Across Mexico, you’ll find acre after acre of the most sublime, silver-toned shade of blue. It’s a colour that looks almost alien, one that wavers between a green-tinged cerulean and a pale, powdery sapphire. But it’s as earthly — and earthy — as colours come. Because these seas of sword-shaped plants are “Weber Azul,” or “blue agave,” and their cores are roasted, crushed, and fermented to create that oh-so sweet of spirits: tequila.
From its hacienda in Jalisco, Patrón has been producing some of the world’s finest tequilas for decades. The brand’s latest expression, Patrón El Alto, is a sumptuously blended selection of exceptional reposado, añejo, and extra añejo tequilas, created by master distiller David Rodriguez over the course of more than 300 tastings.
And the majority of these tequilas were produced using a traditional technique: the “Tahona” method. It’s a time-honoured, passed-down process that requires meticulous precision, wherein a two-ton volcanic stone is used to crush the baked agave in order to make the resulting spirit sweeter, and bring out more accentuated earthy notes.
Specific aromas include fig, honey, caramel, dried fruit, and vanilla — flavours bolstered by the constituent tequilas being aged in 11 different types of barrel, mostly hybrid casks with American oak bodies and French oak heads. This gives the tequila a floral quality, especially on the nose, that calls to mind jasmine and lilies, and serves to remind us of El Alto’s all-natural, blue agave beginnings.
The bottle, too, is a nod to the blue-hued plants from which the tequila is created. Its deep colour gives us but a hint of the rich flavours inside, and it features a sculpted, fret-cut gold lattice around its neck. Finally, the bottle is crowned with a distinctive textured stopper, designed to evoke the rough volcanic soil of the Jalisco Highlands where these remarkable, unparalleled plants grow.
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