Angels

The Story of Enrique Fonseca: Tequila Master

by Lance Cutler

In March of 2006, The Consejo Regulador de Tequila (CRT), the agency responsible for verifying standards, authenticity, and quality of tequila created a new category of tequila. This new category was named Extra Añejo (extra-aged or ultra-aged) and required that tequilas in this class be aged a minimum of three years in oak barrels.

Dozens of producers hurried to enter this class, which was seen as the best way for tequila to compete with spirits like Cognac and single malt scotches. Many of the tequilas came in gorgeous designer bottles. Stories of how the tequilas were aged, along with unsupported claims of tequilas that were eight to ten years old, accompanied each bottle. Many of these tequilas were oaky. All of them were expensive, usually in the $100 to $300 per bottle range.

One man, a man of vision and dogged determination, smiled when he heard of this new category. This was something he had been working toward for more than 30 years. He was anxious to enter the class, and some of his tequilas already qualified, but he realized that patience was critical. He wasn’t interested in being one more brand to enter the fray. Instead, he was determined to be the architect of an entirely new concept of aged tequila; one that was honest, verifiable, and completely transparent. He wanted to produce tequilas that truly competed with the greatest spirits of the world. That man was Enrique Fonseca.

When it comes to tequila, Enrique Fonseca’s ideas are so far outside the box that he seems to exist simultaneously in the past and the future with no real foothold in our present time. Yet, his innovative ideas linking the past traditions of tequila with a future none of us knew existed are built upon solid, self-taught principles and 35 years of hands on experience turning himself into a Master Distiller.

Fonseca’s family has been farming for four generations. They grow corn, wheat, a wide variety of citrus and other agricultural crops, but Enrique always loved the blue agave most. He has worked in agave fields for 50 years, and along with his father, the Fonsecas were among the most respected and largest agave growers in Los Altos, Jalisco. In 1985 they signed contracts with both Tequila Sauza and Jose Cuervo to provide each distillery with 20,000 tons of agave each year.

The contract was scheduled to run for 12 years, but after 4½ years, when agave prices tumbled, the two giant tequila companies refused to honor the balance of the contract. Now that they were geared up to produce so much agave, the Fonsecas had to find a home for it. It wasn’t like they could simply grow less agave until they developed new markets, because agave takes 7 to 10 years to mature, and the Fonsecas had already planted hundreds of acres of agaves to help them fulfill the contracts.

To preserve their mature agave, rather than risk losing it completely, Enrique decided that they should purchase a distillery and make tequila exclusively from their own agave. In 1989, he purchased the old Bacardi distillery which had changed hands several times. Most recently it had been operated by the Viejo Vergel Brandy Company to make brandy, but the company had produced large quantities of tequila as well.

So, in 1990 Enrique Fonseca found himself the owner of the distillery known as La Tequileña, even though he knew absolutely nothing about the distillation process. His distillery had a variety of alembic stills along with a copper double-column still, a type generally used for rum, but not tequila. Along with the distillery came abundant stocks of tequila, but it was uniformly uninteresting product.

Enrique knew that he had some of the best agaves in Jalisco. He was sure he could make some wonderful tequila if he could learn the process. Unfortunately, the specific nuts and bolts of tequila production were (and remain) a pretty closed subject. Other tequileros were unwilling to share their methods and secrets. He tried hiring people with experience making tequila, but the tequila didn’t improve.

He continued his reading, even as he operated his distillery and ran his agricultural businesses. He started reading about Scotch and learned that Aeneas Coffey had designed one of the first successful column stills in Ireland in 1830. His intent was to allow the production of higher alcohol product with lighter character without the need for multiple distillations. Unfortunately, Irish whiskey producers (who dominated the world market at the time) thought the whiskey produced from Coffey’s stills was too light and bland. They opted to continue with their traditional pot stills. Coffey took his still to Scotland where distillers embraced it, reveling in the ethereal flavors it lent to their product. Soon those lighter Scotch whiskys were to displace Irish whiskey as the most popular in the world.

