Tequila lovers who want to know a little bit more about what’s in their bottles will now have to make do without one of the agave spirits industry’s most comprehensive resources. Earlier this month, the Consejo Regulador de Tequila (CRT) — the Mexican authority that regulates the tequila industry — threatened a number of tequila brands over the use of phrases like “additive free” on their labels and in their marketing materials. In response, the popular app Tequila Matchmaker scrubbed all “additive free” designations from its vast database of tequila brands and removed the list of certified additive-free tequila producers from the associated Additive Free Alliance website.
In a round of letters sent out to several small tequila brands on Sept. 30, the regulatory body outlined a series of punitive actions it could take against those producers — including seizure of product — for violating the CRT’s prohibition on the use of additive-free language. In marked escalation, the CRT’s language also suggested it could hold producers accountable for additive-free language associated with their brands even on third-party websites like Tequila Matchmaker.
“I started getting copies of these letters the CRT was sending to brands and distilleries, and they were quite distressed over this,” says Tequila Matchmaker and Additive Free Alliance co-founder Grover Sanschagrin. “So we had an emergency board meeting at the Additive Free Alliance and decided to take all of the tequila brands off of the list just to protect them from their own regulator.”
‘Something Different Was Going On’
Producers began receiving the letters on the evening of Friday, Sept. 27, timing that Sanschagrin believes was likely intentional. A new government would be sworn in the following Tuesday, and sending the letters after close of business on a Friday during a government transition would ensure the recipients would spend the weekend and much of the next week in a state of uncertainty, with no clarification or follow-up.
Whether or not that was the intention, the letters sent many small producers scrambling to understand and comply with the CRT’s new guidance. Yéyo Tequila, one of the brands that received the CRT letter, has previously had to make adjustments on the fly when the CRT abruptly changed labeling policy or some other guideline, says CEO Liran Reingold. But this time felt different.
“The recent action by the CRT just further reinforces, in my mind, their vendetta against smaller brands. The small brands that use additive- free methods are the ones getting affected by this.”
“We were in the process of bottling our new product when all this happened,” he says. “And our product was held up.” The CRT took issue with specific aspects of Yéyo’s labels that were previously CRT-approved, and the inspectors were uncharacteristically inflexible. At one point, Reingold, his team, and the CRT inspectors were arguing over the placement of commas. “Our product was held up,” he says. “They were sticklers on absolutely everything. We just felt like something different was going on.”
Yéyo’s product was eventually released (albeit two weeks behind schedule), but similar episodes played out across the additive-free tequila community, and not for the first time. Earlier this year, Mijenta tequila was told that its previously approved labels — which proudly disclosed the brand’s B Corp status as well as the fact that it makes its tequila without additives — were no longer in compliance with shifting CRT policy. “We had labels that were approved, and then it turns out they were disapproved,” says Michael Dolan, CEO and cofounder of Mijenta. Rather than destroy the labels and print new ones, the brand opted to place a sticker over the offending language, a do-over that cost Mijenta time and money.
The timing of the letters, the opaqueness surrounding CRT decision-making on additive-free tequila language, and the fact that these abrupt policy shifts tend to disproportionately impact smaller producers have many in the industry raising questions about the CRT’s motives (the CRT did not respond to VinePair’s request for comment).
“The recent action by the CRT just further reinforces, in my mind, their vendetta against smaller brands,” says Adam Millman, CEO of De Nada Tequila. “The small brands that use additive-free methods are the ones getting affected by this.”
Tequila’s Transparency Problem
Prior to this latest round of CRT letters, relations between the regulator and those advocating for transparency weren’t exactly warm. For more than a year, producers have had to contend with a rapidly shifting regulatory regime.
“Additive-free language — and even our additive-free program — this was all fine for the first three and a half years, right up until the point where it started to really become effective.”
Under Tequila’s current regulations, additives can comprise up to 1 percent of the liquid in any bottle. Approved additives include sweeteners like aspartame or stevia and things like oak extract and caramel coloring that can mimic characteristics of barrel aging. Glycerin to alter texture? It’s absolutely allowed up to 1 percent. Producers can do all of this and still display “100 percent agave” on the label.
