During the dry Prohibition years in the United States in the early 20th century, American tourists started traveling to Mexican border towns to be able to drink alcohol legally.
Cities like Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez and others along the border became popular destinations for “wet” vacations. They turned into nightlife hubs with casinos, bars and cantinas — all serving tequila shots and margaritas.
Up until that time, tequila was little known in the US.
The liquor was created by Indigenous inhabitants of the Mexican state of Jalisco, where they would ferment juice from agave plants that thrive in the area. After the Europeans brought new distillation techniques to the New World, it became industrialized.
The production was on a small enough scale that tequila makers could produce this premium product and secure all the profit for themselves, making them wealthy.
But at the beginning of the 19th century, the bloody Mexican revolution left the industry in ruins, according to American journalist Ted Genoways. His new book “Tequila Wars: The Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico” dives into the turbulent history of tequila production — and the family dynasties, revolutions and border politics that shaped its rise.
It took Genoways 12 years and many trips to Jalisco to uncover the obscure story. “Every time I asked anyone about their family history, the background of their tequila brand or their region, everyone said over and over again, ‘All of that history is lost. It’s just gone.’”
Genoways’ persistence eventually paid off. After looking through Mexican public records and family journals, he found that one man was largely responsible for rebuilding and modernizing the tequila industry: José Cuervo.
Genoways noted that, while Cuervo’s tequila brand is internationally recognized, his figure had remained in the shadows.
“Almost nothing has been recorded about him personally and about his rise to this sort of place of being the controller of this massive empire,” Genoways explained. “Cuervo managed to lie low and to choose his battles and then disappear when he needed to. And so, he was much more of a true kind of political figure.”
Cuervo recognized the US as an emerging market and helped organize producers to be able to sell tequila to American consumers. According to his book, tequila’s fate changed dramatically during the US Prohibition era, when the product got a premium price and conquered American palates.
Soon after, the United States would become the main market for tequila — up until now.
The boom
The tequila industry is now worth $10 billion, and it has been the fastest growing distilled spirit in the US for decades. It’s attracted celebrities like George Clooney, Michael Jordan and the Kardashians who have launched their own brands.
“It’s been a huge boom,” said Guillermo Erikson Sauza, head of Tequila Los Abuelos and Tequila Fortaleza tequilas, and a descendent of one of the oldest families of tequila producers in Jalisco.
“It’s created all sorts of jobs in farming, manufactory, marketing, distribution and design,” he said. “It’s been crazy.”
Demand for tequila is so high that it’s starting to create problems, as the supply has natural limits. For a liquor to be called tequila, it needs to be produced in a specific area.
Only Jalisco and certain areas in Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit and Tamaulipas can legally produce tequila.
Many producers have been trying to secure as much terrain as possible in official tequila land, as well as planting blue agave, but this has caused an oversupply.
Sauza said the demand for tequila might not be holding up in the near future. Studies indicate that Gen Z drinks approximately 20% less than Millennials did at the same age, mainly because of health consciousness and financial prudence.
It usually takes between seven and eight years for agave plants to be ready for harvest. And Sauza said that if there aren’t enough distilleries to buy all the agave that’s been planted in recent years, the tequila can rot, and farmers can lose everything.
For now, the demand remains high, with more than 2,000 brands of tequila on the market. But Sauza says they are not all great.
“For those of us who are in the business for the long haul, we like to advise: Don’t drink celebrity tequila.” He said that some manufacturers take shortcuts that affect the quality of the product.
The right tequila
“The best tequila can be paired with any food, just like wine,” said Sonia Espínola, a founding member of the Mexican Academy of Tequila and one of the few female masters of tequila licensed to teach about the beverage in Mexico.
Espínola developed a career at José Cuervo, where she regularly offers workshops and tastings about tequila. She advised the public to choose a tequila made with 100% agave, as opposed to others mixed with different beverages. “It’s important for people to try tequila that’s done right, so it doesn’t give you a bad hangover,” she recommended.
Espínola also helped launch the Jose Cuervo Express, a two-hour train ride departing from Guadalajara that gives visitors a way to visit scenic fields of agave stretching to the horizon.
Such projects have seen the town of Tequila transform into a tourist area. “Twenty years ago, Tequila was an agro-industrial town with distilleries, but no tourism,” Espínola said. “Now, close to a million people visit Tequila every year, with distillery tours that compare to those happening in Napa Valley [in California] or Cognac [in France].”
For producers and advocates in Jalisco, tequila remains, not just an economic engine, but a cultural ambassador — one that’s rooted in centuries of tradition and is increasingly being recognized around the world.