![]() I tend to mostly drink blanco/silver tequila in cocktails and since there is clear tequila in the glass, those cocktails can look prettier. Use this as a guide for which top-shelf tequila brands are truly worth the money and which ones you might want to experiment with. If you’re stuck buying something at Oxxo, go for frequent award winners Don Julio, Don Ramon, Campo Azul, or Herradura. Sometimes the bottles are 700ml instead of 750 and you’ll usually have at least 50 choices in a sizable Mexican supermarket. The price of tequila is significantly lower in Mexico if the brand is available there and the spirit is usually bottled at 38% alcohol instead. Since these tastings take place in the USA, assume that all are 40% alcohol and these are sample U.S. Many of these bottles I’ve never even seen in a bar or on a shelf. I’m always amazed though at how many of these brands I’ve never heard of before, even though I live in Mexico, I drink tequila a fair bit, and I’m a spirits reviewer. So we have to just look at who scored a Double Gold and then who scored a Gold to see who ranked the highest with the judges in their blind tastings. ![]() ![]() The San Francisco Spirits competition has changed how it announces winners several times and they don’t seem to pick a “best in show” winner anymore for each category. Some high-end tequila brands seem to keep standing out from the pack year after year, whereas other ones have a nice showing once and then disappear. I put up the first version of this article last decade and naturally there have been changes each year in who wins. This article on the best tequila from Mexico was updated in 2023. If a spirit gets marked as gold by every judge, which is rare, then it gets the designation as Double Gold. It gets the most entries, has the most respected and experienced judges, and conducts blind tastings that eliminate any past assumptions from the mix. The most respected competition out there in the spirits world, however, is the World Spirits Competition taking place each year in San Francisco. My favorite bourbon or beer won’t be the same as yours, so how do I say what is a great tequila, or which is the best tequila? Among individual reviewers (including me), you can’t eliminate personal taste bias. Liquor distributor awards are about what sells, magazines seem to always sneak in a brand or two from a company that is advertising with them, which looks suspicious. Then you have the motivation issues behind the scenes. liquor distribution system is almost as wacky and illogical as its electoral college primary and election system we use to decide on a president. You often see almost completely different brands on a Mexican shelf than you do in the United States, plus the U.S. Each has three or four general categories within each brand, then you have offshoots of those like bleached-out aged tequila that’s a new fad. There are hundreds of tequila brands, maybe 1,000 now, all made from the same blue agave plant. Unfortunately, as I’ve learned after researching this subject for many years, there’s almost no agreement from article to article, from competition to competition. If you wanted to go search online to find the best tequila brands from Mexico, it should be an easy job, right? See which ones get picked the most and then you’ll be set.
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