The flavour and essence of Tequila: Don Fulano

The name Don Fulano refers to a Mexican gentleman of unknown or undisclosed identity. But at the centre of this Tequila brand is a well-known family. Descendants of a Portuguese immigrant, the Fonsecas have farmed in the heart of Atotonilco in the Highlands of Jalisco for generations, planting agave in the late 1800s to supply Tequila distillers. They haven’t just been cultivating agave for 140 years, however. In the 1970s, the family looked into building a distillery of their own, but instead managed to acquire the La Tequileña distillery (NOM 1146) in the heart of Tequila town; a distillery with over a hundred years of heritage. 

But while fifth-generation agave farmer Enrique Fonesca knew all about the raw material, he didn’t know enough about the process of turning it into Tequila so he flew to Europe for a spirited education. In France, he learned the importance of wine to make a spirit, while in Scotland, he learned about distillation and how different kinds of stills create different profiles. He also fell in love with the magic of maturation; “the patience, the layering of flavours, the right casks”.

His efforts paid off. Since 2002, Don Fulano Tequila has won more than 140 international medals, is sold worldwide, and is a highly respected brand. We recently attended a masterclass titled “The flavour and essence of Tequila” with fourth-generation farmer, distiller and blender Sergio Mendoza as well as ambassadors Christina Helmer and Andrés Moran at NOMA to learn more about the brand.

Understanding Tequila

We begin by discussing how Tequila is understood, with Mendoza saying it’s at an important stage in its growth. “There’s a lot of excitement. All the big spirit companies have come to Mexico, they are buying the family-owned brands. Then came the celebrities, it is like a sport. But we have nothing bad or negative to say about that, it has opened many doors that haven’t been opened. But we want to rewind to see if we can get back to the essence, the flavour origins of Tequila… and the culture that underlines that.” 

A certain image of Tequila persists. “We all had these ideas of Tequila, of when you were young, the nightclubs, the bad quality, and hangovers. That used to be the story. It still is, there are some places where Tequila is still in that timeframe,” Mendoza remarks. It’s a conversation you have at any Tequila event these days, but I subscribe to the idea that the only way we overcome any stereotypes is to repeatedly bang the drum that demonstrates their fallibilities and show a new way. Mendoza thinks we are starting to get through. “The producing families, the category Mexico as a whole, battles have been won. Tequila has layers and layers which people are seeing”. 

The session is divided into three main topics: agriculture, craft, and maturation. Most of the emphasis is given to the first. “First and foremost, we are agave farmers. We became Tequila producers much later. The essence and the roots of Tequila are in the soil,” Mendoza explains. Together, the three speakers underline that what makes Tequila unique is its raw material; the agave. A plant with millions of years of evolution, cultivated and highly venerated in Mexico for thousands of years. They outline how it’s one of the most biodiverse families of plants, with multiple species and innumerable varieties from which a great number of products have been produced; ropes, textiles, fibres, bricks, medicine, beverages and of course, the spirits of Mexico.

The agriculture of Tequila

Mendoza explains that the sustainable and holistic approach to the agriculture of agave is at the core of the distillery’s ethos. “The challenges we face now are industrialisation and the treatment of the beautiful agave plant. We are treating not only the agave but the production of food in a very savage way. Depleted soils, growing crops based on petroleum-based energy, because the soil doesn’t have any energy. You need a balance of elements otherwise you start losing nutrients, and flavour is just an extension of nutrients. It’s insane. We don’t even know we’re growing all our products in dead soils. You can grow it bigger and brighter but it has no nutrients, it has no flavour. That’s why Tequila companies that produce in this way: young agaves, distil to 95% ABV, they need to put caramel, vanilla no.75, oak extracts…”. 

Helmer adds “It’s all about soil health. If you don’t have healthy soil, you don’t have a healthy plant and a nutritious plant is what translates into flavour. We over agriculture these days and that way you lose the soil. We use organic matter, not pesticides, really traditional methods with a love for the biodynamic movement. We don’t have the beautiful fields of agave and red soil you see in pictures. There’s grass”. 

