As people partied like it was 1999, they were almost certainly drinking vodka, which at the time accounted for about a quarter of the spirits market. Craft beer was just on the precipice of booming. The cocktail renaissance was on the horizon, too. The rise of bourbon would be meteoric and significant. But it was tequila that I think, ultimately, would define drinking in the first quarter of the 21st century.
From 2000 until the present, tequila sales have grown over 300 percent, accounting for some $6.7 billion in revenue in 2024, according to the Distilled Spirit Council, just a hair behind vodka’s $7.2 billion.
If, in May of 2000, The New York Times reported that there were virtually no non-Mexican companies involved in the tequila industry, today, tequila is a worldwide phenomenon. Just about every multinational conglomerate owns a major tequila brand, whether Don Julio at Diageo (U.K), Sauza at Suntory (Japan), Espolòn at Campari (Italy), or Olmeca at Pernod Ricard (France). Though there are plenty of upstart independents (not to mention, celebrities) that would completely change the industry this century as well.
To help determine the most important and influential tequilas of the past 25 years, I spoke with multiple experts in the category, ranging from tequila bar owners and restaurateurs to fellow journalists and authors to longtime tequila collectors and connoisseurs.
One final point to note: Important does not necessarily mean “tastes good”; likewise, some of the best liquid ever produced is not inherently “important” to anyone outside of the cognoscenti that drinks it.
Clase Azul Reposado
After the commercial failure of 1998’s Teporocho Tequila, brand founder Arturo Lomeli went back to the drawing board to try and figure out how to create a tequila that would differentiate itself from the rest of the market. The result was a high-quality spirit in a ceramic bottle so beautiful, Lomeli hoped people would reuse them as candle holders or vases. First released in 2000, it retailed for an also-unheard-of $100 a bottle. Essentially selling it door-to-door for over a decade, it would take until 2013 or so for luxury bars, restaurants, and nightclubs to latch onto it. “The brand itself has elevated the perception of tequila and Mexican culture as luxury and worth splurging on,” says Bay-Area-based Ernesto Hernandez, a longtime tequila collector and connoisseur, who cites its sweeter, less agave-forward flavor profile as being a gateway for many newbies to the category. “Though purists accuse it of being artificially sweetened, it made consumers comfortable paying so much for tequila,” he says.
Pre- and Post-Diffuser Herradura
Once the most acclaimed of all tequilas — and supposedly the first 100 percent agave tequila to be sold in the U.S., thanks to Bing Crosby — many would point to Brown-Forman’s 2007 acquisition of the brand as its downfall. But, in retrospect, it was the distillery’s 2001 switch to a diffuser — a large industrial machine able to extract agave sugars much faster, more efficiently (and, usually with less flavor) than traditional methods — that would ultimately change the legendary flavor profile for the worse. “Many drinkers, myself included, noticed a change in the blanco profile,” says Hernandez. In turn, an anti-diffuser movement would spring up among connoisseurs that still prevails today (Herradura reportedly quit using a diffuser by 2010). In early 2025, Herradura (and Brown-Forman) forged a return to its previous glory with the introduction of a 92-proof Blanco.
Don Julio 1942
Launched in 2002 to mark 60 years since Don Julio Gonzalez founded the brand, it would take a 2010 redesign encompassing its now iconic spire of a bottle for Don Julio 1942 to fully take off. And, oh boy, did it take off, with professional athletes, rap stars, actors, influencers, and other nightclub-going boldfaces backing it. The appeal of the sleek, $150 bottle — admittedly owned by the world’s largest booze conglomerate (Diageo) — soon spread to the mainstream and it then became impossible for retailers to keep in stock. It’s easy to question the liquid, mock the packaging (or the kind of people who love it), but what no one can deny is that “1942” was the industry’s first unicorn.
Post-Patrón Siete Leguas
Founded in 1952 by Don Ignacio González Vargas, this highlands distillery was long known for its small- batch, traditionally made tequila. That all changed when shampoo mogul John Paul DeJoria decided to launch a tequila brand in the United States: Patrón, which featured Siete Leguas’s liquid. By the turn of the century, Patrón had become a big enough name and a profitable enough brand it decided to distill on its own. “It was a huge deal when Patrón split as it left Siete Leguas in a difficult position,” says David Suro-Piñera, owner of Tequilas Restaurant in Philadelphia, as well as VinePair’s 2022 Next Wave Awards Drinks Professional of the Year. Alas, the González family would persevere and continue to release incredible tequila, using agave sourced from the region and old-school methods. “How many great tequilas are still produced by the families that started them?” asks Suro-Piñera. “Most brands are now in the hands of transnationals.”
