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Friday, April 9, 2010
A sip of Cruz tequila with Pep Katcher
Joseph “Pep” Katcher is el presidente of Cruz tequila, an ultra-premium brand that’s only been in the Austin market for about a year but has made significant inroads in that short time, pouring in some 50 locations around town. It’s also won at least eight international awards. Not bad for something that started out with a backyard barbecue with a bunch of guys with zero distilling experience who had some rotgut and sniffed, “We could make better tequila than this.”
The 100 percent blue agave is grown in the highlands of Jalisco, where the distillery also is. (The company’s home is Scottsdale, AZ.) Katcher, who was in town Thursday and Friday for a slew of events, says the aim was to produce “a lighter, softer, sweeter taste profile. This is what I should tequila should taste like. There’s no quirky tag line, no funny bottle. We just say ‘Taste it.’ We call it the ‘holy cow’ factor.”
The twice-distilled reposado, the flagship, is aged for some five months in oak barrels for a nutty, buttery nose and mouth feel, with light citrus notes and no burn. That one won Cruz a gold medal in the 2009 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. The blanco, more of a mixing tequila, doesn’t have the peppery burn that you get from a lot of lesser products.
Lucky us, Cruz is only available so far in Arizona, Texas and Colorado and they’re currently making 5,000-10,000-liter batches. But they’ve got room to expand and they surely will.
The company also gets eco-cred points for using all recycled glass for their distinctive, antique-y-looking bottles, and for giving seven percent or more of its profits to charity.
I’m just sayin’: If you haven’t had it, it’s pretty darn fantastic tequila.