The biodynamic elements intrigued me and later Moran emailed me an explanation of how Don Fulano implemented this practice. “The agave is a fairly complex plant that has taken thousands of years to evolve and adapt to the forms of production linked to the industry, the production of agave supplies 80% or more of the production of spirits and a small but still significant amount to the production of alternative sweeteners. Until 10 years ago, most of the plantations were concentrated mainly in the Altos de Jalisco, this area is where we grow our agaves, which is also an area with a very important demand for agricultural production for the state’s economy, lemon orchards, Corn, orange trees, pumpkin orchards, mango trees, chickpeas, beans are mostly the diversity of products that are planted here in the Highlands of Jalisco”. 

He continues: “The Fonseca family has planted agave for five generations until now, an essential part of maintaining a fertile and healthy land is finding the balance between planting/agave cycle/harvest season, depending on the nutrients the land needs we choose to plant beans, seeds of chia, chickpea before planting agave for a new cycle, in addition to among the agaves in regions where the terrain allows it, we plant lemon trees between agave lines, we moderately allow the growth of wild weed and we also avoid any type of pesticide or nutrients based on oil, all these practices are learning from generations of farmers who have walked the same path of the evolution of the agave and its transformation for the production of Tequila”.

Agave, agave, agave

Don Fulano is one of the few producers who grows all the agave used in its Tequila production. In its case, that’s exclusively Maduro and Pinto. “We need mature agave. If we don’t have mature agave, there’s no way to make up for that later,” says Helmer “Maturation can take 5-12 years. Once it’s mature, you will see the core, the body swells up a bit, the leaves will relax and come out a little bit and you start to see discolouration, really beautiful red spots and a little bit of yellow. Not enough maturity means the agave is bitter. We harvest by percentage, we’ll never harvest the whole field, which is common now. It can take up to two years for us to harvest an entire field. Once harvested, we will plant two cycles of other crops, especially legumes before planting agave again. These will restore the soil and its nutrients and the essential nitrogen. Time is money, and it’s a really long time to wait”. 

Helmer also explains that one thing you should really look out for is biological age, not chronological age. “If you have agave that’s five or six years that doesn’t mean anything in regards to maturity.  Size doesn’t mean quality either. You could have an agave that’s small, smaller than a soccer ball, and super mature, or a large agave that’s not very mature at all”. It’s all about physiological ripeness, a whole series of internal developments that the plant does that releases energy for reproduction that translates into flavour.

As for harvesting, Moran says Don Fulano selects agave one by one in its field. “From these previously selected agaves we are going to cut the leaves (jima) and cut them from the roots of the ground, the jima is different depending on the amount of sugar that the agave contains, but we are always going to leave a part of the leaf (penca) because we have flavours and some sugars that we can translate into the flavour at the end of the distillation”. He goes on: “This is not a usual practice among Tequila producers, as normally they will have to buy agave from different suppliers, they will not be certain of the ripeness of these. So to avoid paying extra leaf weight for immature agaves, they prefer to shave the agave completely, leaving out the interaction of these flavours at the end”.

The terroir of Tequila

With this much appreciation of the raw material and where it comes from, it will come as no surprise to learn that Don Fulano underlines the importance of terroir in Tequila production. We taste six spirit samples that make it into the Blanco expression across, the only difference between each is where the agave is grown. Some of these fields are neighbours but the soil type is different and the result is an entirely unique spirit. It’s fascinating stuff.

Moran says that the lands where their agaves are grown extend throughout the highlands of Jalisco, largely in the municipality of Atotonilco el Alto, but the lands belonging to the Fonseca family reach further. “We do not have a sure count of how many hectares, but there are several members of the family who are suppliers of agave for Don Fulano, there are even agaves outside the state of Jalisco but within the appellation of origin in the state of Michoacan”. He says the soil samples used to graph the difference in terroir are the type of soil that extends within the territory where they plant agaves and that the composition of the soil in the highlands of Jalisco is significantly different from that of the Valley in Tequila since there was volcanic activity in the valley more than a 1000 years ago.

