Ocho Tequila Tasting with Tomas Estes and Julio Bermejo

By Bar Life UK

We don’t need much of an excuse to go and drink Ocho Tequila…

…but when the tasting is at Dre Masso’s new bar L.T.D. @ The Social, with Tomas & Julio in attendance, well wild Agave couldn’t keep us away. Due to the nature of Ocho, a tasting is always a very interesting and enlightening affair, especially when Tequila royalty in the form of Tomas Estes and Julio Bermejo are in attendance. For those who have not been lucky enough to attend one of these tastings let me quickly explain why Ocho is unique.

First things first, Ocho tequila is a joint partnership between Tomas and Julio’s wife’s family, the legendary Camarenas. That in itself is enough to tell you that it’s a tequila worth trying but that isn’t even half the story. The fact that Ocho is one of the few Tequilas still made using old fashioned, traditional techniques still only takes you to just over half the story.

You see Ocho is the only tequila which is both vintage and field dated. This means that each bottle not only has the year in which it was produced but also the precise field from which the agave comes – each batch is single estate; single field.

We have all heard the wine industry bang on about ‘terroir’ and how it has a huge effect on the taste of the wine, well Tomas has used this theory in his tequila and boy can you see where he was coming from when you try the different vintages side by side.

It is this vintage and field listing angle which makes an Ocho tasting so interesting and so unique. In our session we tried the following:

* 2007 Blanco called La Rivera which is from a Valley estate
* 2008 Blanco called Las Pomez from a Highland estate
* 2010 Blanco called Los Mangos from a Valley estate
* And the latest vintage to hit our shores
* 2011 Blanco called El Puertecito from a Highland estate

The difference between the different vintages is incredible and anyone who has ever uttered the words ‘all tequila taste the same’ needs to be slapped and then given a couple of Ocho vintages to try (in that order).

Whilst we tried the tequilas (expertly served by Stuart and Herb from Cask Liquid Marketing in their best trolley dolly modes) Tomas and Julio told us more about tequila in general and what gives Ocho its taste in particular.
Agave Plants

Everyone loves Tommy

Firstly we looked at the Agave plants themselves. Did you know that one agave plant gives, on average, 35 kilos of usable flesh and it takes 8 kilos to make 1 litre of 50% tequila? The ripeness of an Agave plant when it is harvested makes a big difference to the taste of the finished product. Much like a banana the ripeness of the Agave can be determined by its appearance.

Ocho pick their Agave plants when they are at what is known as a ‘supreme state’, which in the world of bananas we would probably call overripe. The reason for this is that you get the sweetness as usual but the over ripeness also gives it a slightly bitter edge resulting in a greater and more complex Agave taste.

The harvesting of the Agave is also a very important part in the Ocho process. Due to the fact that it is not a mass produced tequila the jimadors are able to pick the exact plants to harvest rather than stripping out the whole field. This helps to ensure that the plants are at exactly the right state when harvested.

Tomas and Julio also discussed the importance that the location of the estate, and the field used, has on the final product. Someone telling you about this is interesting enough however when you can taste the differences in the glasses in front of you it takes on a whole new meaning. I, for one, discovered that I definitely prefer the valley style of tequila over the highland style during our session.
Guest DJ’s

Once the tasting session was over the night was still young and there was an extra treat in store for us all. As I mentioned the session was taking place at L.T.D. @ The Social and what a great venue it is. We will be telling you more about this place in the coming weeks but in the meantime if you haven’t been then get your arses down there pronto.

Whilst Dre and his team pumped out some epic Tommy’s Margaritas first Tomas then Julio took to the decks (ably assisted by Herb) for their own Desert Island Discs. Not only were we treated to some fantastic tunes but we were given a printout showing the songs picked and a little explanation explaining what each song meant to them.

Below is their playlists along with a couple of the explanations but before that a special mention must be made to the Steve Reid Foundation who The Social were raising money for through a raffle whilst we enjoyed ourselves. Also if you want more info on Ocho Tequilas and the opportunity to try these great brands then get in touch with the guys over at CASK Liquid Marketing.

DJ Tomas E

* Jackson Brown, ‘Baby’s Feeling Funny in the Morning’
* Bob Dylan, ‘Song for Woody’
* Toots and the Maytalls, ‘Love Gonna Walk Out On Me’
* Eric Clapton, ‘Please Be With Me’
* Los Lobos, ‘La Bamba’ - This is good dance music. Los Lobos are homies. They grew up near me and later lived in my hometown. We like to reminisce about life on Whittier Blvd in East LA.
* Shirelles, ‘Baby It’s You’
* Ray Charles, ‘What’d I Say?’
* Fleetwood Mac, ‘For You’
* Jeff Buckley, ‘Halleluja’ - Beautiful, haunting song by Leonard Cohen. Reminds me of opening Café Pacifico Sydney. After closing we’d turn on Jeff Buckley and sing along while lying on the restaurant floor, sipping Tequila. It was like singing in the shower in its acoustics.
* The Beatles, ‘Love Is All You Need’
* Mose Allison, ‘A Young Man ain’t Nothin in the World ‘til He’s Dead’
* Ray Davies and Jackson Brown, ‘Waterloo Sunset’
* Music From Hair, ‘What a Piece of Work is Man’
* Lyoll George, ‘Rosarita’
* Unknown, ‘El Rey’ - We had a unique Mexican waiter at Café Pacifico in Paris in 1984. He would sing a cappella as he served tables. He sang ‘El Rey’ in Spanish and would translate it in English as he went along. El Rey is a song representing the macho side of men.
* Neil Young, ‘I Believe in You’
* Judy Collins, ‘My Father’
* Jimi Hendrix, ‘Little Wing’
* Michel Legrand, music from ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’
* Ramblin Jack Elliot, ‘Blue Eyes Cryin in the Rain’
* Lou Reed, ‘Pale Blue Eyes

