Agaves planted in certain areas and elevations make different products even when distilled identically and made into blancos or even repos. Most of what is unique about that is lost when aged in too much oak. I just prefer less oak on my Tequila, more on whiskey or brandy.
I just figure why bother with a proxy, see Nick Kron's post above featuring Campo Azul, which is decent Tequila, except they use autoclave. They are even bottling that extra anejo (3+ years in barrel) that way to make whiskey drinkers take notice, wax seal, LOLZ, so stupid. Same thing is happening with Cognac and Armagnac, they are being marketed to appeal to American drinkers of American whiskey, using bottle shapes that are typically used for whiskey.
It's the opposite of Tequila in Cognac and Armagnac: the grapes used to make those brandies generally make shitty wine. Ugni blanc (in Italy, trebbiano) is a very neutral high acid grape that mostly makes unremarkable wines. But it makes lovely spirits when distilled lovingly and *when aged correctly in oak.*
There's a new Cognac, Baardseth, which is supposedly good stuff. It's being bottled for and imported by an American importer, I can't recall which. Anyway, no one will me which Cognac house is supplying the brandy. They (whoever is labeling and importing) literally don't want anyone to know. The reason for this could easily be (I am not in any way suggesting it is in this case) that the barrels being sold to the American importer are barrels that the Cognac house rejected for its own Cognac brand, and was going to sell off to some other bottler in France to be bottled and sold as simply "Brandy."
It happens in all spirit categories involving oak barrels: some are better than others. For example, Weller 12 year whiskey is just Pappy barrels that the master decided weren't quite good enough for the Pappy 12 year label. Or, put another way, the Pappy barrels are just a tiny little bit better than the Weller 12 barrels. The average drinker would never detect the difference, but they will pay WAY more for the Pappy label. I remember asking the brand ambassador about this years ago (I was to teach a bourbon class and the ambassador wanted to be a part of it) and getting no reply. They literally weren't allowed to tell anyone. Maybe that has changed since I left bartending.
It's the one thing I hate about this business I am in, the secrecy, and why I prefer European wine, where secrets are harder to keep, because everything is tested by the government at the appellation level: AOC, DO, DOC, DOCG, &c.
Marketing in booze is fierce, and effective, because the producers really don't want you to know anything about these mass marketed and huge production spirits. Nearly all big name booze producers are owned by multi-national conglomerates. Their shareholders want ROI.
tastetequila.com