Enrique had an epiphany. “The tequilas we produced in those early years were kind of bland and lacked true agave flavor,” he described. “The Scots had found a way to use the column still to produce lighter, higher-proof product that, when blended with traditional alembic still product, created complex whiskys with loads of character. Well, I had alembic stills and I had one of the only column stills in use at a tequila factory in all of Mexico. I figured if the Scots had figured out how to use the column still to improve their Scotch, then I should be able to use it to improve my tequila.”

Enrique saw an opportunity to develop a new style of tequila, one that was linked to fine traditional styles, but that brought them into a more modern context. He had to verify his idea and see the stills. He decided to go to Scotland to find out how they did it. The occasion of his honeymoon in 2001 was his excuse for going. His new wife Maria Elena Moreno spent her honeymoon in Scotland and Cognac, France, which might have been lovely, were she not being dragged from one distillery to another listening to her husband discuss intricacies of distillation methodology with a host of Master Distillers.

The Europeans were very generous with their knowledge, and Enrique was overflowing with enthusiasm. He felt he had seen the future. Now he could move forward and achieve his goals of producing a new style of tequila, He knew it wouldn’t happen quickly and that there would be bumps along the way, but at least he knew which direction to follow.

He took what he had learned in Europe and worked hard to master the art of distillation with his column still. He was able to elevate the proof of his product which gave it lighter body, while maintaining a refined and elegant sensibility that was full of agave character. As he learned more and more about the art of distillation, his background as an architect kicked in. He theorized that taller alembic stills would give better control of temperature and pressure leading to more control over the distillation process and allowing him to produce better product. He insisted on using copper for his stills, instead of stainless steel, because it added complexity and was more traditional. He redesigned the cooling tubes to slow condensation. Before he knew it, he had designed his own unique stills.

He realized that the formula used by distillers to control temperature and pressure, key issues in determining the quality and character of the end product, was based exclusively on the mix of alcohol and water through the course of distillation. But the agave product from which tequila was distilled had mixed solids, acids and other compounds that had to be considered in the formula. His appetite for distillation knowledge was boundless. It led to learning about azeotropic distillation methods, which operate at different temperatures than plain distillation, giving different boiling points and allowing for more control by the distiller.

Enrique admits, “I just can’t help myself. I am constantly tweaking things looking for a better way to make tequila. A lot of times my ideas seem crazy, but sometimes they work.”

His first attempts using his new stills produced tequila that was intense, but very “rustic.” He tried blending it with some of the more neutral column-distilled product in his vast stocks and got lucky. The tequila was good, better than anything he had produced up to that time. He was on the right track. By 2002, Enrique Fonseca was convinced that he was making some very good tequila, and that as time went on, it would continue to improve.

His trip to Europe had opened his eyes to a lot of things, and one of those was fine wine. He fell in love with the different grape varieties, the consequences of vintage and the importance of terroir. He became intrigued with the possibilities of blending wine and how winemakers used tastings to assess their products and determine blends.

Enrique continued to follow his own muse in producing his tequila, but he started tasting more and more tequilas from his competitors. These tequila tastings led to a discovery: most tequilas fell into one of two categories. Some tequilas were artisanal, rustic and full of intense agave flavor, but they tended to be inconsistent from one bottling to the next. Other tequilas, especially those from the larger companies, were more consistent, but didn’t have the agave power or complexity to make them interesting. Enrique determined to concentrate on two goals for his tequila: he wanted to make traditional, focused agave tequila that was sophisticated and balanced rather than rustic, and he wanted to be able to do it consistently.

To achieve those goals, he taught himself to become a blender, much like a winemaker. He set aside different lots of tequila from different locations. He aged a single lot in different types of barrels. He marked lots according to what time of year they were harvested. He separated tequilas produced in his alembic stills from those produced in his column still. He tasted all those individual batches regularly and often. He experimented with mixing various lots, all the while focusing on his goals of balanced agave flavors and consistency.

