Patron Tequila is able to take a spot on the highest shelf.
The corporate, on Monday, will debut Patron El Alto, a status new tequila expression that would be the firm’s first foray into the super-premium area.
“We’ve been daring innovators in terms of tequila,” D-J Hageman, Vice President of Advertising at Patron, tells Fortune. “That is us making an announcement once more.”
The brand new expression is comprised of agave grown within the highest components of Jalisco, Mexico, which the corporate says yields the sweetest flavors. It combines Reposado, Añejo, and Additional Añejo tequilas aged in 11 kinds of barrels, leading to a fancy drink that’s extremely easy with hints of vanilla, caramel and fruit.
It has been a four-year improvement course of for the corporate to launch El Alto, with over 300 tastings internally to make sure grasp distiller David Rodriguez and his group bought exactly the flavour they had been striving for. Regardless of that time-frame, portions of the tequila are restricted.
El Alto will promote for a instructed retail worth of $179 and can initially solely be accessible in New York, Miami, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. As you would possibly count on with the worth tag, this isn’t the tequila you wish to seize when mixing a margarita. It’s finest loved neat, although on the rocks is suitable.
Tequila has been having a moment over the previous few years. A report from CGA Technique, published in September, discovered that persons are more and more choosing the agave-based beverage over brown liquors. It’s, in truth, the one main spirit to indicate share progress this yr.
An enormous a part of that’s coming from premium and super-premium choices (the categorization comes right down to the getting older course of and using 100% blue agave within the creation of the beverage). The Distilled Spirits Council of the US says gross sales of luxurious spirits grew 43% within the final yr, with tequila and American whiskey main the cost. Tequila noticed a 75% annual progress price in that point.
“That is the head of what Patron thinks status tequila ought to be,” says Hageman.
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