Come-clean time: I study like a madman, just so I’ll feel like I know what I’m talking about when I pop off about something, in beer, wine, or spirits. And I’ve most of a lifetime spent in studying Whiskeys, Vodka, Gin, Rum…but not Tequila. Personal tastes absolutely DO enter in when we’re talking about dedication to a subject and, although I do love Tequila, it is solidly #5 on this list of five categories we’re doing in this series.
Leopoldo Solis at Work
That said, as in all these categories – and in everything I write for this blog – my approach is that of an Average American drinker: does it taste good? I try hard not to get bogged down in the stylistic minutiae of beer, wine, and booze. If your Barleywine isn’t aged as long or in the right style barrels as the original Brit progenitors, I don’t care. Does It Taste Good? Will it represent a wise use of your money? Will you derive pleasure from drinking it? Those are my questions. For real, hard-core information about Tequila in all its forms, I’m going to refer you to the world’s premier Tequila website, SiembraAzul, and its rock-star contributor, Leopoldo Solis, universally recognized as the world’s greatest Tequila authority. It’s a resource I use constantly and it’s in English. Leopoldo is a real Tequila expert. I’m a guy who sips shots and talks baseball. It bears noting, here, that Tequila is undergoing a rather significant wave of Price Creep, these days. It’s become fashionable among young jet-setters, not only here but in Europe, and the market drives the price. It’s become difficult to find great !!! for little $$$, so this category is small and getting smaller. Sad, but, hey, that’s free enterprise and the irony of the term “Free Enterprise” being anything but free seems to be lost on almost everybody. 
NOTE: There were some samples I received for this Fall Round-Up that were clearly not in the category of “Value Spirits” and are not included here. Examples are the Diplomatico Rums and Casa Noble Tequilas, all of which will be given their own stand-alone reviews next week, as ALL were far too wonderful for me to simply omit. The guidelines given of this tasting were all the clear spirits – Gin, Tequila, Vodka and Rum (okay, they’re not all clear, all the time) coming in at $30-ish and Whiskeys that retail for under $40…ish. Some of the folks who submitted missed that, which was probably because I didn’t make it clear. In this whole tasting, there were exactly FIVE bottles that I just cannot review or recommend, a rather astoundingly small percentage, in my experience. So, here they are…the Best Tequila Bargains I’ve found in 2014… 
The Tequilas: Cactus with NONE of the Thorns
EL JIMADOR TEQUILA BLANCO
Style: Blanco About $22 Rating: “Best Booze Buy“
El Jimador is named for the field hands who harvest the agave used in its production and it tastes as earthy and rustic – and fresh and crisp and natural as its name. The hallmark grassiness you expect from a fine Lowlamnds Tequila is here in spades, graced by lovely, uber-fresh citrus peel and pepper notes. It’s assertive enough to work as a sipper and lights up any drink you mix it in, stubbornly refusing to get lost under the volleys of fruit juices and other mixers. This is a beautiful little bottle of cactus-y goodness and the go-to Tequila for bartenders everywhere.
TEQUILA ESPOLÓN BLANCO
Style: Blanco About $23 Rating: “Exceptional“
Espolón is also 100% agave, from the Mexican Highlands, is the work of Master Distiller Cirilo Oropeza, a genuine legend in the world of Tequila, who coaxes out every molecule of the agave freshness, clear fruit flavors, mild spices, and white pepper that the cactus can supply. It’s wildly earthy, brilliantly recalling the rugged landscapes of its origins and delivers a glorious complexity, with grace notes of wildflowers, grilled fruits, and eucalyptus in the background. It’s wonderfully intense and immediate, taking over your palate instantly but finishing gracefully. This is my second favorite sipping Tequila and an absolutely howlin’ bargain.
TRES AGAVES TEQUILA BLANCO
Style: Blanco About $28 Rating: “Best Booze Buy“
Unlike many Blancos, which are barreled in oak because their makers think it’s necessary to add interest and value, Tres Agaves – a spin-off brand of the legendary restaurant of the same name – dispenses with the artifice and gets down to the core issue: 100% agave and how that tastes. Answer: pretty effin’ wonderful. Tres is BIG, a whoppin’ mouthful of fresh cactus pepper and exotic spices and cucumber-ish vegetal notes. It’s relentlessly crisp and refreshing and makes an absolutely stunning Margarita, melding with the fruitiness of the drink without getting lost. This is my choice for a warm-weather sipper: some ice, twist of lime, Tres Agaves, BOOM. Done. What more do you need?
