Sergio Vivanco

"I'm very proud to be Mexican. I love my people, I love my country, and we love what we are doing. We do our part with passion, with honesty, with everything that we can with our hands. We are people from the field. We are rancheros, and we feel proud of this. It's our task." – Sergio Vivanco

For five generations, the Vivanco family has been growing agave in Arandas, in the Jalisco highland plateau, though they didn't establish their own destilería until 1994. Registered as NOM 1414, they soon launched their own family label, Viva México Tequila. The distillery built an enviable reputation, and the family took on contracts for brands seeking purity, quality, and transparency.

Now co-owner and one of four master distillers, Sergio Vivanco has become one of the most respected figures in the tequila industry. In this episode, tequila educator and advocate Marissa Paragano sits down with Sergio to taste five expressions from Viva México and Plantador, discussing the production details that make NOM 1414 tequilas distinct, Sergio's five-step tasting method, and how a culture of multi-generational craftsmanship delivers excellent results.

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Transcript

Introduction

Sergio Vivanco 0:03

I'm very proud to be Mexican. I love my people, and I love my country, and we love what we are doing. We make our part doing this with passion, with honesty, with everything we can in our hands. This family business is five generations growing agave, so we are people from the field. We are rancheros and we feel proud of this. It's it's our task.

Harmon Skurnik 0:32

Hey, this is Harmon Skurnik, and welcome to another episode of Skurnik Unfiltered. And today we have an interview with Sergio Vivanco. I'm sitting now with Justin Briggs, who is our portfolio manager of all things Mexico.

Justin Lane Briggs 0:48

Hey everybody.

Harmon Skurnik 0:49

Welcome back, Justin.

Justin Lane Briggs 0:50

Thank you. Thank you.

Harmon Skurnik 0:51

Today's interview is different than most in that the interviewer is not actually a Skurnik person, but is somebody who's very, very tied to the tequila world. Her name is Marissa Paragano. She's friends with the proprietor, Sergio, and did the interview, which was really terrific.

Justin Lane Briggs 1:10

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. We had her up here to our office, on the ninth floor in Manhattan. Marissa is is a friend to both myself and and Sergio and is a leading light of advocacy with integrity for tequila, and also just a really fun interviewer. So it was a really enjoyable interview, even just to sit as a fly on the wall and listen to it as it went down.

Harmon Skurnik 1:30

She has quite a following on social media, I believe.

Justin Lane Briggs 1:32

She sure does. She is is known as the @tequilaencyclopedia on Instagram and and elsewhere, and she also is the co-host of @thetequiladies, where they do a weekly interview series with different producers and figures in in agave spirits.

Harmon Skurnik 1:45

Great. So Sergio is the proprietor of a brand that we recently picked up called Viva México. I remember, Justin, when you brought samples of of this tequila to us, and I remember looking at the label and saying, how can we take serious a brand that's called Viva México? It must be some kind of... what's the story here? This must it looks like some kind of private label. And you assured me that it wasn't, and that it was the real deal, that it was a brand that was authentic and owned by this family, the Vivanco family, and that it was produced at one of your favorite NOMs, right?

Justin Lane Briggs 2:19

Yeah, correct. NOM 1414. Actually, I remember that conversation very distinctly. I remember it strikes me as one of those moments where clarity, it feels almost like a stereotype when you see it, but this is like something that is very, very true and born of place and people. It's not a mistake that the the first four letters in Viva México are the same first four letters as the family's name. The family has been one of the really significant growing and producing families of agave cultivation in the highlands and the plateau of Jalisco for five generations. The brand was started three generations ago.

Harmon Skurnik 2:48

It goes back to 1929, I believe.

Justin Lane Briggs 2:50

Yes, their actual product their agave production. Then the brand, their distillation goes back to 1990, 1993, 1993, I believe. They represent, I think, a lot of what has been one of the charms of tequila for a long time. They've been producing distillates for decades that punch far above their price point and their weight. They grow all their own agave. It's all practicing organic, it's all made very traditionally, very purely, but it's only recently come into—this entire category—it's only more recently come into such shine. And so they've long been this kind of place where you knew you could go and find this product that might not, I'll say, compete with the prices you're paying for your most expensive whiskies, but might outshine them as a quality distillate by many degrees.