“I became fascinated by the aging process and wanted to educate myself further,” Enrique said. “During my trip to Scotland and France I learned about the maturation of spirits in wood. They have been aging spirits in Europe for 400 years, so I learned a lot from that experience. But winemakers look at the maturation process differently,” he explained. “Winemakers select the type of oak they use in the maturation process depending on whether a wine needs more or less tannin or more or less oak flavor, but the winemaker’s focus is always on the base product, which is the wine. I realized that the ultimate key to high quality was the base blanco tequila itself. The flavor intensity of agave, along with the balance, would determine how I would mature each individual lot.”

Barrels had always occupied a special place in Enrique’s heart. From the time he started producing his own tequila in 1989 and for every year thereafter, he had the vision and temerity to set aside special lots of tequila for long-term aging. His La Tequileña distillery in Tequila has 5,000 barrels of high-quality tequila aging slowly. Rancho Chapingo, his stunning property in the Los Altos highlands near his hometown of Atotonilco El Alto, currently houses another 8,000 barrels of prime tequila. The barrels sit in a building, specially designed by Enrique (who happens to be an architect) to maximize aging conditions while minimizing evaporative loss.

Still, evaporative loss of spirits stored in barrels is inevitable. This loss, known as the “angel’s share,” averages four to six percent annually at Rancho Chapingo. Angels are not shy about taking their share. When you have 13,000 barrels evaporating at an annual rate of four to six percent, it amounts to a loss of 580 barrels per year, every year. It makes storing tequila for long-term aging a very expensive proposition.

Enrique, who is a barrel-chested man with an easy laugh and a glint of humor in his eyes said, “At first, I was putting my tequila in barrels just because the barrels needed liquid in them to survive. I didn’t know it would make the tequila better. As time went on, I started to like the way the tequilas tasted, so I bought some more barrels and stored more tequila. After that, things just got away from me. Before I knew it, I had thousands of barrels full of aged tequila. I figured I better start producing tequila from this stock before it all evaporated.”

Enrique was instrumental in working with the CRT to establish how truly aged tequilas would be designated. He wanted the harvest date of the agaves used for that tequila to appear on the front of the bottle. Through his efforts, a change in the extra-añejo Tequila Norm was added to require that extended-aged tequilas have the age of the tequila, at the time of bottling, printed on the front label to certify the true age of the tequila. If this element is missing, then the tequila has no valid age statement and has not been certified by the CRT, no matter the claims in the literature.

So, seven patient years after the CRT created the Extra Añejo class—seven years of struggling and negotiating with the CRT over how to verify long-term aged tequilas, Enrique Fonseca has released his first Extra Añejo tequilas. The brand is called Fuenteseca Extra Añejo Reserva and is composed of six amazingly distinctive tequilas. The tequilas are presented by age: 7, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21 years old. These age claims are documented and guaranteed by the CRT. Only 1,000 numbered bottles of each tequila have been produced.

Enrique Fonseca is unique in the tequila industry. His family has more than 100 years of experience in agave cultivation. He has one of the largest private agave holdings in Jalisco and possesses the largest collection of long-term aged tequilas in the industry. For 35 years Enrique Fonseca toiled at his craft. He taught himself the art of distillation until he is now considered one of the foremost Master Distillers of tequila in all of Mexico. He had the foresight to age individual lots of tequila and he tasted them over and over until he is now, undoubtedly, a Master Blender. His Purasangre, Lapis, and Arte NOM Añejo brands are formidable examples of delicious, intense tequilas with a hard core of agave flavor, an air of sophistication and exemplary balance, especially given their reasonable price points.

Now with the release of his Fuenteseca Extra Añejo Reservas, all this experience and passion has culminated in the ultimate expression of his abilities. The Fuenteseca Reservas genuinely command comparison with the other truly great spirits of the world. These are very special tequilas made by a very special man.

When Enrique Fonseca ends an evening at his beloved Rancho Chapingo, he finishes it by sipping one of his Fuenteseca Extra Añejo Reservas. He gazes into the black, late-night sky glittering with sparkling stars. There is a distant, muffled sound that he can barely make out, the sound of exultation and bliss—the sound of angels gleefully partaking of their share.