The story, it can be a powerful thing. It’s the reason we trek to Napa to visit vineyards. It’s why we buy handmade and artisan-crafted trinkets at the farmers market. Heck, it’s what just persuaded me to spend $10 on a few ounces of chevre (made by a pair of former university professors who, tired of academia, began raising goats).
And when it comes to the story, Roca Patron, the brand’s new line of tequilas, has a pretty good one. Patron’s workers produce the spirits by crushing slow-roasted agave pinas (which spent 79 hours in a brick oven) in a circular stone pit using a 2-ton wheel made of volcanic rock — roca in Spanish, hence the tequila’s name. That’s the traditional method that tequila-makers used to produce the spirit, but it’s a technique that largely went the way of the passenger pigeon.
Most distilleries moved from tahonas (the giant rock wheels) to automated rollers to extract juice because the tahona method is horribly inefficient, says Antonio Rodriguez, production manager at Tequila Patron.
“It’s a really hard production process that produces a lot of headaches for us,” he says. “But those headaches are worth it.”
They’re worth it because automated rollers are actually too good at their job of extracting juice. They fail to leave behind any residual agave fibers. And when you add those fibers to the fermentation and distillation process, you get a more interesting, multidimensional tequila, Rodriguez says.
That’s actually not a new concept to Patron, which since its inception has made tequila by blending agave crushed by tahona process and agave crushed through a roller mill (traditional Patron tequila is a 50/50 mix of the two methods).
But by offering the tahona-crushed tequila on its own — in three forms — an unaged silver, a reposado that spent five months in used bourbon barrels and an anejo that spent 14 months in the same barrels, Patron is highlighting the value of the labor-intensive method. The tahona method produces earthier, sweeter, smoother spirits — with notes that stem from the roasted agave — and less citrus, pepper and fruity notes than traditional Patron. The tequilas also lack the sharp alcoholic bite common to many tequilas, even though they’re bottled at higher proofs than traditional Patron.
So the tahona method doesn’t just make for a good story, it makes for a good tequila; three in fact.
Silver: Features a delicate, slightly sweet, earthy nose, with a flavor that opens with roasted agave and vanilla notes and finishes with a slight peppery kick.
Reposado: Like the silver, the reposado has a delicate, slightly sweet, earthy nose that, thanks to the bourbon barrels, has a hint of caramel. Caramel, oak and cooked agave dominate the flavor, which also finishes with a slight peppery kick.
Anejo: Oak, caramel and vanilla dominate the nose of the anejo. Sweet caramel, vanilla and roasted agave flavors meld with cinnamon and pepper notes, and it finishes smoothly with a slight oak and pepper kick.