Harmon Skurnik 3:29

They have quite a reputation for quality, purity, and transparency.

Justin Lane Briggs 3:33

Absolutely. Yeah. Under their work with David Suro-Piñera on the Siembra Azul label, they're one of the first people to start offering transparency on things like parcel growth of their agave, methods of farming, methods of production, with quite such detailing and technical clarity. They've mostly been famous in the US for their contract labels. They've had all these contract labels for decades. I think the first time I heard about them was almost 20 years ago now, and fell in love with their tequilas then. But they're a family brand, I didn't even know that they had a family brand for my first few years of being aware of them. Their family brand, this one, Viva México, has only been available really for the most part in Guadalajara. It's even hard to find, or was, in Mexico City. Being able to represent that, represent their family's own work and their own passion and heritage in a bottle is really, I think, about what we as a company at Skurnik are about, and direct relationships with what they're doing as a family, we're that intermediary.

Harmon Skurnik 4:21

Well, I'll say that the quality of the tequila is very, very high. And the initial skepticism was erased very quickly when we tasted the tequila together. Tell me something about sonic harmonization.

Justin Lane Briggs 4:33

Ooh, I was hoping you'd ask about that.

Harmon Skurnik 4:35

What is that all about?

Justin Lane Briggs 4:37

They're the pioneers of this method, in fact. Sonic harmonization is a fancy way of saying fermenting to music. The popular way to say it in tequila circles in Mexico is to call it the "Mozart method." Essentially, the family plays classical music very loudly to all their fermenters in the fermenting area in the fermenting rooms. Some of the producers we work with—this has expanded beyond them now, this is no longer just something unique to the Vivancos—lots of other producers have followed suit. Our label that we import directly, Santanera, does that as well.

Harmon Skurnik 5:04

So this is not that unusual.

Justin Lane Briggs 5:06

It's becoming less unusual. It's still unusual, but it's becoming less unusual. Santanera even plays music to their barrels as they rest. The logic is that the music, the rhythms of the music, the vibrations of the music, influence the way that the yeast interacts. It all stems from actually a Japanese sound artist who, back in the 1980s, did a study where he played different music and different sounds to microorganisms and watched the way that they reacted. And like things like heavy metal and noise rock and things like that would make these aggressive, shattering, high-angled, chaotic looking movement among those microorganisms. But classical music created these beautiful fractals and these geometric shapes and patterns, and they applied that same logic to their fermentation. Watching Sergio at the distillery get excited about the music's impact on the fermenters, I mean, you're standing there with him at these huge fermenters, the music is so loud that it's booming. These days he mostly plays Vivaldi, not it's not Mozart anymore. But he's playing Vivaldi, that same four letters again, V I V A. He's playing Vivaldi really loud, and you're shouting over Vivaldi, and he's like, "Look at the yeast! Watch it bounce! It's dancing!" and you're like, "Alright, dude, yes! I'm a believer right now!"

Harmon Skurnik 6:11

That's amazing.

Justin Lane Briggs 6:12

It's wonderful, yeah.

The benefits of proprietary agave fields

Harmon Skurnik 6:13

There are some winemakers who also believe in music having an impact on the wine. I'll just say that I'll take your word for it. Ha! So let's listen to Marissa's wonderful interview with Sergio Vivanco of Viva México. 

Marissa Paragano 6:31

I'm Marissa Paragano, also known as the Tequila Encyclopedia, and I'm here with a man who needs no introduction, Sergio Vivanco of Viva Mexico and NOM 1414 and a million other incredible tequila projects. And we are in the Flatiron District of Manhattan at Skurnik headquarters. How are you today?

Sergio Vivanco 6:51

I'm fine and I'm very happy to be here.

Marissa Paragano 6:54

Me too. The honor is all mine. Obviously, you've created some incredible profiles over the years, particularly Viva México. Can you tell us a little bit about that, and what started it, and what's behind the name? What's behind having your own house brand out of NOM 1414?