Post-Siete Leguas Patrón
Nevertheless, Patrón splitting from Siete Leguas was, ultimately, the correct move for the brand. In 2002, Patrón opened its own distillery in Jalisco with just two tahona wheels and one roller mill; it eventually became the massive Hacienda Patrón, now with around 100 small, copper pot stills and 14 tahonas, the most of any distillery on Earth. By 2006 the brand was selling 1 million cases of Patrón Silver per year and began attracting attention from celebrities and early adopters — the first high-end tequila to truly become mainstream. In 2018, Patrón was sold to Bacardi for $5.1 billion and, today, Patrón calls itself the world’s best-selling super-premium tequila (whatever that means) and has become one of the most recognizable and beloved “quality” tequila brands across the world.
Los Abuelos Lote 1
The legendary Sauza family’s legacy was critically revived in 2005 when Don Cenobio Sauza’s great-great-grandson Guillermo Erickson Sauza began producing the Los Abuelos brand in the same hacienda, La Persevarancia, that he had originally founded in 1873. (The brand would be renamed the now more commonly known Fortaleza for the U.S. market in 2007.) Sauza adopted the same methods his ancestors had once used: brick oven roasting, tahona crushing, wooden tanks for fermentation, and even the original copper pots for distillation. If most connoisseurs didn’t care for Sauza any more — ever since Javier Sauza sold the family company in 1976 — they quickly fell for Fortaleza and today it is arguably the most coveted, discussed, and hyped brand in the business.
El Tesoro de Don Felipe Paradiso — ‘C’ Series
There was great concern that the quality of El Tesoro would decline after legendary tequila importers Robert Denton and Marilyn Smith unloaded their control to Jim Beam’s holding company in 1999. This release proved that was not the case. Paradiso Series “A” (1994, aged in Old Boone barrels supplied by Julian Van Winkle III) and Series “B” (circa late-1990s, said to be aged in Louis Treize casks) were extra añejos par excellence. Early lots of Paradiso Series “C,” aged in A. Fussigny Cognac barrels, showed the transition from Denton to Beam wouldn’t be as rocky as initially feared.
Fortaleza Lote 16 Blanco
“Among collectors and tequila enthusiasts, Fortaleza really began to pick up steam around this time,” says collector Hernandez. He believes this was the first lot that truly turned tequila geeks onto the idea of there being slightly different flavor profiles from lot to lot, mainly because of how unique it was. “Since then most everyone started turning [Fortaleza] around to see which lot a bottle may be,” he adds. The trend of lot-labeling and -seeking has spread to other brands as well.
El Tesoro de Don Felipe 70th Anniversary
In 2007, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Don Felipe Camarena’s founding of the La Alteña Distillery in 1937, the current distiller and Don Felipe’s grandson, Carlos Camarena, produced this masterpiece, aged for seven years in ex-bourbon barrels, released in a batch of only 12,042 bottles, and believed to have the highest Brix content of any tequila ever released. And yet, early on, thanks to the then shocking $129.99 retail price, it languished on shelves before being heavily discounted in many stores. Today, it is considered arguably the greatest extra añejo of all time and moves for over $1,000 per bottle. Meanwhile, Carlos Camarena is regarded as a distilling legend. “It marked the end of tequila as a relegated spirit on shelves and demonstrates how hard it was for a great tequila to get traction not too long ago,” says Hernandez. “It was the last ‘overlooked’ yet memorable release in tequila.”
Alquimia
Tequila is inherently a product of the land, but it would take until the aughts for a brand to be released based on organic farming methods. In the 1990s, Dr. Adolfo Murillo acquired his family’s farmland in Agua Negra, Jalisco, and decided to begin growing agave; local farmers said that was impossible in the rugged, dark brown soil. But Murillo believed by using organic methods, it might work and started planting blue Tequilana agaves in 1993. The results were incredible: high sugar content agaves that distilleries were eager to buy. By 2007, Murillo had proudly started his own 100 percent organic agave tequila brand, a trend many other upstarts would copy.
Tequila Ocho Plata 2008, Rancho Carrizal Estate
Yet another Carlos Camarena project (along with co-founder, Mexican restaurateur Tomas Estes) Ocho was the first brand to truly cite the importance of terroir in tequila via its “Single Estate” releases. Starting with 2008’s Carrizal Estate, each batch of Tequila Ocho was produced from agave entirely sourced from one specific “rancho,” each with its own unique aromas and flavor profiles. Today many other brands specify the location from where they harvested their agave.
