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How Additive-Free Tequila Changes Everything
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We sit down with tequila educator, Katie O’Donnell to unpack what “good tequila” really means, from agave fields in Jalisco to the cocktails we order without thinking twice. We talk craft versus mass production, why additive-free tequila is a transparency issue, and how to start tasting tequila without repeating your worst “gold tequila” memory.
• Katie’s path from theater and improv to bartending and tequila education
• What makes craft tequila different, including more hand touches and fewer shortcuts
• The real meaning of tequila vs 100% agave tequila
• Why additive-free tequila is trending, including how the 1% allowance can change flavor
• How agave maturity, harvest decisions, and Highlands vs Lowlands soils affect taste
• Tromba’s sustainability work, including agave fiber products and the agave rewilding project
• The biggest misconception about tequila and why “dangerous” is often misinformation
• Beginner-friendly ways to explore, including margaritas, aged tequila, and tastings with food pairings
- “That’s it for today’s brew of inspiration on Koffee Chitchat. Take what filled your cup today and pour it into someone else’s life.”
Coffee Of The Week And Welcome
SPEAKER_01Hey y'all, hey, it's your girl Paul, and we're back with another exciting episode of Coffee Chit Chat. But before we introduce our special guest, we're gonna shout out the Coffee of the Week, which is a blueberry crumble. So make sure you try one. Today's guest is Katie O'Donnell, one of the leading voices in tequila education and cocktail culture in the United States. As a tequila expert with Trumba Tequila, she kept bringing the story of craft additive-free tequila to life from the agate feels of the Mexican Highlands to the cocktails we enjoy today. Combining her hospitality expertise with a background in theater and improv, Katie makes tequila approachable, engaging, and fun for everyone. We're excited to learn more about the growing world of tequila, sustainability, and what makes a truly great cocktail experience. Welcome, Katie, to Coffee Chit Chat.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me, Paula. So
Katie’s Path Into Tequila
SPEAKER_00nice to be here.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so how did you become passionate about tequila?
SPEAKER_00So I grew up on the East Coast of the U.S. I grew up in Massachusetts and I lived in New York City for a little while. And I was doing theater and I was, you know, I was pounding the pavement, as they like to say. And I got I got a little burnt out, a little tired of that. So I moved out to Southern California to hang out with some friends and live with them for a little while. I did not like Hollywood. I did not want to be on camera. I was not, it was not my thing. So I settled into the world of bartending. Um and it was really exciting because I felt like every night I was getting ready to go for my own little individual performance, right? People would come and sit in front of me and I got to tell stories and and meet really cool people. And so I fell in love with the art of hospitality. And through that, I was blessed enough to go through a really intense education program that was seven days, oh sorry, five days a week, three hours a day for seven weeks. And I learned everything about alcoholic spirits from all over the world and the cocktails that go with them and the history, the, you know, how things originated, why they did, how they migrated, really cool information. And when it came to agave spirits and specifically tequila, I just fell head over heels. I absolutely loved the history behind it. I loved everything that it represented for the culture of Mexico. And it was really a way, a vessel of bringing culture to other parts of the world. So I started to really dig into that. And then I got a job in sales, and I was working for a couple small craft brands, and then I got the invitation to go to Guadalajara, which is the motherland of tequila. That is where that's where everything, not every tequila, but most tequilas come from there. My first trip there, I fell in love, absolutely in love with the city, more in love with the culture. And then I found the really good tequilas. And I found like the good stuff. And ever since then, that was 2017, I have not stopped going back to Guadalajara at least once a year, if not many times. Um, and just I absolutely love it. So it was the people, the culture, the storytelling, and then just the craft artisanalness of tequila that drew me in. Now I'm stuck. What do you say? Now you're stuck. Yeah, now I'm stuck with it. I love it. I wouldn't want to be stuck anywhere else.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
Craft Tequila Versus Industrial Brands
SPEAKER_01What makes craft tequila different from mass-produced brands?
SPEAKER_00So, really what the difference is is the hand touches. So the attention to detail, there's no shortcuts, there's patience involved. Um, if you look at something that's more mass-produced, it becomes more industrialized. You're using more equipment and less people. So there's less hands-on moments. Um, you're relying on systems that have been, you know, curated and you push a button and a product comes out, versus playing with the elements, understanding how the environment can change what your end product is going to be and paying attention to the spirit from start to finish. I mean, it starts out in the agave fields with the farmers and the and the hemidors, the guys who cut down the agave, all the way through the distillery, into the bottling process, and then ultimately even to the sales team. Um, you have people who are really curated and passionate and care about the story they're telling and the product that they're bringing to the rest of the world. So it's really it's really in production, but it comes down to respect for community and culture as well. So there's a big difference in there.
