Word: tequilas
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...boom encouraged smaller distilleries and exporters to the U.S., which consumes 80% of Mexico's tequila shipments abroad. "A few people who regularly went to Mexico for these small specialty tequilas started importing them for sale," says Christopher Palmer, publisher of the online magazine Tequila Fancy. International customers were soon savoring formerly inaccessible brands like Centinela, Lapiz and Gran Centenario. A string of new multinational players in the market also helped. Over the past five years, giants like Brown-Forman and Seagram (Tequila Don Julio) and powerhouses Diageo (Cuervo's distributor) and Allied Domecq (Sauza's) have bought tequila distilleries...
...spend last December stockpiling Champagne? Sucker. Instead of getting ready for a bubbly crisis that never came, you should have been stashing away the harder stuff, tequila. Since last year, farmers in and around the tequila-producing Mexican state of Jalisco have been facing shortages of agave, the spiky-leafed member of the lily family from which the spirit is distilled. Agave's price has leaped from about $40 a ton a year ago to a high of $560 a ton last December. If the shortage continues--and the agave plant's grandfatherly maturation time of eight to 12 years...
Weber blue agave, the only species authorized for tequila making, has suffered from a 1997 freeze and a recent spate of crop diseases. Even so, these are heady days for the tequila industry. Since 1995, drinkers the world over have turned tequila into a best seller. Global consumption has doubled, making Mexico's national drink the fastest-growing liquor category in the world--another reason for the agave shortage. A major factor in the beverage's popularity has been the burgeoning demand for premium and superpremium tequilas, like La Altena distillery's El Tesoro, or La Gonzalena's Chinaco, made...
Before the boom, when the current agave crop was being planted, the international market for tequila was decidedly downscale. "People knew tequila as what they drank in college to get drunk," says Alex Alejandro, co-owner of New York City's oldest Mexican restaurant, El Parador. The restaurant has stocked premium tequilas for all its 40 years, but it hasn't always found a ready buyer. "Ten years ago, the average consumer wasn't willing to pay more than about $4 a shot," says Alejandro...
...market leader Jose Cuervo now offers a $1,000 bottle of limited edition 1800 Coleccion. It's all part of the trend toward boutique liquors that began in Europe and the U.S. in the late 1980s, says Chris Morris, national marketing director for American distiller Brown-Forman's two tequila brands, Pepe Lopez and the newly introduced Don Eduardo. "When single-malt whiskeys burst onto the market, we saw consumers become fascinated with niche products," says Morris. "People were willing to pay $25 or $30 a bottle if you gave them a good product or a reason...