Judge Julio

* Theme from Mission Impossible
* Vincente Fernandez, ‘Los Mandados’
* Roberto Carlos, ‘Amigo’
* Rare Earth, ‘Get Ready’
* The Champs, ‘Tequila’ - The national anthem of Tommy’s! Needless to say if it were not for Tequila, I would not be here today nor would I have had the opportunity to meet and enjoy many of your companies. Nick Strangeway and I never would have invented the tequila luge, nor would I have ever met Lily in Arandas. To quote Stefano Francavilla “God bless Tequila!” nothing else needs to be said.
* U2, ‘Pride (In the name of Love)’
* Luis Miguel, ‘El Viajero’
* Earth Wind and Fire, ‘Got to Get You Into My Life’
* Police, ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ - To me everything Lily does is magic! Te amo, Mi Vida!
* General Public, ‘Tenderness’
* Carlos Baute y Martha Sanchez, ‘Colgando en Tus Manos’
* Astrud Gilberto, ‘Girl from Ipanema’
* Juanes Song, ‘Es Por Ti’
* Katrina and the Waves, ‘Walking on Sunshine’
* Carlos Santana, ‘Samba Pa Ti’
* Tony Bennett, ‘I Left my Heart in San Francisco’ - San Francisco is my town! I am one of its biggest promoters. I was born there and it will always be my home though I consider myself a citizen of the world. I love showing visitors how beautiful she is. Indeed Lily has my heart now, but whenever I am far from San Francisco, Tony Bennett brings me back home!
* Nat King Cole, ‘Fantastico’
* Prince, ‘Take Me With You’
* Luis Miguel, ‘Sabes Una Cosa’




www.barlifeuk.com

Ocho Tequila living the high life

In November Ocho Margaritas will be served at a reception at Paris City Hall.

This follows this year's Cinco de Mayo celebrations at The White House with Ocho Reposado. (Ya, that's right.....THE WHITE HOUSE!)

Tequila ventures into vintage and terroir

By Gabriel Savage

Tequila ambassador Tomas Estes is using his Tequila Ocho brand to explore the implications of vintage and terroir for the category.

With the first vintage produced in 2007, Tequila Ocho is the result of a collaboration between Estes, official Tequila ambassador to the European Union, and the Camarena family, who produce Tequila Tapatio.

The family works with over 100 different ranches, producing to order a range of what Estes claims are the only single ranch Tequilas on the market.

Explaining the project, Estes said: “I wanted it to be as complex and nuanced as possible, to express the breadth that agave has.”

For this reason, the Ocho Tequilas are aged for “the minimum time allowed” in neutralised barrels and the core of the range is made in a blanco style.

“On my own, I would always have a blanco and have a cocktail made with blanco too,” remarked Estes, who described the addition of reposado and añejo styles to the range as “somewhat of an afterthought”.

At a recent UK vertical tasting of Ocho, Julio Bermejo, son-in-law to the Camarena family and owner of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant in San Francisco, highlighted the rarity value to vintage Tequilas.

“Once harvested, you’re not going to see agave from that field for a generation,” he observed. “It might take three years to harvest one field because you want exactly the right ripeness.”

Estes confirmed: “It would take a decade before we would see any of these ranches come back,” as he highlighted the collectability of the range “for anybody who cares about that kind of thing.”

Bermejo predicted an increase in the number of age-statement Tequilas in the near future, observing: “The industry’s basically going to follow what Scotch whisky has done; you need to add SKUs to your line-up so it’s a natural progression.”

As for the impact of terroir on Tequila, Estes conceded: “It’s still a big question, but I think we’re going to find out.”

However Bermejo offered some insight into the potential range of expression, observing: “There are 600 different compounds in agave and just 200 that they’ve found in wine.”

For the moment, however, Estes admitted: “People don’t understand what makes it different. In the Côte D’Or they’ve been studying it for centuries; we’ve literally only been playing with terroir for 10 years.”

Explaining his decision to explore these fresh avenues with the brand, Estes remarked: “There’s no way we can play with the big guys – they don’t have money, they have capital. We have to play with creativity.”

In line with this, Estes also touched on a separate project of his, which sees blanco infused with cooked agave fibres. “Everyone’s excited about 100% agave, but this one’s like 100+”, he enthused.