SPEAKER_01Love
What Additive-Free Really Means
SPEAKER_01it, love it. And why is ASD-free tequila getting so much attention right now?
SPEAKER_00So there are two different kinds of tequila for those of you who don't know. There is a tequila called tequila, and there's another side of tequila called 100% agave tequila. So if you look at tequila as just its own category, what happens there is you you only are required to use 51% of the agave sugars in your final product. So you can use other spirits, you can use other sugars, um, you can sweeten it with whatever you want and use caramel coloring, all these things, and and it's still called tequila. But if you look at the 100% agave aspect, that and the product needs to be 99% agave sugars. So very vast difference, right? Um, and even within the 100% agave, that 1% that you can have what we're calling additives or you know, flavor enhancers or or they're like stabilizers in a way, that 1% can go pretty far. And um, and people started to realize once they were in the 100% agave category and and finding these different brands that had that on the label, that they still notice, you know, this doesn't really taste like true tequila. There's some other things in there. And that started to raise awareness into the fact that that 1% can be vanilla, it can be oak extract, it can be glycerin, it can be caramel coloring. And one just think about 1% of a liter is a lot, especially if you're talking vanilla extract. Anyone who bakes or uses vanilla extract knows that a little bit goes a long way. So they have that opportunity. Yeah, they have that opportunity in 100% agave to even use those additives. And it became very clear that more of these mass-produced tequilas were utilizing that for consistency purposes and for, you know, maintaining the color, maintaining the same flavor in every bottle. Where this is an agricultural product like wine, you know, every harvest is going to taste slightly different and there's different yeasts in the air. So you kind of want those nuances to change if you are really respecting it. So I think the push for additive free comes down to transparency. The consumer today is definitely more aware of what they're consuming and they want very much to be a transparent, you know, transaction. And once they find those brands that are really clear and don't use those modifiers or additives, uh, they're they fall in love with them. So it's definitely a big topic of conversation. And there's nothing wrong with those flavors. If that's the kind of tequila you like to drink, by all means, go ahead and drink that. But there are a lot of consumers who are conscious more for transparency and having something that's true and clear and reflective of the history and culture of the drink.
SPEAKER_01Or fresh tasting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, cleaner. A lot of times we use the word clean. Yeah, a nice clean flavor.
SPEAKER_01Um, and I'm I'm not a tequila drinker, but is it sweet or is it bitter or is it like midway, like some tequilas can be sweet.
SPEAKER_00It is made from a plant which we cook the plant. So we raise the sugar content, right? We we roast these agave to bring the starches and sugars so that they almost caramelize. So those flavors will be naturally residual in the in the plant, but you also have a little bit of minerality because we use, believe it or not, tequila is only traditionally 40% alcohol and 60% water. So your water source can impart minerality into your tequila. Um, it can it can do a lot of different things to the flavor. So all tequila to me is can be sweet slightly, like that natural cooked agave flavor, mineral forward, and um yeah, it's delightful. It's it's it's just delicious. Uh honest.
SPEAKER_01It's delightful. It's delightful. Okay, okay. I didn't know. I was like, I wonder if that's like a semi-sweet or sweet um, you know, alcohol.
SPEAKER_00But I don't think I don't think it most people would call it sweet. Um, it does have hints, there can be hints of flavors of sweetness, but it is it is definitely not a like sweet, sweet beverage.
SPEAKER_01Okay,
How Farming Shapes Tequila Flavor
SPEAKER_01okay. Can you explain the connection between a gaibe foreman and uh flavor?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Totally. There is a lot, like I mentioned earlier, it's the tequila, tequila country as we call it, which is in Jalisco, it's it's the main producer of the five tequila states that produce tequila. It is like going to wine country when you're out there. You're driving through the mountains and there are these fields of agave, right? All around you, and it's just encompassing. And all of these agave take, you want them to take about six to seven years to fully mature, and that's when you can start to make tequila out of them. So the farmer is involved in the largest part of tequila's life for the most part. So the farmer can do a lot. Um, the farmer can treat their land a certain way in which the agave grow to be really strong and flavorful and be able to stand up to the tequila process. Or you can have a farmer who wants to just continuously rotate the same crop and it loses a little bit of that flavor, a little bit of that, you know, natural influence from the soil. Um, that's one part of it. And then how long you let it grow. The farmer can say, Um, I'm I want to make money tomorrow, so I'm gonna cut my tequila, I'm gonna have them harvested at four or five years. And I'm not gonna, because I don't want to wait the extra two or three years for them to mature. And that's gonna affect the flavor because those sugars have not produced enough in order to be cooked down and to translate into the liquid. So that's another huge step. Um, and there's a really cool part in the harvest of agave, um, where when you're harvesting agave, we we cut off the big arms, like they're called pencas, they like the big leaves of the agave. And you leave a little bit of that on the on the heart, or we call the pina. And that can inspire different levels of bitterness depending on how you harvest. So there's a lot of there's a lot of um flavor interaction. You'll hear some people talk about um highlands versus lowlands agave. They're grown in different soils. The highlands are more red soil and the lowlands are more clay soil. So you definitely can get differences in how the agave grow in those soils as well. So a lot of influence.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm learning a whole lot.
