Consumers are increasingly opting for additive-free tequila. That’s a good thing. The bad news is that Mexico’s tequila regulatory agency doesn’t want you to know about it. So brands that want to tout their additive-free status have to find a way around these restrictions, and Patrón has come up with a particularly ingenious campaign.
First, a little backstory: Some tequila producers pull their agave early and rely on additives to correct color or flavor profiles. This is legal! The Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT) allows tequila to use additives (and not disclose them) if they make up less than 1% of the total volume. But the same agency has been hostile to spirits brands touting the lack of additives. As we’ve noted before, Mexican federal authorities raided a property owned by Grover and Scarlet Sanschagrin, the couple behind the Tequila Matchmaker app that pushes for transparency around additive-free spirits. And the agency also pressured brands, including Patrón, to pull back their recent advertising campaign centered around being 100% additive-free.
The Latest on the Tequila Industry and a Push for Additive-Free Transparency
We spoke with Grover Sanschagrin, one of the founders of Tequila MatchmakerGiven the popularity of Patrón (it’s the third highest-selling tequila in the world), this pushback is kind of a surprise. However, the brand recently launched a fun way to note its additive-free status without actually saying it’s additive-free. “Censored Truth” is a campaign featuring redacted visuals and bleeped-out audio advertising that emphasizes, quite blatantly, what they can’t say.
“I think people are excited by how we’re able to communicate our message and our commitment to transparency,” says Roberto Ramirez-Laverde, global SVP of Patrón, who spoke to me about an hour before the tequila brand launched a two-day “100% [CENSORED]” event in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail, featuring multiple bars, educational seminars and plenty of “censored” signage around various bars within the Virgin Hotel.
“We launched a 100% additive-free campaign earlier in the year. And the CRT was challenging us,” he adds. “They actually suspended our export license. So we had conversations with them, and we agreed to tell our message in a different way. People can read between the lines.”
Interestingly, and as InsideHook contributor and agave expert Lou Bank mentioned in a seminar I attended recently, tequila has undergone an unusually strong focus on additives, when pretty much all spirits have additives, for better or worse. Why is tequila taking up this fight?
“I think because there’s a lack of knowledge of how tequila is produced,” Ramirez-Laverde says. “The CRT allows the industry to produce tequila with up to 1% of additives. It’s not good or bad, but we think even 1% is too much. We just want to make sure consumers can have an informed decision on which product they choose, and if they want to choose ours, it’s because they know what’s in it. We’re only made of three ingredients — 100% Blue Weber agave, water and yeast.”
In the end, it’d be ideal if the CRT could come up with a way for brands to be certified additive-free, a practice that would also be great for the rest of the spirits business to follow.
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