From Piña to Pour

The whole arc of the liquid.

Every Tusk'ave barrel starts as mature blue agave in the highlands of Los Altos and ends as documented single-barrel tequila. In between sits a run of decisions, and each one shapes the spirit. Here is that journey, stage by stage.

About this page — please read

The Craft pages are informational. They set out the range of methods a distillery can use to make tequila the way it has traditionally been made — what is commonly called the artisanal route — so that you can read a cask’s record and know what its entries mean.

They are not a description of how our tequila was made. Showing a method here does not mean our casks used it, and nothing on these pages should be read as a claim that any or all of them were used to produce our spirit.

They also do not cover every method in the industry. The industrial diffuser is not described here; these pages deal with the artisanal processes only.

How our own blanco was actually produced — the extraction, fermentation and distillation behind a given barrel — is recorded cask by cask on the inventory, and that is the place to look for it.

What holds for every cask we sell: Additive-free Single barrel Distilled by our partner distillery, NOM 1634, in Los Altos de Jalisco

Our partner distillery in the Los Altos highlands

01

Harvest

Mature blue Weber agave is hand-harvested by jimadores, the piñas selected for ripeness and sugar content.
02

Cooking

The piñas are slowly cooked, converting their starches into the fermentable sugars that will become alcohol.
03

Extraction

The cooked agave's juice is separated from its fiber, by tahona or roller mill.
Extraction methods →
04

Fermentation

Yeast converts the sugars into alcohol, building the spirit's aromatic backbone.
Fermentation methods →
05

Distillation

The fermented liquid is distilled at least twice, refined and clarified into spirit.
Distillation methods →
06

Aging

Time in oak gives the spirit its color, structure, and category.
Aging →
07

Release

The barrel is selected, certified, documented, and bottled on its own. Yours to choose from the live library.
Browse the live library →