When they launched Tequila Matchmaker in 2015, Grover and Scarlet Sanschagrin started cataloging the exploding number of tequila brands coming to market at that time. As they did so, they began tracking which brands were known to use additives and which did not, marking the latter products as “additive-free” in their database. They also began independently lab testing tequilas for common additives, eventually founding the Additive Free Alliance (an outgrowth of Tequila Matchmaker’s Additive-Free Verification Program) in 2020 as a way for transparency-focused tequila brands to obtain a third-party certification that their spirits were in fact free of additives. AFA even supplied brands with a small seal of approval that made their bottles easily recognizable to consumers.
WIth the conversation around additives in tequila growing louder and sales of additive-free tequilas on the rise, the CRT eventually took interest. In March of last year, it declared itself the only authority empowered to certify tequilas as additive-free and pledged to launch its own certification program. In October, the CRT certified its first additive-free brand (Patrón) and then immediately abandoned the entire program after pushback from other large tequila brands. In January of this year, the CRT issued a statement claiming no tequila brands could use the phrase “additive free” or related terms on their labels.
“The worst thing you can do sometimes is raise an issue to a level of prominence. Inadvertently, the people who are trying to suppress this information are in fact creating more interest. They’re creating an occasion for people to talk about this.”
The months-long drama boiled over in March when the CRT filed a criminal complaint against the Sanschagrins, alleging the couple’s home was a factory for adulterated alcoholic beverages. The complaint prompted Mexican authorities to raid their Guadalajara home, prompting many within the tequila community to question the CRT’s motivations along with the veracity of its accusations. (The couple currently resides in the U.S. while the legal process plays out.)
“Additive-free language — and even our additive-free program — this was all fine for the first three and a half years, right up until the point where it started to really become effective,” Sanschagrin says. “When it started to become a movement, that’s when it suddenly had to be banned.”
Setting ‘Additive-Free’ Free
For brands that have staked their identity on additive-free production, the inability to communicate that through their labels — and now even via third parties like the AFA — makes it tougher to differentiate themselves. Many believe that’s precisely the point. According to this line of thinking, the big tequila brands are the ones whose industrial production processes create sub-par tequilas that need to be corrected with additives. Those same companies use their clout with regulators to put pressure on their smaller competitors and keep additive-free language off labels, many believe.
Market trends lend some weight to the allegation. Dolan cites Nielsen data that shows some additive-free tequila brands growing at 20 times the clip of their larger rivals. There’s still a huge differential in total volume that favors the larger tequila producers, but when sales of massive brands like Casamigos fall by more than 20 percent in a year, companies take notice. That’s brought the CRT — which is a state-sanctioned, non-profit regulatory body funded by the tequila industry rather than a direct organ of the Mexican government — into increasing conflict with the subset of small brands that want to play up their additive-free status.
“I feel for them,” Dolan says of the CRT. “They’re trying to do the right thing for the industry and they’re just caught in a difficult position.” But, he continues, ultimately the consumer will drive the conversation, and right now more and more consumers are talking about additive-free tequila.
“The worst thing you can do sometimes is raise an issue to a level of prominence,” Dolan says of the recent CRT letters. “Inadvertently, the people who are trying to suppress this information are in fact creating more interest. They’re creating an occasion for people to talk about this.”
Sanschagrin is hopeful that Mexico’s new government will listen to both consumers and additive-free producers and approve a second certifying authority for the tequila industry.
At least two applications to create additional certifying authorities are currently working their way through Mexico’s Secretariat of Economy, he says. If one or both were approved, it could end the current impasse over labeling policy and give additive-free producers an alternative route to market with their labeling transparency intact.
“I think a lot of the things that the CRT is pulling would have to end if they had competition,” he says. “If the distilleries and the brands could go somewhere else, I think they probably would.”
That would count as a win for both the makers of additive-free tequila and a U.S. consumer increasingly thirsty for transparency.
“I have a sense of optimism in the long run,” De Nada’s Millman says. “I just think that the additive-free movement has become too much of a thing for it to completely go away.”
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