Casa Noble Distillery Tour
A tour of the Casa Noble distillery, where they also have a hotel with rooms shaped like tequila barrels!
As we drive through the typically ramshackle little Mexican town of La Cofradia, about an hour southeast of Tequila, we pass what seems to be a cattle market. Beyond here a field of blue agave plants guides us towards the gates of the distillery where some of the finest tequila in Jalisco is made, Casa Noble.
Marketing Director David Yan explains a little about the lovely shady setting that we’re in.
‘These are 150-year-old mango trees that we’re standing under. It’s so green here because we have three wells on the property, which has been here since the 1700s. So we have a consistent source of good water. The streams come down from the Tequila Volcano, and because of all the greenery there’s a lot of airborne yeast, which is what we use. This makes us a little unusual.
‘All our agave is grown on our own estate which is about 150 kilometers [93 miles] from here. We have 650 hectares [1606 acres] up in the mountains at just under 6000’ [1830 meters] with 100% volcanic soil. We’re very proud of the fact that we were the first distillery in Mexico to be certified organic, and that’s a big part of what we believe. It’s all about sustainability. We were the first brand to achieve both crop and process certified.
‘One of the factors that’s important to us is patience. We don’t cut our agave before cooking, we cook them whole, which means we have to cook them longer and slower to give us our preferred flavor profile. We cook them for 38 hours in stone ovens, which give more vegetal and less sugar notes.’
They then use a screwmill to squeeze the juice out of the cooked agave, on its journey towards becoming tequila. For fermentation they add no yeast at all, relying 100% on the natural airborne yeast to do its work.
‘This takes longer,’ David says, ‘typically 4-5 days, but it puts more complexity into the flavor of the tequila. We use alembic pot stills for distillation. The rate you heat it up is so important. We discard the heads and tails. We call the still The Destroyer!
‘The first distillation is to about 24% ABV and it then goes into smaller stills for a second distillation, which produces 55% ABV. This is Rectified Ordinario. The third distillation is for 12.5 hours and produces 57% ABV. We were the first to put triple-distilled on our label about 20 years ago. And only now do we call it tequila. Then we have to decide whether to bottle it or age it.’
For their aged tequilas they only use French oak barrels, because they found bourbon barrels competed with the complexities of the tequila. The wood comes from the Forest of Tronçais in central France.
‘We leave the staves in the forest for a year. We then leave them two more years to dry and season. We have two coopers, one in Cognac and one in Bordeaux. Our oak barrels cost $1000-$5000 depending on the size, and you can buy American oak barrels for $180, which is what most people do.’
Casa Noble Distillery Tour: The Compost!
Behind the distillery David shows us something of which they are all clearly very proud: their compost.
‘We manage our waste batch by batch. Almost 90% of the volume in the tequila-making process is pumped out as waste. And we’re proud that we were the first distillery to produce 100% agave compost. We have composting material spread over four complete fields, each about the size of a football field. They’re lined with concrete so nothing gets into the earth. So once it biodegrades, it’s 100% agave fertilizer. And we were the first so we’re very proud.’
David then invites us to join him in a tasting, to see how all this attention to detail pays off in the final products.
‘This is where Casa Noble becomes tangible. It’s the moment of truth! In order to taste you must first learn how to kiss tequila. Put some blanco on your lips to get them ready, and let them dry. Then put some on the gums, and then on the top of the tongue. Now you are ready to taste tequila!’
By this time we were certainly ready to taste tequila. First up is their blanco, called Crystal, which is their most awarded tequila. On the nose it’s very smooth, and herbal. On the palate the taste is very clean, still herbal, a gentle-tasting tequila, unusual for a blanco. David tells us it’s their best-selling tequila in the USA and works great in their own signature recipe for an organic margarita.
Next we try their reposado, which is aged for exactly 364 days. One more day and it would become an añejo tequila. The nose is more complex than the blanco, as you would expect. It’s still herbal but there’s now citrus in there too. That also comes through on the palate, with an unexpected fieriness on the finish.
The añejo we try next has spent two years in their French oak barrels, which have given it a more golden color. The smell and the taste are more complex yet again, with hints of fruitiness, apple, quince, vanilla, nuts, and even chocolate all swirling around in there.
David then ups the ante with a triple-distilled organic single-batch joven, which is a massive 55% ABV. Jovens are often cheap blended tequilas, designed for producing cheap cocktails. Not this one, though, as David explains.
‘It took about eight months to develop the recipe, which we did with a friend of Pepe, our distiller, who was a bourbon-maker. It’s got a straw color and is aged for only six weeks in our smallest 114-litre barrels for maximum contact with the wood so it gains some color. We sell it in some US states.’
As if that one wasn’t special enough, David produces with a flourish the most expensive tequila I’ve ever tasted.
‘This is an 8-year-old, part of a series we started twenty years ago. It’s aged in 114-litre barrels for 8 years and bottled at 41.5%. It’s one of a fun series of experiments we’ve been doing. We have sauternes barrels, cabernet sauvignon barrels, barrels from Opus One in Napa Valley, and others. On this one we had a 50% angels’ share. It went from 57 to 67% ABV. It’s a lovely dark golden color. It sells for $1500, and this one is already pre-sold. It sold out in two months. The nose is very complex. It’s got flowers, fruit, nuts, spices, agave, minerals, and overall a kind of funkiness about it. The taste is wonderfully smooth, it’s warm, it’s velvet, and all those aromas are also in the taste. It’s a versatile tequila, which you could pair with cheese, chocolate, even meat.’
At the end of the tasting we get to meet the man who makes the magic happen, the founder and Maestro Tequilero, José ‘Pepe’ Hermosillo. Pepe started the business in 1997 when he inherited $3000 from his father, who had been a tequila maker for several generations. Pepe decided to continue the family tradition.
‘Our first production was ten cases,’ he says, ‘and so we had a party and drank all ten cases. It wasn’t good for business but it was a great party!’
Casa Noble Distillery Tour: More Information
Something unusual about the distillery is that you can also stay there. They have some private villas and also rooms that look like tequila barrels scattered around the distillery grounds. Touring the Casa Noble distillery, known like the town as La Cofradia, is definitely different! For more information visit the websites for Casa Noble and the La Cofradia tequila distillery hotel.
If you can’t visit the distillery you can find some of their really classy tequilas at Caskers and at Master of Malt.