Viewpoint
GUILLERMO SAUZA PATRIARCH OF FORTALEZA TEQUILA, ONE OF THE FEW FAMILY-OWNED TEQUILA HOUSES LEFT IN MEXICO, TALKS TO DRINKS TRADE ON THE TEQUILA IN HIS BLOOD, THE TEQUILA BOOM AND HIS LOVE FOR THE HARLEY DAVIDSON MOTORCYCLE. What is it about tequila? For me, it’s a fantastic spirit made from the blue Weber agave. As you know, mezcal is made from any of the varieties. Some of them taste OK. Many of them don’t taste very good at all. Tequila always tastes good.
What does tequila mean to you? What it means to me is a lot; it is part of my life. It’s also a great source of revenue for Mexico and means a lot of jobs. The industry employs 70,000 people. Most people are introduced to the spirit, maybe in a bar when they are 18. We grew up with it. My grandfather owned Sauza at the time, and my great grandfather started that company, so you might say it was part of our persona. Sauza, at the time, was the number one brand in Mexico and the world in the 60s and 70s. My grandfather was a workaholic. The distillery was always in some state of growth. Can you talk to us more about your family? My great-great-grandfather, Don Cenobia Sauza was born in 1842 in a small town located south of Lake Chapala, named, Teocuitatlan and at 16, his father died. His father was a notary; he could read and write, and so could his children. We were under the rule of the Spaniards for over three hundred years, and they wouldn’t allow tequila to be made because they didn’t want tequila to compete with brandy or any of the products coming from Spain. In 1810 we had the revolution to throw off the Spanish rule, and in the 1850s, my great-great-grandfather through his ability to read and write, rare at the time, became an entrepreneur. In 1873 he starts Tequila Sauza. My grandfather, Francisco Javier Sauza took over in 1946 when my great grandfather, Eladio passed and ran the business until 1976, when he sold. When we grew up, Tequila Sauza was in its heyday. We had a lot of fun, and it was a learning experience. My grandfather was furious that my mother married a gringo because my father was of Norwegian/Swedish descent
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and my great grandfather was furious that my grandfather married somebody related to the Jose Cuervo family! Was it true your family were responsible for the tequila appellation or Denomination of Origin? Yes, my grandfather pushed the Chamber of Commerce for tequila makers, and for the appellation. This was in the 1960s. My grandfather would travel the world and understood the value of an appellation. Several other people participated in getting it done. Thank god we got it done because giving us the appellation means we can’t get copied. For example, my grandfather went to Japan in 1962 and found Japanese distributors making a product they called tequila, but it wasn’t tequila and wasn’t made in Mexico. He fought that. It has been a boon for all the tequila makers and for Jalisco and the other municipalities included in the appellation. It is a boon having that protection.
Who is drinking tequila? The US is taking 85% of all the tequila, but the boom is due to the Millennials’ drinking age now. I’m a baby boomer, and we are on the tail end. We can’t drink as much as we used to. The ones that drank too much are dead already, and I am not in that category (chuckles). They see the agave as healthier for you than a wheat or corn-base drink. The agave is dextrose sugars, not fructose sugars, so it’s a different sugar chain. The second reason is people see Mexico as a fun place, and culturally they associate tequila with fun. Perhaps a better experience for your body and a cooler experience because the Millennials parents drank vodka and rum, and both those categories are flat. It’s got a mystique to it as well because of the goddess of the agave. And it doesn’t have sulphites like wine because sulphites hurt. Fortaleza is performing well in Australia, and is it due to Covid? Some of it is due to that, but our client wants to buy something traditional, real and honest. We have our distillery open six days a week for tours. We have nothing to hide. There are distilleries you can’t get in to see, and multiple brands coming out of distilleries, and we make one, and that is where all our tequila goes, into our Fortaleza brand. I think part of it is Covid. People are stocking up their bars in their houses. Before Covid, people would go to a bar so they