Maestro Dobel Diamante
Say what you will about the category, but cristalino tequila has undoubtedly been one of the biggest innovations of the 21st century. And the idea of fully aged yet colorless tequila — a blend of extra-añejos, añejos, and reposados filtered via activated carbon — began in 2008 with this Proximo Spirits release. Today, just about every major brand has a cristalino, even if the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT) continues to refuse to recognize the category.
Tequila Avión
Tequila’s place in the pop culture firmament was radically accelerated when an imaginary TV character named Turtle decided to start hawking a brand called Avión as a side hustle. The show was HBO’s “Entourage,” and when the tequila appeared in a 2010, seventh season episode, many viewers surely assumed it was a made-up brand — no different from the movies that protagonist Vinny Chase (Adrian Grenier) starred in. As “Entourage” fans began to encounter Avión on retail shelves and back bars — with a slogan of “Yes, It’s Real!” — the brand began to explode. Within three years, Pernod Ricard bought a majority stake in Avión for $100 million. Turtle’s triumph was, in many ways, the ur-celebrity tequila, and a harbinger of things to come.
Selección ArteNOM
Entrepreneur and agave expert Jacob Lustig wanted to start bottling his favorite tequila expressions similar to how independent bottlers in Scotland like Gordon & MacPhail might package their favorite whiskies from various distilleries under the same brand name. The only issue was: Legally, no one is allowed to bottle tequilas from different distilleries under the same brand name. After a long struggle with the CRT, Lustig was finally granted an exception to this rule in 2010, creating the one brand that puts the NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana, a four-digit code identifying where tequila was produced) in big letters on the front of the bottle as opposed to tiny ones on the back label. “It was the first brand to incorporate the concept of sourcing amazing products in unique styles from different distilleries to offer under one label, marking a turning point for appreciating tequila as a terroir-driven craft spirit,” says Tess Rose Lampert, author of “The Essential Tequila & Mezcal Companion.”
G4 Tequila
The first tequila brand devoted to intentional experimentation in the category, with Felipe Camarena (Carlo’s brother FWIW) acting as, according to tequila collector and connoisseur Eduardo Urena, “the mad scientist” at his Destilería El Pandillo. G4 was first released in 2011, though not imported to the U.S. until 2016; Hernandez thinks it changed the game in terms of how tequila distilleries look at water usage in particular. “If your bottle is only 40 percent alcohol the rest of its contents are mostly water,” he says. “Felipe began experimenting with rain, spring, and well water ratios to confirm the big impact water choice has on tequila.”
Tapatio 110 Blanco
Today, high-proof blancos are de rigueur, but this was the release that gave legitimacy to high-ABV tequila, as it was bottled at the highest legal U.S. proof for the category. Another brand from the La Alteña Distillery, this was a unique collaboration between Carlos Camarena and the American father-and-son master distillers Miles and Marko Karakasevic of California’s Charbay Distillery. It was an immediate cult hit “and the industry hasn’t looked back,” says Hernandez.
Casamigos
The celebrity tequila that launched a thousand ships: Started in 2013 by George Clooney, Rande Gerber (Mr. Cindy Crawford), and some non-famous guy — who claimed they had produced this tequila simply to be served at their “house of friends” — it quickly became a sensation. Perhaps it was A-lister Clooney’s handsome visage on marketing materials, maybe it was the fact that liquid was so vanilla-laden it was easy for neophytes to enjoy, but by 2017 Diageo had acquired it for a billion bucks. Much derided today among connoisseurs, it is remarkably now the fourth best-selling tequila in the country, the brand you’ll most frequently hear “called” by customers if you sit at any given bar for the night. Dozens of other celebrity tequilas have followed, making many wonder if you are truly a celebrity if you don’t have your own tequila.
Tears of Llorona
The son of an industry legend, master distiller Germán González would go his own way in 2014 and release one of the first extra añejos to play around with barrel aging. Aged for five years in brandy, sherry, and Scotch barrels — as opposed to the more typical ex-bourbon barrels — Tears of Llorona would become a cult hit. Limited in release, exceedingly hard to find, and highly priced, it might very well have been the first release to be dubbed the “Pappy of tequila.”