Estes is currently looking for a larger partner to launch this idea on a major scale. “I want to get in with a big guy so we can then say indisputably ‘We are the first’,” he explained.

Although the UK has been slower than the US to embrace Tequila, Estes, who founded Café Pacifico in London in 1982, picked out the capital’s bar scene as being “far ahead of the US.” In particular, he pointed to “the excitement and the cocktail level in terms of quality, innovation and high standards.”




www.thedrinksbusiness.com

The Tequila Take Over

By Tres Mariachis

Bienvenidos mariachis of the world!

A lot has happened in the world of agave the last few weeks. I have for a very long time tried to get a serious Tequila session together for the Copenhagen bar community. Being so far from Mexico makes this a lot harder, though not to many producers of agave spirits hang out in Scandinavia. But sometimes it just clicks, and all the pieces fall in to place. I have been writing about Tomas Estes before, so you all know who he is. A man with a hectic schedule chasing his feet around the world, but this time there was a small gap, and on the way from Moscow bar show to business in Paris, there was time for a short stop in beautiful Denmark. The weather seemed to be on our side for ones, it was warm! In october. Sun shining really showes the city at its best.

Since a while back Ocho (8) Tequila has been available in Denmark, and it has been flying out the windows of that little favourite shop of mine, Juuls Vin & Spiritus. With Tomas in town for two days only we were in for some hard core ocho’ing. But as always, to everything good there is always a lot of preparation. Weeks before me and Max from Juuls got up on our bikes and cycled around town, handing out invites to every place with a mexican flag, name, you name it. The biggest success here was with the Mexican embassy, who gave us endless amounts of decorations, toys and support. This was going to be the biggest Tequila event in Scandinavia, ever. In all real’ness though, as we know, bigger is not always better, so we split it up in two days. As the programme was set, everything was talked through with Tomas, we got a great surprise, Sophie Decobecq, sent me an email saying that she somehow hade a couple of ”spare” days, and she would love to come and help Tomas out for the presentations, and of course, get a good look at what Copenhagen has to offer. Not knowing if we were in for more surprises we just left it to Tequila to show us the way.

Sitting in the lobby of the hotel where Tomas and Sophie were staying, it finally felt real. I could touch it, this was going to be an amazing two days. A few hugs and coffee’s later, we made our way to the first destination, Weltkuglen. A brand new bar in the heart of the city, and in my humble opinion, the best new opening for a good while.

We (Copenhagen Cocktail Club) got 25 of Copenhagen’s best bartenders together for what turned out to be a four hour long nerdy conversation. The standard of agave knowledge was high to start with, so rather than Sophie & Tomas talking through the basics of Tequila, we quite quickly got a very good forum started, and I belive that what ever level of Tequila knowledge one had, this was very educational. More than that we did some tasting exercises. I believe that a straight up tasting for a larger group of varied levels of tasting experiences are rather boring, and I do not tend to get very much out of it. Maybe boring is the wrong word, but many people aren’t used to taste straight spirits. And there is quite the difference between drinking and tasting. I have been to 40-50 something spirit tastings and are just starting to get the hang of it. I might be a bit slow, or maybe just as most people, did not pay enough attention in the younger days. One big problem in tastings I recon, is that no one really tells you how to taste, how to prepare your mouth and how to look for flavours. Therefore a little exercise is good, and from personal experience, I tend to remember much more about the whole tasting if it is a bit more interactive. The four hours quickly passed and after washing 300 something tasting glasses, we headed on for dinner. Where do you bring people of the world, that has most likely been to more restaurants, diners, bars than I ever will, well, home. So we went back to my place for a home cooked somewhat traditional Danish meal. It is something special to enter someones home, and homes in different countries are also always different. Give me more of a local feel and usually an experience I remember. There is only so many bars and restaurants one can remember. The food was bigger than hip hop, thanks for all the time and effort with that! This also ment picking Tomas & Sophie’s brains in to the late hours.

After some well deserved sleep I woke up and went to Juuls to meet up with the others. In the shop we went through that evenings product, tasted, made some notes and made a somewhat plan of how to structure the evening. We needed some fresh air and went for a good walk around the lakes of Copenhagen, and that was about as much tourism we got in to. A traditional Danish ”Ristet HotDog med alt” for a snack before hitting Restaurant Pilen for the evenings tasting. This time we turned up the volume a bit and got 136 people to attend, the largest tasting of its kind in Scandinavia. Setting up glasses, pouring eight different agave spirits (6 Tequilas, 2 Mezcals), decorating cinco the mayo style and struggling with the projector, again. This tasting was a bit more introduction to the process of making, different terroirs and as always with Tomas, the tasting goes in a few different directions before getting carefully knitted together. Sophie had to stop talking about fermentation I believe 5 times. The passion Tomas & Sophie have shines through so much, I did not see anyone leaving with out a smile. We almost had to kick people out, they simply stayed and drank what was left. How often does that happen?

If you were there for both of the days, I belive you have one of the most credible educations in tequila one can get in two days!

Last but not least, I want to thank everybody involved, this could not have happened without you! Raise a glass of Tequila for yourself. Salud!




www.tresmariachis.dk