The Agave Rewilding Sustainability Project
SPEAKER_01What is the agave revitalized? Uh reviling. Rewilding. Rewilding. Look at me, I was like, that's rewilding project, and why does it matter?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So at tequila tromba, we are a sustainably focused company. It is very important to us that we acknowledge what we take from the planet and what we take from the earth, and and how can we offset our footprint or give back? So, in offsetting, we take our spent fibers after we make our tequila and we make straws out of them and we make like basically single-use plastics we can replace with the waste of the tequila, but these agave fibers. We take those from the agave plant and make them into these really they're they're great replacements for plastic. Um, they're biodegradable, you know, they're compostable. There, it's really, really cool project. Um, the other arm of our sustainability project is giving back to what we're taking. So we're harvesting from the land. And because it is such a popular spirit right now, there are a lot more agave farms than there used to be. And in order to do that, the farmers went out and they they took down some of the other ecosystem. They took down other trees, other agave nectar or other agave plants to make room for this blue weber agave, because you can only use one kind of plant to make tequila. So, in doing so, they are kind of taking away from the ecosystem at large. There's not as many pollinators, if you think about bats and bees that help cross-pollinate, and that's what they live off of. And that's, you know, this whole part of the system has been kind of eradicated. So the agave rewilding project that we initiated at Tromba is where we go out once a year. Our trip is in July this year. We're taking a bunch of bartenders, um, invited them down to Mexico from the United States, Canada, and Australia. They will come out with us. We will go into our conservation land that we have that's in the midst of these agave fields, and we're going to replant those trees and those agave that were taken away. So yeah. So we go, we literally give back to the land that we took from and in a way that we think will have a positive impact upon the soil. It'll have a positive impact among amongst the ecosystem at large and and really just you know, giving back to the planet Earth. It's it's really important. So that's what the agave rewild project is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that. And then they get a trip out to Mexico.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we put we put them to work though. They are gonna get their hands dirty and be digging in fast.
SPEAKER_01It's not all play, but just that they put them to work.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but it's it is a really yeah, it's a great project and it it matters a lot to a lot of people. Um, the sustainability aspect is something it's a little hard to control sometimes in bars and restaurants. So if you have a sense of of giving back, it it works through this project. That's
The Biggest Tequila Misconception
SPEAKER_00awesome.
SPEAKER_01What is the biggest misconception people have about tequila?
SPEAKER_00I think the biggest misconception is that it's dangerous. Right. Um, a lot of people, when I first started working closely with tequila, I would sit at a bar and say, Hey, can I buy you a shot of tequila? Or can I buy you a drink of tequila? Oh no, I don't touch that. I had a bad experience with that. And I'm like, okay, well, how how old were you? Oh, you know, I was 19, I was 20, you know. I was in college and I was like, did what color was the tequila? They're like, oh, it was gold. I was like, okay, so you had it, you had tequila proper. Remember when I said there's two kinds of tequila? But you've been having the the first kind of tequila, not knowing that there was a whole new universe out there of beautifully flavored, natural tequilas. So I think that misconception is that it's always going to be that gold, harsh, dangerous, bad experience. And that is completely the opposite. Once you're an educated drinker and you know what you what you're looking for, you will have literally a night and day experience to that. So that's the biggest misconception, in my opinion. The biggest way is like, oh, can you have that? Like, oh no, we broke up a long time ago. I'm like, in that spike.
SPEAKER_01No, no, I love
Where Beginners Should Start
SPEAKER_01it. And for someone new to tequila, where should they start?
SPEAKER_00So um, there's a couple different ways that you can start off. Obviously, a cocktail is a very approachable way, right? A margarita is a home run. Every time, I mean, it's my favorite too. You're gonna you're gonna ask me about my favorite drinks later. I love a margarita. So I always think that's a great gateway into understanding the flavors, you know? They're there, they're not in your face, they're they're mixed up and it's like a perfectly balanced beverage, but you start there. And then if you're gonna tip your toes into drinking tequila meat or without ice or um you want to go down that path, I usually recommend people start with an aged tequila, uh, like a reposado or an añejo, especially if you're used to drinking other spirits like bourbon and you're a little bit more familiar with the barrel aging process and what that does to a spirit. It could be a little bit more approachable for you as a new first-time consumer. Um, and then work your way into those blancos. And I would say really try to stick 100% agave so that you get the true flavor and you really do get to understand um the nuances that come behind it. So okay.