Mendoza explains that it’s impossible to truly understand the amazing richness of variables in the soil. “In wine, you can talk about the geography, of the year, how much rain, if it rained late, if it was a hot year… in agave, it’s exactly the same with this concept of terroir. But over six years, seven years, eight years. There are some fields where I’ve only seen three harvests of agave in my lifetime. To put all of that into perspective is not easy at all”. 

He also says that, while they are agave farmers, it doesn’t have to be like that. “Tequila has always been an agro-industry, there are farmers and there are distillers. It’s like restaurants, no? A great chef doesn’t have to grow their own vegetables. But as we’re seeing more and more it is important to know who your partner is. It’s the same for Tequila. You could be solely a distillery and buy agave in the third market. But it’s important how that agave grew, and what soil it comes from. But agave is treated more and more like a commodity, grown with heavy use of agrochemicals in a monocultive system”. He reveals that, at one time, a certain celebrity brand was buying 16 different finished spirits to create its Tequila. 

The speakers make you understand that Tequila and mezcal are from Jalisco and Oaxaca for a reason, which is that they have the greatest biodiversity of agave. The distillery is in the valleys of Tequila, where almost all distilleries are in a line following the river. “Tequila is one of a few spirits that doesn’t come from a grain or a fruit. It’s a plant, it has a vegetal nature,” Mendoza says. “Cooked agave has this vegetal and green quality but also notes of sweet potato, molasses, overripe banana, and pineapple”. 

The craft of Tequila: cooking and milling

Once we’d covered agave we moved onto the craft stage of Tequila production, referring to cooking, milling, mashing, fermentation, and distillation. The question Don Fulano poses is: how do you make great Tequila that is only mature agave, proprietary yeast, and spring volcanic water? The process begins with mature, quality agave but it’s then a matter of ensuring those qualities make it through to the Tequila. The ripe Maduro and Pinto agaves are halved or quartered depending on their size and carefully loaded and layered inside the autoclaves or steam hornos, essentially a stainless steam oven.

“We steam the agave for around 28-32 hours. It turns the agave golden, moist and sweet. The ovens could do it in six hours, but there is no point in waiting all that time for the agave to mature to then take the flavour out in processing,”. Moran says. By slowly steaming the agave at low pressure and then letting it rest for another 12 hours, Don Fulano continues the process of breaking down the complex sugars into mono and Disaccharides, which the plant itself had already started in the fields. These simpler resulting sugars are now accessible and fermentable. 

The cooked agaves are then unloaded on the opposite side of the hornos and sent over on a conveyer belt to a self-engineered screw press where the agave juice or aguamiel (honey-water) is squeezed gently out of the fibres. “We have a screw mill to separate the fibres in the first squeeze, so we’re going to get all the juices out, which are very thick with sugar. We also have to wash the fibres, that’s why we press in four steps in the roller mill, washing the fibre with the water that we collect from the Tequila volcano”, Moran explains. 

The craft of Tequila: fermentation

After the milling comes fermentation and by selecting agave for optimum maturity, the necessary enzymes are present which means the fermentations are going to be completely natural without the addition of any accelerants or external nutrients.

At La Tequileña, open wooden fermentation tanks are filled with the aguamiel and, for about 30% of fermentations, with the bagasse (agave fibres). The former creates an elegant product with mineral richness, while the bagasse is a source of more nutrients and residual sugars which can add more flavour. Depending on the time of year, humidity and weather conditions, the fermentations are going to last between three to six days and the result is a low alcoholic wine called mosto, which is between 6 and 9% ABV.

