FOOD
PREMIUM TEQUILA BRAND IMPORTED BY WAY OF PLAYA VISTA For Mico Tequila co-founder Subir Singh, his brand has been decades in the making STORY BY ANDY VASOYAN | PHOTOS BY ZSUZSI STEINER
MONKEY THYME 1.5 oz. Mico tequila .5 oz. Gran Classico .25 oz. simple syrup .5 oz. lemon juice A spoon full of fig jam Instructions: Add ice and all ingredients into a shaker. Shake vigorously (10 to 15 seconds), and strain into a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with a charred thyme sprig.
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hat cocktail is courtesy of Mico Tequila, a premium brand launched out of Playa Vista in 2018. President and co-founder Subir Singh has been a PV resident since 2009, but the story of how he got into the tequila business stretches back over decades and hundreds of miles. The Singh family emigrated from Fiji in the early eighties, and Subir’s father, Ajendra “AJ” Singh, found himself living in Los Angeles with $1500 to his name. As Subir tells it, after working his
Mico is Spanish for monkey. Mico tequila comes in three varieties: blanco, reposado and añejo
way up as a CPA, AJ was approached by Martin Crowley, the co-founder of Patron Tequila, and was asked to help bring production of Patron’s tequila in-house. AJ moved to Guadalajara, became an executive in the growing Patron empire, and put it on the path to becoming the king of modern upscale tequilas. At the same time, the Singh family became close with the Nuñez family, who have been in the tequila business for more than 80 years. AJ left Patron in 2008 and began working on his own tequila brand in 2009 with the help of Juan Nuñez. Over the next six years those efforts would turn into Mico Spirits, which was established in 2015. By that time, Subir had seen success as a sales representative in the liquor industry, working for Patron and Remy Cointreau, and he was also working with his dad’s company, though he wouldn’t quit his job and join Mico full-time until
2018. “It was a shock to a lot of people, because I had a great gig,” Singh says. “There’s a lot of tequilas out there, so it’s not like this was a slam dunk!” So what distinguishes Mico tequila from the rest of the pack? Most importantly, it’s the tequila itself. “[The Nuñez family] and AJ worked together to produce the formula, and they harvest the agave from local farmers they have relationships with,” Sing says, “but the third component is Karina. Karina Rojo is our master distiller, and she’s one of very few female master distillers in Jalisco. She and AJ are very close, and they work together to produce tequila that really reflects the highlands and is authentic.” Although the tequila is authentic, (Continued on page 20) PLAYA VISTA DIRECT | OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2020 19