Sergio Vivanco 7:08

Yeah, certainly. Well, this is something new for me, to be here with a microphone in front of me, but this is a family business, and this family business is five generations growing agave. We are people from the field. We are rancheros, and we feel proud of this. And we are three generations making tequila. We are taking care of a lot of details of the tequila. The process of the tequila is very simple. It's the harvest, cooking, extraction, fermentation, distillation, and aging. But if those are the steps that you're supposed to do with tequila, what makes the good tequilas and the bad tequila? The details that you take care of since the field, and every single step. We have four master distillers. Two of them from the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, and the other two, my brother and I. It's because of the experience, and we have been taking care of the small details. If you wanna go deep in this conversation, we'll let you know some of them, not all of them. We can keep secrets.

Marissa Paragano 8:16

Some secrets, sure.

Sergio Vivanco 8:17

Yeah. But that's the way we make tequila, taking care of the small details.

Marissa Paragano 8:23

Yeah, and some of the small details, I think what makes NOM 1414 so special, is you have a variety of equipment, you have generations of experience, and then for Viva México in particular, you guys own your agaves, and that allows you to have the ultimate control of your product. Obviously, right now we've got a little bit of a dip in agave prices, and so some brands are able to find agave that they wouldn't otherwise have. However, in a few years, when the prices go back up, you guys still have access to the best agaves because you own them. So, do you want to tell us a little bit about what makes you different, other than having the agaves? What makes you different in terms of how you produce, and your point of view on making tequila?

Sergio Vivanco 9:04

That's a very interesting point. We grow plants over a long period of time. We are trying to protect ourselves because we have a lot of variations in the price of the agave and the amount of the agave that is available. I if you have your own fields of agave, you are protected. But if you want to make a good orange juice, you have to have good oranges. And that's the same in the agave. But if I'm going to sell a field of agave to the big companies, I sell all my plants of the agave. The ones that are very mature and the ones that are not. And when we are picking our agave, our crew of jimadores, they pick only the mature, the very mature. And if the next plant is not mature yet, they leave them there to get mature. We are picking only the good piñas of agave that they are transported to the patios, and then we are going to cook them. But they are completely mature, so everything starts there. And also, it all depends on the crew of jimadores. They strip down the leaves for the profile of the tequila. If I am going to sell the agave to a big company, I'm not gonna say the name, and they ask for them to be completely shaven, I sell the agave to them completely shaven. And for another one that wants more viscosity, I leave one inch and a half of the leaf of the plant. For our products, most of them, we have some parts of the leaves left on the pinas of agave. That's the reason that our profiles have a very good viscosity.

Marissa Paragano 10:50

They do. And when you're talking about cutting the piñas, of course, not naming names, there are brands that have to buy by weight, so when they're buying agave, they might make decisions like shaving the piñas down so that they can pay a little less for their product.

Sergio Vivanco 11:04

That's the reason.

Marissa Paragano 11:05

Exactly. Whereas you guys have the ultimate choice because they're your agaves. If you want them a little thicker, you can have them thicker. If you want them shaved, whatever you want to do.

Sergio Vivanco 11:14

But when they are buying the agave and they ask for the piñas completely shaved.

Marissa Paragano 11:18

Red flag.

Sergio Vivanco 11:19

Yeah, it's up to them what kind of profile of they are gonna get with that kind of agave. If that agave is going to our distillery, we leave one inch or one inch and a half, or even two inches.

Fermentation, cooking, and extraction

Marissa Paragano 11:33

It brings back a good point. You own all the components of your process, and that's really important. I was at a pretty ridiculous restaurant the other day where I bought a $30 pizza. This was a pizza that was this big and it was $30. And I ended up talking to the chef and I asked him, "How is it $30?" And he said because the way that they have their tomatoes, they source them in from Italy, and their cheese is a special cheese, and their fermentation, which I want to talk about for you, they ferment their yeast for this pizza for 40 hours. So if you think about all the time and process that went into this pizza that is now a $30 pizza, I equate it to tequila. Obviously, there's steps at the beginning, but the steps at the end are equally as important. And one of the things you guys are known for is how you ferment some of your different products. We've heard about the classical music in the distillery. Do you want to talk about that and some of the different fermentation methods that you guys do that make you unique, that other brands might be copying? 

