Felipe's Way: A look into G4 Tequila

Here used to be a cattle farm that belonged to the grandfather of the Ingeniero Felipe and between the cattle there was one bull with a slight curve back so the nickname of that bull became Toro Pando or Toro Pandillo, became the favorite bull of the grandfather, he changed the name of the farm to Rancho El Pandillo and we built the distillery here and that's why we have Distilleria El Pandillo. So here for example we have the Tajona, the one that you can see on the entrance of the factory, this is from 1910, was the first attempt of the Camarena family to make tequila but it was during Mexican Revolution so it was burned down to ashes and that same Tajona that we have there survived the war and it's been passed by to the first male born of every generation so that's why we have it here. So the main point here is to keep the soul of how tequila was done 100 years ago with the same Tajona, with the same stone-made ovens, with a wood fermentation in some part of the process as well and the idea is to keep the tradition in a bottle, like to keep the flavor, to keep in making some innovations. The boss says that everyone knows that he loves to innovate so he innovates trying to keep the soul of what tequila was done 100 years ago with every step of the process. Do something different than the other people and automatically you're crazy, then I was crazy. We have a unique Felipe sign or Frankenstein itself that the boss built out of junkyard, that's why the nickname of Felipe sign, which gives us now about a 97% efficiency of sugar extraction out of the fibers. The extraction is so much more efficient compared with the stone. Then it was just, I was just thinking it should be a better way to do this, to make the extraction. It was an experiment. I got the cylinder from a junkyard from Harry Machinery. It used to be a cylinder from an old compactor. The access is coming from a train wagon and even the bearings are coming from a junkyard from trailers, but it worked. In Canelo Felipe, he's a civil engineer so he used a three generation experience that he has of tequila producers plus the civil engineering to design the factory to have certain inclination that almost everything rolls down by gravity, so give us a really way more efficient energy use wise and also a low electrical consumption and make us one of the greenest distilleries there so far in the way that we have solar panels as well and we reuse most of the water that we dispose. The idea is to use as much as possible gravity, then as a result we are using those a small amount of pumps in order to pump the tequila once it's finished from there to the tanks so help us so much to avoid pumping pumping pumping everything everywhere. So in this case we have the condensation tanks where we cool down the the gases in order to make it to condensate the liquid again and this product this water never touches the product at all it just touches the copper coils that is from the outside so this water can is still clean but it's hot so we have to to cool it down with a aqueduct that we build in order to avoid to have extra energy to cool down the water again and reduce it so we just cool it down naturally with a open air aqueduct and whenever it's cooled down in a normal temperature we we pump it back to the to the artificial dam with some fishes over there with our own ecosystem so it can be reused by mother nature and we can be absorbed to the underground banks water banks. We are trying to to be as much friendly with nature with our environment. I refuse to let any single drop of water leave in the property because once it's leaving the property it will be contaminated immediately. We are planting trees all around trying to trying to be friendly with the with the nature. It's good and at the same time believe me it's not more expensive save you a lot of money taking care of your environment. So we have two stone oven 100 stone ovens and we have a three day three days of cooking process so the first 24 hours we inject steam and the only differentiation that we have with other companies that we inject the steam from the bottom and from the upper part. Most of the companies they only do it by bottom so we use both sides in order to have more even cooking agave at the end of the process and for those 24 hours of the first 24 hours of the three days three hours that we cooked of the process we shut down the steam and we let it condensate everything that condensates we call it bitter honey and we dispose of it. Then from the remaining 21 hours that we still cooking it we condense whatever condensates over there we use it as an oven honey and we can make tequila out of it. One day of rest with a closed oven and the third day we open it and then we can start using the product. I do believe it is more important the quality of your water than the quality of your agave. You can have the best agave possible but bad water you will never get a high quality product should be both things together. We have three water sources we have rainwater we have spring water and we have deep well water. Each one of these waters has different minerals different ph just using one water doing precisely the same but using this water and using the other water or the other water we will have different profiles and again if we are have a combination from this tequila made with this water with this water just make combination and you will have a different profile same quality different profile so every single change with the combination of waters will change profile and of course we cannot produce the same profile again and again and again it's not a kitchen recipe there is many factors the ph from the agave it is different or not uh how's the level of maturity of your agave that will make you some change. I cannot give you the same the same precise profile from this lot than from the next one or from the last one it will be small changes but it will be. The boss is always improving and experimenting in everything. We started small but eventually we started because of Sean because of the team in the United States growing growing growing growing and eventually we are growing exponentially then yes we are happy yeah this is a huge uh let's call a shout out for all the fans because thanks to you guys we are we are pushing us to to always improve to produce more now we have a double shift that we double our production already we just doubling in the chief we are getting a new fermentation tanks new uh new ovens in order to be able to match the requirements to be able to be in all the U.S. in all the states but all this takes a process we try to do it like slow in order to be sure that we keep the quality that we are known for we need more space then in this moment we are in process to grow to grow to grow equipment ovens more more fermentation tanks more of the seals I think we will be able to produce this year between a hundred thousand liters so close and next year we should be able to produce one and a half million liters it's going to be new for example like the new cellar is going to be four or five times bigger than the one that we have right now with a tasting room going to have a view to the new cellar so you're taking you're going to have a wide view to our aging processes so inside it I never thought that we should be in the place we are now in the market with the brands we're happy I am a happy man