Fortaleza Still Strength
If many tequila brands presumed they would lure whiskey drinkers to the category via overly mature barrel-aged releases, it was ultimately proof that would do the trick. Namely, high-proof in the form of “still strength” tequila, the category’s answer to “barrel proof” bourbon and “cask strength” Scotch. Fortaleza was the first to introduce the buzzy term, releasing bottlings starting in 2016 after American bartenders clamored for it after having flown down to Jalisco to taste the liquid straight off the still. “We kind of initially brought it out thinking that it was going to be mostly sold to bars and restaurants as a kind of, like, cheers at the end of the night to celebrate making it through an eight-hour bartending shift or whatever,” says Billy Erickson, Sauza’s son and Fortaleza’s sales and marketing manager. Instead, it created an entire (unofficial) sub-category with dozens of brands releasing still strength bottlings over the last decade.
Cascahuín Blanco
With roots dating back to 1904, and a distillery first built in 1955, Cascahuín would hardly seem influential this century. And yet it would take until recently for this brand to take off in the States, thanks to Suro-Piñera’s importing efforts. Tequila enthusiasts now go crazy for the traditionally made tequilas of Salvador Rosales Torres and his family, knowing that a NOM 1123 on the back of any bottle is a guarantee of quality. “Their blanco is the best basic tequila on the market — insane value,” says Lampert. “[And] the distillery is behind many of the new projects that industry nerds go crazy for.” Those would include Cascahuín 11 Brix, a blend of three different fermentation types, and the recent Cascahuín Destino, a blanco blend highlighting unique cooking, fermentation, and distillation methods.
Siembra Valles Ancestral
A passion project for Suro-Piñera, who wanted to know what tequila might have tasted like in the past. He would achieve that through an agave roasting technique not used in the industry for a century, with piñas cooked underground in earthen pits, then crushed via wooden mallets, a method that even predates the tahona. Fermented via ambient yeast and finally distilled (at Cascahuín no less) with copper and pine wood alembic stills and first released in 2016, the result was a rustic, slightly smoky blanco unlike any on the modern market. “It was completely the opposite of the way the industry is going with mass production,” says Suro-Piñera. In turn, portions of the industry have begun to move toward more “rustic” releases like Patrón Ahumado.
Fortaleza Winter Blend
In 2019 Tequila Fortaleza would release its first-ever seasonal limited edition, a reposado aged in a variety of used and new French and American oak barrels. An immediate hit both critically and among consumers, a new Winter Blend would follow each holiday season, always aged in a variety of intriguing barrels, whether beer casks (2020), ex-Marsala casks (2021), sherry and Hungarian oak (2022), and ex-Charanda casks (2023). Increasingly hard to find and costly on the secondary market, it would show that bottle-hunting madness is not only the purview of the bourbon tater.
Caballito Cerrero
Still mostly unknown to all but the most savvy U.S. drinkers — and only pursued by connoisseurs and collectors recently, upon small distribution to the country starting in 2019 — Caballito Cerrero’s influence is predominantly legal and philosophical. After years of issues with the CRT, Santa Rita Fabrica’s Jimenez family decided to stop dealing with them (and stop paying them) altogether. Thus, even though their wonderful spirits fit all of the parameters of tequila, they are not allowed to call it tequila, instead opting for “destilado de agave,” beginning in 2018. Not only has this given an added mystique to the cult brand, it’s shown other small producers in both the tequila and mezcal world a different way of doing things. “The brand exemplifies in a tangible, tastable way that the world of agave spirits in Jalisco, including tequila, is vast, historical, and dynamic,” says Lampert.
Teremana
If Casamigos would eventually become a divisive signifier of a tequila drinker’s knowledge (or lack thereof), Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson proved there was still room for celebrity tequilas… that were actually pretty good. Launched in March 2020 and fueled by Johnson’s prominent pandemic-era social media push, it immediately became one the fastest-growing spirit brands of all time, selling 300,000 cases in the U.S. before the year was up. (It passed 1 million cases per year in 2023.) Transparent (production and nutrition details are atypically listed on the label), sustainable, hospitable, and affordable, it was a hit on both sides of the bar, especially among Margarita-mixing bartenders.
Tequila Ocho Plata Puntas – 2021 La Ladera
Long a non-commercial, “IYKYK” term restricted to the mezcal industry, in 2021 Tequila Ocho was the first to bring the idea of “puntas” to the mainstream — an all-heads cut of agave spirit that possesses incredibly aromatic, flavorful compounds like propanol, ethyl lactate, acetic acid, and furfural. (For what it’s worth, Ocho doesn’t simply bottle the entire head cut, which would contain too many unwanted compounds. Instead, Carlos Camarena makes a cut right at the end of the heads through the very beginning of the hearts.) This release was a cult hit and a second release, Tequila Ocho Plata Puntas 2023 Mesa Colorada, elicited a fervor among the online tequila community and claimed a spot on VinePair’s 50 Best Spirits of 2023.