Sergio Vivanco 12:30

Well, the rest of the industry, they are trying to make the best thing. We have the knowledge and the ability to make good profiles. The knowledge and the experience is the key to make innovations and to make new things. We try them, and we try them, and when they are good, we apply them to our products.

Marissa Paragano 12:52

You get to test. You have so many brands, and when you see a brand that does something cool, you have the opportunity to say, "Is that something cool that I want to apply to a different brand? Or is that something that I maybe don't want to do again?" And so by having all that experience, five generations of experience, you uniquely have the chance to see what works and doesn't work, and what works together and what doesn't.

Sergio Vivanco 13:12

Very quick: when we start in the fields, we bring the piñas to the patio, we cut them in two, and then we take away the cogollo. The cogollo affects the final part of the production.

Marissa Paragano 13:24

Yeah.

Sergio Vivanco 13:25

And then we put it in the oven in a special way to let the steam go through. So what we want is to cook the agave in the same way, in the outside part and in inside part.

Marissa Paragano 13:39

Make it a nice and even cook.

Sergio Vivanco 13:41

Exactly. Yeah, you speak better English than I.

Marissa Paragano 13:44

Ha! I would hope I do. It's my main language. But you speak better Spanish than me.

Sergio Vivanco 13:48

I don't know. And then we have the chance to cook the agave for 22 hours, 26, 28, or 30 hours. It all depends on how much caramel you want in the taste.

Marissa Paragano 14:00

And what's the difference between a 22-hour and a 30-hour, in terms of the caramel taste?

Sergio Vivanco 14:05

If you are cooking a longer period of time, you are losing more water and you are keeping more syrup, so it's going to taste sweeter.

Marissa Paragano 14:15

Is it safe to say that the longer you cook the agave and the more time you take in that step, the sweeter your tequila could be?

Sergio Vivanco 14:24

Yes.

Marissa Paragano 14:25

So it's all about taking the right steps and taking your time to make a really solid profile, then.

Tasting Viva México Blanco

Sergio Vivanco 14:30

It's very easy to understand. If you have water with sugar and you put it over the fire, you are losing water and you're keeping the sugar there, so that liquid is going to taste sweeter. That's what happens in the ovens of cooking agave. Once we have cooked the agave, then comes the extraction. We have two ways to extract, to squeeze the agave. One of them is the tahona and the other one is the mill. In both of them we spray some hot water to separate the fiber and get the sugar. If we spray more water, the "mosto," the juice that we collect, is going to have less sugar. More water, less sugar. So if we spray less— and that's what we call Brix. We may have eight Brix, ten Brix, thirty Brix, or sixteen Brix. Sixteen Brix is more sugar and less water, so the the taste of the final product is going to be more sweet than if we add more water. 

Marissa Paragano 15:39

Okay, so this is your Blanco. Can I do the honors of pouring it?

Sergio Vivanco 15:44

Please.

Marissa Paragano 15:44

Okay. It's 10:30am, so how much tequila do you want?

Sergio Vivanco 15:47

It's five o'clock somewhere.

Marissa Paragano 15:50

Ha! So this is cool: people who know tequila, they know their NOMs, and one of the things that I always look for is what NOM makes the tequila. And whenever I see 1414, which is you guys, I know that the tequila is going to be good.

Sergio Vivanco 16:03

Yeah, this is the base. I don't know if this—sometimes I invent the English—but this is the trunk and the rest are the branches. This tequila that we are going to enjoy right now is made with champagne yeast. The agave came from a ranch that belonged to my grandfather, whose name was Manuel. And the agave was six years old. Six years old, in these times, is a very good mature agave. Because in the very old times, we grew the agave in the no-good fields. The good fields were for corn and beans, but now we have switched. Now, because of the price of the agave and the boom of tequila. So in five years, the piñas of agave are mature enough. But these ones that we made this tequila from, they are six years old. So let's taste them. Cheers.

Marissa Paragano 17:00

Wow, there's a lot of agave on the nose. I know that I'm biased here, but there's just something about a 1414 Blanco that just love.

Sergio Vivanco 17:08

The presence of the agave is there, the cooked agave and the raw agave. And also, you may guess that this tequila was made in a brick oven.