Moran says Don Fulano also has big tanks, 9,000-litre stainless steel ones in a different area surrounded by wild yeast. “We allow the yeast from everywhere to affect the juice, which is already active. That gives us the funkiness and flavours, caramel and milky flavours that we like in our product”. It’s not only wild yeast, however, but a cultivated strain that Don Fulano extracts from its agave. Remember those discoloured red spots? It propagates yeast out of those spots on the mature agave to create a concentration, which is blended proportionally with the mosto in the fermentation tanks. This agave-based starter yeast is not unlike a sourdough starter that is constantly fed.

The craft of Tequila: distillation

The mosto is then distilled. “We distil two times in pot stills. We have five different pot stills, three stills have outside stainless steel with copper coils and copper columns for the first distillation, then the two stills for the second distillation are pure copper alembic still. We also have a column Coffey still that works in a very inefficient way,” says Moran. “We distil to lower than 60% ABV, we could go up to 70-80% but if we do that we’re going to lose flavours, aromas, textures, so we prefer to go lower. Everything is a blend, two fermentations, and two still types. The Blanco, for example, is a blend of 85% copper pot and 15% column”. Each still is fired by steam jackets and natural volcanic spring water is used across the entire process. 

The copper Coffey still is intriguing and we get a fascinating history of it from Mendoza. “We inherited this still when my family bought the distillery in the 1980s. It was the first-ever column or Coffey still in Tequila. It’s not common at all, if you understand Tequila or mezcal distillation. It’s a German-made column and it took us literally – I’m not joking– 10 years to understand how to run it. Nobody in Mexico knew how to operate it. That column was made to distil alcohol at 90% ABV. But we thought it was the most stupid thing to grow a beautiful agave and then to distil it to 90%, so we managed to re-engineer it and balance it and take some plates out to create a product at 55-65% ABV”. 

Because Don Fulano also distils in the pot still between 46-48% ABV, it attains two very different ranges of flavour. As you can imagine, the pot still distillate is richer, deeper, and bolder, while the Coffey still distillate is more elegant, subtle and the agave note pulls towards the floral and fruit style. It’s not unlike malt and grain Scotch whisky the way Don Fulano makes Tequila and Mendoza says “Don Fulano is that: the balance of pot and column still”. He goes on: “We play from the library or cellars of flavour, we don’t use anything external. Some of our distillate is fruity, some our rounder, others are drier, more vegetal, another is spicy. You balance these like you would a cocktail”.

Tequila and maturation

This brings us to the last pillar, which is maturation. Yes, ageing. You may know Tequila as a white spirit, but for Don Fulano, this is still an important focus. They make the point that a lot of good Blanco Tequilas rest in stainless steel for six months to marry and evolve together, something we don’t always appreciate. In fact, the spirit is sometimes left in these pipons, or wooden vats where the spirits are married, to rest for long enough that it constitutes a mini maturation. 

But the thing that really sets Don Fulano apart is that it doesn’t use American white oak casks that previously contained bourbon. “About 95% of all aged Tequila produced is matured in these. Bourbon producers can only use their casks once by norm, so for distillers in Mexico, and pretty much everywhere these days, these are the easiest casks to get ahold of. However, the style of bourbon calls for heavily burnt casks that can easily overshadow the subtle nuances and delicate notes of the agave and its terroir within a few years of ageing. For that reason, we were the first Tequileros to explore using other kinds of casks,” Mendoza says.

Don Fulano is aged exclusively in ex-wine European dark oaks. Casks are filled at still strength for the pot still (48%) and most of the time with the column still (max 65% ABV). These are primarily French Limousine and Nevers casks which previously held wines from Burgundy, Bordeaux, and the Loire Valley in France, as well as other European oaks from different sources: Napa, Sonoma, Champagne, Jerez, Portugal, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Cognac, and Calvados. “They allow us to go much deeper into ageing, getting all the complexities that the process of maturation brings, without losing the essence of our spirit and its terroir. We also use multiple maturation locations at different altitudes, under different climates and cellar characteristics to gain deeper complexity, allowing us to blend in ways never before seen in Tequila production.”

