The tequila trend: charting the rise of a new drinks bore
Words: Ed Cumming
Every drink has its bores. Beer has long had its CAMRA fanatics, with Tolkien beards and strong views on cellars. They have been joined by the new-wave craft beer hipsters with neater beards, roaming Hackney in limited-edition trainers for limited-edition bottles from the USA. Then there’s wine, the original pretentiousness-industrial complex.
As a given drink gains in popularity, a cadre of know-it-alls springs up around it. The gin craze occasioned people who had previously kept to Carling and Yellow Tail spouting off about botanicals and the merits of fishbowl glasses, ‘like they do in Spain’.
The TTT (Tiresome Tequila Type) is merely the latest addition to this dubious pantheon. In recent years, tequila has shaken off any lingering student-night-shot connotations to become the global fashion crowd’s tipple of choice. The market has been growing at more than 10% per year, and is expected to be worth $15bn annually by 2025. It is the base spirit for Soho House’s ubiquitous picante, and every celebrity worth their salt (but not on the back of their hand) is getting in on the act. George Clooney has Casamigos; Eva Longoria has Casa del Sol; the Rock has Teremana [1]; Lebron has Lobos 1707; Kendall Jenner has 818.
Why are they all at it? There’s the money, of course. There is gold in them bottles. In 2017 Clooney sold Casamigos to Diageo for $1bn, even more than his reported eight-figure paydays from hawking Nespresso. Since then, it has been said to be one of the fastest-growing spirits brands in the world.
But celebrities also flock to tequila because of what it says about them. Tequila has been cunningly positioned to tick every box. It’s a drink for partying, but not senselessly so. It is low-calorie, so the Rock can legitimately advocate hitting it between bouts of adipose-shredding gym sessions. Tequila’s mythology conjures natural imagery: deserts, cacti and growers working their alchemy under the hot sun, the Mexican dirt under their fingernails.
For non-celebrity tequila enthusiasts, these factors combine to give their drink a unique combination of desirable lifestyle qualities. Tequila is trendy but ancient. Natural, but stylishly packaged. It gets you drunk but it won’t make you fat. Drinking it, you can imagine that you are the kind of person who would be just as at home kicking back with the guys on the ranch as at a rooftop soirée in Vienna. The dream of tequila is that it can represent all things to all men: the people who drink it would like to think the same of themselves.
"The tequila guy believes he is partaking in a sacred and ancient central American ritual"
So it is a shame that it so often seems to be the same kind of man. And it is mostly men, I’m afraid. For though “tequila, fresh lime and soda, no cordial thanks” has become a unisex battlecry of the fashion week afterparty, as is so often the case it is the men who have taken things too far. While the tequila wave breaks over the world, propelled by marketing dollars and the raw celebrity of Dwayne Johnson, ‘Tequila Man’ is emerging as a distinctive cultural figure in his own right.
He is a sipper, never a shotter. Maybe with a little ice or water. He abhors margaritas and the culture around them. He is an encyclopaedia on reposados and anejos. He holds it to be self-evident that there are no edible tacos east of New York. He can identify different blue agaves at 100 metres. He went on honeymoon to Jalisco. He worries about the effect of TMA, the blight that is tearing through fields of blue agave. These people are as far from Jose Cuervo as the distillery master is from a slug of Jack Daniels on a bench in Camden Town.
For tequila man, the drink is part of a suite of lifestyle choices which, in his mind at least, are coherent. He owns some Patagonia. He listens to techno. He meditates. He listens to podcasts, but not naffly. He has nomadic tendencies. He has a good job, but not in a way that makes him wear a tie. He is hedonistic, within limits. He is no stranger to Burning Man. Aside from a long-haul flight or two per week, he is eco-conscious.
For the moment, what makes this character unique is that unlike other alcohol fans, tequila man — and his more niche cousin, mezcal chap — can dress their habit up in a semblance of virtue. The rum stan knows they are in it for their own pleasure. Whatever the natural wine guys say, the wine bore must accept they are part of a dying breed, an ancien régime figure who looks increasingly out of time in the 20th century.
"Before long, bad country pubs will be offering little specialist tequila menus"
But somewhere along the line, the tequila mob were allowed to believe that they are participating in a living part of history, largely misunderstood by the modern world. The tequila guy believes, deep down, that while we might all be at the same party, he is partaking in a sacred and ancient central American ritual. He is altogether a better kind of drinker.
No, this has nothing to do with George Clooney.
There wouldn’t be a problem if they stayed in their niche. Live and let live. But with so many millions of dollars pouring into marketing the stuff, there is no guarantee that tequila won’t start spiralling out of the specialist market and into mainstream acceptance. In the satirical HBO show Silicon Valley — which is beginning to look as much like an instruction manual as a fictional world — ultimate VC bro Russ Hanneman [2] releases a tequila called ‘Tres Comas’ (or ‘three commas’), in a gaudy nod to his billionaire status. It’s meant to be an outlandish joke, but the marketing spiel — “It’s more than a tequila: it’s a lifestyle” — could be taken directly from a tequila brand pitch deck today. In 2019, Diageo bought the rights to Tres Comas and released it for real.
There are signs that the tequila mob are coming for food, too. In 2022, there is no liquid that has not been offered up as a pairing option, and tequila is no exception. There are catadores — tequila sommeliers — who will tell you that a young tequila goes beautifully with the mineral pleasures of an oyster, or is just the thing to offset a dish of grilled octopus, regardless of whether the Pacific Ocean is in sight. They’re wrong, of course, but that doesn’t mean we can discount the threat of otherwise serious restaurants doling up tequila with your main course.
Before long, bad country pubs will be offering little specialist tequila menus, as they did with gin. There will be an exponential increase in the incidence of mariachi music. It’s not too late to stop the rise of tequila man, but this might be our last shot.
[1] Meaning, literally, ‘Spirit of the Earth’ in Polynesian — “because quality, the people, the land and legacy are what matter most,” says Johnson.
[2] “Is that beer?” asks Hanneman in one memorable scene. “No, you’re not drinking that piss. We drink my piss! Tres Comas!”
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