Marissa Paragano 17:18

Yeah.

Sergio Vivanco 17:18

Yeah, it doesn't have a metallic taste.

Sergio’s 5 steps for tasting

Marissa Paragano 17:22

When I'm teaching people who don't know about tequila, one of the things I teach them is the difference between Blanco, Reposado, and Añejo, and the way that I like to explain it is: Blanco is very agave forward; Añejo is agave, but also a bit of oak just from aging; Reposado is in the middle. With this tequila and this Blanco in particular, you get so much agave that if someone didn't know what agave tasted like, I would tell them, "Drink this, and now you know." 

Sergio Vivanco 17:47

I have been attending fourteen schools of tasting. Some of them are bluffers, and some may use very extravagant words to make you impressed, but they are very good. Tasting is something very easy. It's five steps: eyes, nose, mouth, swallow, and hangover.

Marissa Paragano 18:10

Ha!

Sergio Vivanco 18:10

Those are the five steps. What we do in the school of tasting of Jalisco is that we want to call the same tastes with the same word. This is black, but I am not in your head to see if you see this black, probably you see gray, but we call this color with the same word. That's the key to get along. You like it or you don't like it, but most of the tasting and smells is because of the nose, 80%. So if you want to do an exercise here to see what the nose can do, we will do it. We are going to inhale, keep the air in the lungs, and then we pour a small amount of tequila in the mouth. We go around and then swallow. And after that, with the mouth shut, we're going to let the air go in a small motion, and you will find how different you can taste this tequila.

Marissa Paragano 19:09

Okay. I've never done that before. Sorry, mom, I'm going to inhale. Let's try this. Okay, that was really cool. That's a fun party trick.

Sergio Vivanco 19:19

Very different. Try it out, guys.

Marissa Paragano 19:21

Wow, so that's different. And I know with a lot of people have different nostrils. Sometimes they'll smell more with their left or their right nostril, and one might be dominant.

Sergio Vivanco 19:29

Yeah, that is true because of the hemispheres in your brain.

Marissa Paragano 19:33

Yeah.

Tasting Viva México Resposado

Sergio Vivanco 19:33

If you go like this, you have some notes, and then you do the crossover, it's totally different. 

Marissa Paragano 19:40

You also have a Reposado, and of course, the Reposado introduces your aging process. One of the things that I like to do, and we didn't do it on the first bottle, but I have that show, Tequi- Ladies, and we always ask people before they drink to make a toast and to cheers to somebody. And I feel like we should cheers to people before we drink this.

Sergio Vivanco 19:57

Okay, my toast is to work with a perfect team. It's like a team of soccer. You cannot score the goals if you don't have the defense and the goalkeeper. So we make our part doing this with passion, with honesty, with everything we can with our hands. And this team here will make the goals to do the rest of the part. So to have a team with the same principles than we.

Marissa Paragano 20:26

Equipo Perfecto?

Sergio Vivanco 20:27

Equipo Perfecto. Wow.

Marissa Paragano 20:31

This is so good. How is this different than your Blanco then? What do you do to make this Reposado so special?

Sergio Vivanco 20:38

I have the chance now to get revenge on my brothers. When we get together, most of my brothers have Blanco. And my father and I used to have Reposado, and that's my favorite. And then we have Añejo. One of my brothers has Añejo. And when we went to the competitions, we won with Blanco and we won with Añejo, and I was mad because Reposado was my favorite. And I'm going to tell you why. The perfect balance between the Añejo and the Blanco is the Reposado because they haven't lost the raw materials, the raw tasting of the Blanco. I like very much the Añejo and the Extra Añejo after dinner, but having only two, three— Four, five... Ha! But if we're going to have a long party, let's say all the afternoon, most of the time we drink Blanco and Reposado. And the notes that I found here, I don't know about you, of course it has a little vanilla, but if we ignore denominate notes, we will find here dry fruit, like those dry apricots. It's very present here.

