barrel promise is only worth what you can verify. Five steps, exactly as they happen.

You will see the name Hogshead Travesía on the labels, the bottles and the cases. That is our first collection — the first casks we ever bottled — and the name stays on them. The house that made them is Tusk'ave.

  1. A gloved hand filling a bottle straight from the cask tap

    Filled by hand

    Straight from the cask, one bottle at a time.

  2. Two filled bottles held up against a bright inspection light

    Held to the light

    Every bottle checked for clarity before it goes on.

  3. A worker writing barrel and bottle numbers by hand onto Hogshead Travesía labels laid out on a steel bench

    Numbered by hand

    Barrel number, bottle number, ABV. Written, not printed.

  4. A capsule being sealed over the neck of a filled Hogshead Travesía bottle

    Sealed

    Wax capsule pressed over the cork.

  5. A Hogshead Travesía case on the packing line

    Boxed for you

    Cased and on its way.

A four-head filling station running amber tequila into bottles, operated by a worker in a hairnet, mask and gloves

Hands and machines

People where it matters. Equipment where it must be exact.

Hand-crafted does not mean improvised. Filling runs through a multi-head station with sanitary stainless fittings and inline filtration, so every bottle from a cask is filled to the same level, at the same strength, in clean conditions.

What stays human is the judgement: deciding a cask is ready, checking a bottle against the light, writing its numbers down. That is the part a machine cannot do for us, so we don't ask it to.

No two the same

Every label is filled in by hand

Not printed in a batch. Written on, bottle by bottle, with the numbers that belong to this cask and no other.

Rows of labelled Hogshead Travesía bottles being finished by hand, each label hand-written with its barrel and bottle number
Hogshead Travesía — our first collection
A finished Hogshead Travesía bottle on the line, its label filled in by hand: Añejo, 27 months, Barrel # H01, Bottle # 101 of 174, 54.4% alcohol by volume, 108.8 proof
Hogshead Travesía — Barrel # H01

Read it yourself

Barrel number. Bottle number. The exact proof.

Every bottle carries which barrel it came from, which number it is out of that barrel's total, and the strength that cask actually came out at. Yours is one of a few hundred that will ever exist.

See the casks →

See it running

The same check, every bottle

Two unedited clips from the floor: bottles passing the inspection light, and the line in motion. Press play if you want to watch the boring, repeatable part. That part is the quality control.

A row of finished, labelled Hogshead Travesía bottles from a single barrel, lined up on the bottling table
Hogshead Travesía — one cask’s whole yield

The whole yield

One cask, counted out

A barrel gives what it gives. However many bottles come out is how many will ever exist, and the count is printed on each one. When they are gone, that expression is finished for good.

What makes it official

Next: CRT & Denomination of Origin →