Anyway, the only really sad thing about this is that I’m living in Canada, in the province of Québec and it’s really hard, nigh impossible, to find good tequila. I think its a shame that good tequila is so hard to come by in the Great White North.

If you want to drink it in volume, couple it with a fruit juice or with Fresca (common in Mexico) and drink it as a cocktail. For that, any decent 100% blue agave will do. Herradura Reposado is a good start.

At the moment, I’m finding Corralejo Repo for $24, Gran Centenario Anejo for $35, and had been grabbing 950ml packs of Pueblo Viejo for $22. Of the three, the Gran Centenario is the only one good to sip. They all make great margaritas.

Generally, I can find Herradura for pretty decent prices, too.

For sipping tequilas, I’ll go for El Tesoro, Arette, Partida, old Centinela 3 year (newer stuff isn’t very good by comparison), Espolon, Tapatio, and, if I’m really feeling the treat, La Fortaleza (more expensive but, oh so amazingly fine).

Those typically range from about $32 to about $80, depending on whether I grab a blanco, reposado, anejo, or extra anejo. I typically go for reposados for sipping as I like the balance between the vegetal nature of a young tequila combined with just a touch of wood from aging.

I need to make another run to the local shops to see what is what.

Drink what you like, certainly. No, really — drink whatever you want.

Cuervo owns something like 90% of the North American tequila market and almost all of what they sell is, by the standards of tequila making, a completely crap product. If it is not a Cuervo 100% blue agave product, it will be 51% blue agave tequila made as efficiently as possible, flavor be damned, and 49% cane sugar alcohol made as cheaply as possible. The color is entirely an additive and there are flavor additives used to cover the rather awful flavors that are a product of the manufacturing process.

Cuervo is an extremely efficient marketing agency more than a purveyor of traditionally crafted tequilas. The methods of manufacture that Cuervo employes are optimized to efficiency and, thus, yield a very different product than some of the less efficient and more traditional means of manufacture. This additional efficiency means that a number of additional compounds– not all good for the resulting product– are extracted earlier in the process (roasting & musto extraction, for example) and this must be compensated for later in the process.

Nothing wrong with that. Just don’t drink it in ignorance. To claim the Cuervo is making the same product as their neighbors in Tequila would be a denial of reality.

None of that is to say that Cuervo doesn’t make some really just flat out amazing products. They do; the Reserva product has been absolutely fantastic in years gone by (I haven’t tasted recent product), but you’ll pay a lot for it and, by the results of various blind tasting based rating systems, some of that cost is due to the brand, not the contents of the bottle. Depending on the product, they are also made using a distinctly different process– often much more traditional in nature specifically because Cuervo has decided that is the best way to achieve a higher quality product; a product that they can sell at a higher price.

In any case, some of my favorite tequilas are pretty damned cheap; much less expensive than anything Patron makes and leaps and bounds better quality product. Better flavor? Personal choice, sure.

However, the contents of my liquor cabinet certainly don’t reflect anything akin to price snobbery! Snobbery through education? Maybe. But that’s OK by me!