Patron is one of the biggest names in tequila and seems to have been around forever. It’s surprising to discover, then, that in 2019 it will only be celebrating its 30th anniversary – a baby compared to some tequila distilleries.
The company was founded in 1989 when two business entrepreneurs, John Paul Dejoria and Martin Crowley, fell in love with tequila and decided to make the best tequila possible. They succeeded, and their company, Patron (‘the good boss’), became the first to make an ultra-premium tequila, a category which previously didn’t exist.
Back then it was rare for any exported tequila to be made from 100% blue agave plants. The good stuff that was produced tended to stay in Mexico, and the rougher stuff was exported. This gave tequila a bad rep in the spirits world at the time, especially in the USA where most of the exports went. Patron changed all that, though it took a long time for drinkers to realize that tequila could be as sophisticated and complex as any other spirit.
Although it’s a relatively new company, Patron likes to use traditional methods. One of these is to crush the cooked agave using the tahona process, which only a handful of distilleries do. The tahona is a large circular piece of volcanic stone which is turned like a millstone and separates the juice from the fibre before fermentation. Patron has ten tahona pits in five separate parts of their huge distillery, and they are working constantly in what is a labour-intensive process.
What makes Patron unusual, though, is that as well as the tahona process they also use the more modern roller mill process to separate juice and fibre from some of the blue agave plants. Their original Patron Silver is a blend of tequilas from the two processes, although their Roca Patron, introduced in 2014, is a more artisanal tequila which uses only the ancient tahona process.
Some of their 1600 employees work at the Hacienda, and as we walk round we see some of the yellow American ex-school buses which bring in the workers for their different shifts, and take them home again. I think back to the bottling plant where some of the 400 people were clearly enjoying themselves, listening to music, gossiping, laughing, as they put the labels on the bottles by hand and did other jobs that could be done by machine. Good for Patron, for keeping the machines out and the people in work, and it’s also nice to know that by buying Patron Silver you’re helping the economy of this small town in Jalisco.