SPEAKER_01So start with a mixed drink or sort.
SPEAKER_00I would I would start there and then, you know, maybe get a little taster on the side. Or if someone, if you go to a bar or restaurant, a lot of what they're starting to do is offer tequila tastings. Uh sign up, especially if they're paired for with food and the chef is into it. Like that's an experience that will really open your eyes to to how amazing tequila can be. And that, yes, you can pair Blanco tequila with ceviche. You can take your reposado and put a little bit more like El Pastor meats to it, and then get into your dark chocolates for a yeah, right? Like you can have a really cool experience. So put yourself out there if you are interested.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's interesting. Okay.
Favorite Drinks Tommy’s Margarita And Paloma
SPEAKER_01So now we are to what's your favorite?
SPEAKER_00Okay. So, you know, I mentioned I I love I love a margarita. Um, so my favorite way to drink tequila is blanco, which is an un the unaged tequila by itself. Just room temperature and a glass. That's how I prefer to drink tequila. Now, I've been drinking tequila for many, many years. I know which brands I like that taste to taste that way. And and if those are available, that's where I'll go to. Now, the margarita for me is it's a it, I don't want to say it's a guilty pleasure. It's just so good. It's like you, if you get a really solid margarita, and my favorite is a is a style called a Tommy's margarita. So you have a Cadillac that has orange liqueur, Gram Marnier in that. You can have a regular margarita that might have triple sack or like another kind of like lower end orange liqueur, or you can go with Tommy's margarita, which was created at Tommy's uh Mexican bar up in San Francisco. Um, and it is very clean cocktail. It is just lime juice, agave nectar, and tequila. That to me is it's perfect. It's like a daiquiri, but for tequila. It's so good. Um that's where that's where I like I like to sit. I mean, if we're gonna go down that a little farther, the Paloma is probably my next favorite, which is actually the official cocktail of the country of Mexico, their national cocktail. And it is, yeah, in Mexico, usually it is a uh Mexican squirt and tequila over ice with a little bit of lime juice, maybe some orange juice and soda water if you want to get a little cleaner. But here in the States, I like to make it with fresh grapefruit juice, tequila, and soda water, a little bit of agave nectar, and it's perfect.
SPEAKER_01Okay, love it. So I'm gonna I'm gonna do like a little bonus uh question for you.
A Dream Tequila With Anthony Bourdain
SPEAKER_01If you can enjoy a tequila cocktail with anyone, living or historical, who would it be and what would you order?
SPEAKER_00So um I would pick Anthony Bourdain. Okay. Um, I miss him dearly. I really grew up appreciating travel and experiencing cultures and food because of him. And I just like that would be that would be the moment to have. I would love to be um at an old so like saloon-style bar in Guadalajara and just pick a great tequila off the back bar, blanco, throw it into a margarita, and sit there with Anthony and and just learn and just enjoy life.
SPEAKER_01He I mean, I love to listen to his when he would go and especially like some of the food. I'm like, oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00Right? Yeah. I mean, he's incredible, he's an incredible storyteller, and that's something that I think the spirits industry, you know, we we gravitate towards. And especially me, myself having a theater theater background. I I just appreciate, you know, telling people exactly what you're experiencing in a way that's so beautiful to listen to and inspires you to go out and enjoy that experience yourself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I that's a good pick. I love that. Okay, thanks.
How To Follow And Closing Quote
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, we surely appreciate you taking time at your busy schedule when you're not making sure that tequila is right to chat with Coffee Chit Chat and let our uh listeners know how to follow you.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So yeah, yeah, learn some more. So tequila tromba, our brand, is um at tequila tromba.com is our website. I'm sorry, tequila.com is our website at tequila tromba is our Instagram, and then my personal Instagram is at Katie. My name is K-A-T-Y, and then it's in Jalisco. So if you think like I just dream like that TV show Emily in Paris, right? She's like out there living her dream in Paris. And so, like, if I make my Instagram handle Katie and Jalisco, I can go live my dream in Jalisco. I love it.
SPEAKER_01I love their lovely personality.
SPEAKER_00Right? It's fun. So yeah, definitely follow us to Gila Tromba and Katie and Jalisco. Um, it's been it's been fantastic to chat with you. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01Oh, thank you. And Tit Chatters, um, we're gonna put all of that information on our social media. Tit Chatters, the quote of the week. I am lucky that whatever fear I have inside me, my desire to win is always stronger. And that is by Serena Williams. Tune in next week for another exciting episode of Call for Tit Chat.