Mendoza says this unique cask programme wasn’t always the plan, but his uncle (master distiller Enrique Fonesca) was one of the first in Tequila to source European oak casks from France and beyond. “We’re known in Tequila for two things: being agave farmers and for bringing Tequila to the brown spirits section,” Mendoza says. That’s something that honestly was born within the walls of La Tequilana by Enrique’s conception. Even his father told him he was insane, ‘why are you putting so much Tequila in casks?’”.  

No additive Tequila

It’s an interesting approach to maturation, particularly listening as someone who is most familiar with it from the rods of whisky, brandy, and rum. “The concept of ageing as it is done in other parts of the world is very different. They work with much more simple carbohydrates, like grain, so ageing is a must to bring diversity and complexity. But imagine you have an amazing Tequila that has a lot and then you do an organised, intentional ageing with subtle casks that let the spirit mature without overwhelming it with heavily matured casks. That’s what we do. We’re just beginning to understand the potential of Anejo and Extra Anejo,” Mendoza explains. 

He says he is building a library of flavour and references the issue Japanese whisky had, becoming so popular it was forced to go through the stock and so it lost years and years of ageing, which it now has to build again. “That was another good decision of Enrique, to build a library and to keep it and nurture it. Just like the soil, you nurture that library with batches of Tequila”. Each expression of Don Fulano draws from a map of character which defines the region where the agave comes from, the altitude and kind of soil, the time of harvest, fermentations with or without bagasse, distillation techniques and ageing, including time spent and type of barrel used. It’s an approach akin to Scotch or Cognac production, creating base spirits in batches that are reviewed by a tasting panel before being blended from selected barrels by the master of the cellar.

Don Fulano Tequila goes through a simple cellulose filtration, there’s no chill filtration, and it’s presented without additives. After all that hard work generating flavour, Don Fulano also doesn’t need to use additives, a point that is made repeatedly in our masterclass. We’re shocked to learn that additive-free Tequila is less than 1% of the category, which contains more than 4,000 brands. “The question of using or not using additives is not one you make in an office. You don’t want to use additives, you want to build the sources of additives in your product. And for that, you have to build, you have to create, you have to preserve. That is the essence and beauty of Tequila,” says Mendoza. 

Tasting the Don Fulano range

Well, after all that we reckon it’s time to taste some Tequila. My thanks to the Don Fulano team for an extraordinary masterclass. You can buy Don Fulano Tequila from Master of Malt and below we have a selection of its core products. Everything you see here is distilled by Fonesca and blended by Mendoza. We hope you appreciate these spirits even more now that you know much care and craft has gone into them.

Don Fulano Blanco 70cl

The agave is Maduro and Pinto (Jima Media) from Atotonilco (Highlands), which is cooked for 28 to 32 hours and then fermented in an open tank for 72 to 96 hours with a proprietary yeast from the agave. It’s a mix of Tequila distilled in a copper pot (80%) and the brand’s unique Coffey still (20%) and then left to rest in stainless steel for six months before it’s bottled at 40% ABV. The profile is herbaceous and earthy with a butterscotch oiliness.

Don Fulano Reposado 70cl

The reposado is made the same way as the Blanco but with eight to 11 months of maturation in French Limousine and Nevers oak casks which gives it rich, buttery qualities as well as dark chocolate and fruit. There are still plenty of cooked agave notes though. 

Don Fulano Añejo 70cl

Don Fulano Añejo also mirror the production of the Blanco and the cask profile of the Reposado, but the maturation is 30 months which heightens spice elements like allspice and cardamom and gives it a honeyed nutty taste too. 

Don Fulano Imperial Extra Añejo Tequila 70cl

Finally, the Don Fulano Imperial, which is blended from dark European oak and oloroso sherry casks aged for five years minimum so it’s abundant in notes of black cherries, leather, tobacco and spices like clove and cardamom

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