THE ART OF AGING
How Enrique Fonseca revolutionized tequila with one simple ingredient: time.
THE RESULTSIt began out of necessity.
Enrique Fonseca was born in Atotonilco el Alto, he studied Arts and Architecture in Canada and Mexico. Throughout his life he worked alongside his father planting and harvesting blue agave in the region of “Los Altos de Jalisco”. He maintains a close relationship with the agave plant: he knows how to select the best fields (huertas) for planting, comprehends its unique maturation process and so has the ability to harvest only the supreme.
Due to some unforeseen circumstances,
Enrique found himself with a large quantity of agave, ready to be transformed into tequila, and couldn’t find anybody to buy it. Time was not on his side. If he waited too long, the agave would spoil and be worthless for tequila production. So, out of necessity, Enrique Fonseca learned how to make tequila by himself.
As anyone who knows Enrique will tell you,
he’s not a man who does things half-measured.
When it came time to make his tequila, he refused to settle for bottom shelf quality. He wanted to make a product that was not just one of the best tequilas in the world, but one of the best distillates ever, period. And so began his journey to do just that.
Enrique’s ambition required research.
He traveled from Mexico to Kentucky, Scotland, France and the rest of Europe to learn from distillate producers what made them so special. The answer was simple: great quality raw materials and Time. The finest bourbons, scotches, and cognacs were all aged to perfection. But while that may sound easy enough, the process is actually quite complex.
TEQUILA HAD NEVER BEEN AGED BEFORE, AT LEAST, NOT LIKE THESE OTHER DISTILLATES.
Mexico’s weather conditions are not ideal for aging: too hot and dry; add to that at the time, a general lack of knowledge on the process of aging and you can see why it was barely attempted. You didn’t know what you were going to get until you tried it. Aging requires a massive leap of faith, and who has decades to wait and see if a tequila is any good? As it turns out, Enrique did.
What began as a necessity to use up some agave before it spoiled, quickly turned into a passion. Enrique was obsessed. He loved learning about what types of wood made the best aging barrels and how the different treatments reacted with tequila. From his life experiences, he already had more knowledge about the agave plant than any tequila producer in the world. Now, after his tour around the globe, he knew as much about barrel-aging as anyone in the global industry.
Combining his newly acquired knowledge and unparalleled experience,
Enrique was able to see the tequila production process from all angles. He understood how all of the variables affected one another and used that insight to develop one of the most exclusive tequilas in the world: FUENTESECA. What made it so unique was not just how it was produced and aged, but for how long. Thirty years was an unprecedented amount of time to age tequila. But Enrique was committed to making the best tequila the world had ever tasted and if thirty years is what it took, thirty years would be what he waited.
