‘La Gritona’ is Spanish for ‘The Screamer’. It’s an appropriate name considering one of the people behind this outstanding tequila is LA-based punk guitarist Andy Coronado. The other significant player is the renowned Tequilero Melly Cárdenas, who fashions La Gritona at her small distillery in Valle de Guadalupe in the highlands of Jalisco. One of Mexico’s few female master distillers (12 out of 152 in total), the fiercely independent Cárdenas—who has 20 years of quality Tequila production under her black Stetson—shares Coronado’s love of the exceptional and unconventional, and leads a team staffed only by local women.

In a market dominated by major companies, the duo set out to create a pared-down Reposado that would stand out by staying true to the region’s heritage. For a Reposado, La Gritona is light on colour and sweetness—Coronado and Cárdenas want none of the flavours that mask many commercial Reposados like vanilla, chocolate and dulce de leche.

La Gritona is packed with honest and savoury roasted agave flavour, reminiscent of the old-style ‘rested’ Tequila before the mass market took hold: “It’s Tequila like our grandparents drank,” says Cárdenas.

Working with nine- to ten-year-old, mature blue weber agave grown in the iron-rich red soil of the Jalisco highlands, every step of production after harvest takes place under Cárdenas’ own roof and with an attention to detail that the big boys, or those outsourcing distillation, cannot hope to replicate. The agave is steam-cooked in a single, thick-walled earthen oven for 24 hours and then allowed to rest for another two days before crushing. The collected liquid is naturally fermented (no additives are used to push things along) in open steel vats at a rate dictated by the ambient air temperature and the wild yeasts—usually lasting between six to nine days.

The double distillation takes place in small steel stills. The distilled Blanco is then rested in reused American Whiskey barrels for eight months before bottling. These low-impact second- or third-fill barrels are given only the lightest char, which allows the refreshing, sappy notes of the agave to shine through, resulting in a tequila that sips and mixes perfectly in equal measure. The bespoke bottles are made from recycled Mexican glass, hand-blown just an hour’s drive from the distillery.

Regarding pricing, there’s no marketing budget and there are no brand ambassadors (which can add up to 40% to a tequila’s cost), so you only pay for the finest quality agave spirit. In truth, we would have shipped it if it was considerably more expensive, but it turns out that sometimes you can have your tequila and sip it too.