PARTIDA TEQUILA BLANCO
Style: Blanco About $35 Rating: “Best Booze Buy“
This Partida actually did not qualify under my price guidelines but it absolutely does qualify in terms of the venerable concept of QPR – Quality to Price Ratio. Call it the jauntier “Bang For Buck“, if you like but it means the same: getting a lot more than you paid for. Partida Blanco is the precise opposite of the Tres Agaves: a Tequila all about grace and elegance and balance and the Wow Factor. It easily stacks up with Fortaleza and Herradura Silver and Gran Patron Platinum and the newer brands that are making splashes with Tequila Trendies. Chris Null, writing for drinkhacker.com, says this Partida is “…among the best Tequilas I’ve tasted” and I have to echo that sentiment, after experiencing the fresh, tangy, seamless pleasure of that mouthful of grassy, citrusy, peppery, complex nectar. The fact that it’s only $36 makes it a mind-boggling bargain and demands its inclusion here. So, should you pop for the extra $12 – $14 and buy the Partida over the Espolón, the Tres Agaves, or the El Jimador? It depends on what you want. If you’re after a great mixer, don’t. Partida will lay back a tad more than the others. But for sipping, my vote would be Yes and my $$$ would expand enough to choose this brilliant Blanco for the pure, old fashioned, hedonistic pleasure of it.
TAPATIO TEQUILA BLANCO
Style: Blanco About $30 Rating: “Exceptional“
For decades, Tapatio was a rumor, here. It wasn’t exported and the Mexicans seemed to be having a lot of fun with it and not sharing. Now, it’s here and…lucky us. Tapatio is a sort of “break the mold” Blanco. It shows aggressive notes of licorice, lemongrass, white pepper, burnt sugar, hay, vanilla, faint mintiness, and a lovely, almost smoky vegetal suggestion, like a tiny bite of grilled celery. At $30, it might appear that Tapatio, too, violates the price limits but this is actually a full 1 Liter bottle, so the comparative price with the others, all 750ML, is…$22.50, a terrific value and a steal for what’s in your glass. It mixes better than grain Vodka but retains enough Tequila character that you will, by Golly, know it’s there in your cocktails. Just a tremendous value!
The Pour Fool 
I was wondering if you ever considered changing the structure of
your blog? Its very well written; I love what youve got
to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with
it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only
having 1 or 2 images. Maybe you could space it out better?
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Tim: Thanks for reading and thanks for the feedback…but, no, I haven’t considered changing the structure of the blog. I get near-constant offers in my email from people and companies wanting to “add content”. Very little of what they insist would “improve” The Pour Fool has ANY relevance to what this blog is about. So far, I’ve had offers to add content dealing with creative mothering (NOT kidding), runners’ health, general health, what amounts to a running disclaimer in the form of sidebars written by alcoholics who tell of their experiences with out-of-control drinking, a “Miss Manners” knock-off, an automotive blog, a political blog that was pitched to me as a way to keep up with legislation dealing with liquor sales issues, a sports blog, and individual contributors who have offered to add – among MANY other things – features on world hunger, women’s basketball, woodworking, chocolate reviews, coffee reviews (“…as you know, Mr. Body, beer and coffee are both brewed!“), body-building, marathoning, gun advocacy, anti-gun advocacy, both conservative and liberal political commentary, lacrosse coverage, TEA reviews, KOMBUCHA reviews, and – my favorite – a fake blog presented as written by Jim Harbaugh.
The Harbaugh thing was the only one I seriously considered, mostly because it was really funny, but that could be because I think Harbaugh is a dip-shit and everything about him cracks me up, especially his habit of losing to my Seahawks. But the POINT of The Pour Fool is adult beverages. Period. And the author of it is me…just me, for better or for worse. Yes, the blog is spacious and not crammed with graphics – completely on purpose. As much as I use and, for the most part, enjoy Facebook and the baffling Thing Which Is Twitter, their clutter and constant intrusion into the user experience revolts me. Absolutely makes me want to hurl. I aim The Pour Fool at people with attention spans; those who don’t have to be wheedled into that connection you mentioned but want to read and to THINK about what they read. I get my share of people who are just knuckleheads and want to mix it up, confront, and snark about anything, just to entertain themselves, and my responses are direct, pointed, and not very nice…if I allow them to appear at all. I LOVE IT when somebody disagrees with me and has a rational argument to back up their dissenting opinion. LOVE that. But I have ZERO patience with trolls who have nothing to add but, “You’re a f__king idiot! You suck! You left out ______ from __________ brewery/winery/distillery,so you obviously know nothing!!” That shit will NOT appear here.
The degree of contact you have with The Pour Fool is a two-way street. I try – really hard! – to be entertaining as well as informative with what I write and even those who call me an idiot rarely question my passion for the subjects. But I’m HALF the little social compact. YOU are the other half and your degree of participation and connection depends on how focused you are on the subjects. It will rarely take more than seven or eight minutes to read any post from start to finish. For those stuck in and wallowing in The Twitter Age, that’s too much of a challenge…to which I can only say…
Good
. Those folks have twitter and reddit and other sites that cater to short attention spans. The rest of us have blogs like The Pour Fool, and I have NO desire at all to change anything, even if I eventually change platforms. I appreciate your taking time to read but this, as the kids often say, Is What It Is.
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