Marissa Paragano 21:56

Apricot! That was the first one that came to mind for me. And similarly, I do like reposado. I think when people are trying tequila for the first time, everyone gravitates to blanco. And that's a really great way to learn about a distillery, but I think the majority of people should start with a reposado. And for the exact reason you mentioned, it has a bit of blanco in it, it has a bit of a añejo in it. It's sort of a nice middle ground. If you want a little more agave, go blanco. If you want a little more oak, go añejo. But you should really start with reposado, in my opinion.

Sergio Vivanco 22:23

Yeah, I like that. Excellent. I always give this example. If you and me are talking in a very noisy place and I can't hear you, but if I focus on your conversation, I ignore the rest and I can get what you are saying. It's the same with the tasting. First of all, you have to ignore the alcohol and then the notes that dominate. And then you will find more than 100 notes. Tequila, it's a lovely spirit drink with a lot of notes.

Marissa Paragano 22:53

One of the things that I think is intimidating about tequila, some people have this assumption that they don't know how to drink it. And Oh, I know it from college and whatever. But once you try a really good tequila like Viva Mexico, which doesn't even have to cost that much money, I certainly would pay more for it because I know how it's made. It's made traditionally and with generations of experience. But I think one of the things that people need to think about when they're trying tequila is, again, try all the expressions from a brand. If you try the blanco, you're getting an idea of the agave. If you go to the reposado, you get a little balance. And then the añejo, you can get more about how they're aging it. So instead of being scared and just trying blancos all the time, try all three expressions and you can learn a lot more and trust your palate. Don't listen to other people telling you, "Oh, you have to like this, you have to like that." Like what you like.

Sergio Vivanco 23:38

Yeah, we have a lot of work to do culturizing about tequila. Yeah. The tequila need to be kissed. There are very good tequilas in the market.

Marissa Paragano 23:49

Well, when people hear that I'm super into tequila, the first question that I always get is, "Well, what's the best tequila? What's your favorite tequila?" And there is no right answer to that. And what I always tell people is, choosing a favorite tequila is like choosing a favorite song; it really depends on your mood. Depending on my mood, it might be Viva México Blanco, it might be Plantador.

Sergio Vivanco 24:10

Qué bonito. That's nice.

Marissa Paragano 24:10

Yeah, isn't that a great one?

Tasting Viva México Añejo

Sergio Vivanco 24:11

Yeah. 

Marissa Paragano 24:12

Maybe we should try the Añejo next. What do you think?

Sergio Vivanco 24:14

Okay, that sounds good to me. What we need to know about the Añejo is that, at the beginning, it was Blanco in a Tennessee whiskey barrel, and the temperature of the room in Centigrade is 18º to 22º, the temperature. The room has to be with humidity to avoid gaps in the barrels.

Marissa Paragano 24:35

Because it expands the barrel.

Sergio Vivanco 24:36

Yeah, because if you have gaps, you may lose liquid and the evaporation is going be too much. We calculate 8% evaporation, the angels tax. They like very much tequila. And what we are losing at the beginning is a lot of water, so we are keeping the syrup. That's the reason that if you taste the reposado and then the añejo and then the extra añejo, it's gonna be sweeter, the notes of dry fruit are going to be harder, and the vanilla is going to be very present. So let's try this.

Marissa Paragano 25:12

It's really good. Yeah, it's like dessert, but in a very authentic way. It's not an overly-sweet sort of thing. It's got some nuance to it. And again, the dried fruit is there, the oak is there. It's wild, and I would recommend to anybody trying tequila to do that exercise. Inhale in, try it, swish it around, swallow, breathe out of your nose. It accentuates some of the flavors. And they're coming across in my palate as I'm breathing out of my nose, which is really interesting, but I think it's also a different way of seeing it. Highly recommend.

Sergio Vivanco 25:48

Yeah, and also when you have a glass of tequila like this, you take time to swallow and the taste stays there longer. That means good tequila.

Marissa Paragano 26:02

Oh, really? So however long it lasts, like if it lasts longer on your palate—

The culture that inspires “Viva México”

Sergio Vivanco 26:06

You don't need to sip very often, but it's very enjoyable to have a a complex tequila like this one because it has a very good taste, but it has also very good aromas. 

Marissa Paragano 26:19

Honestly, it's a beautiful bottle, and I love how the design is simple, but yet it gets the point across. You've got the the brand here, and then on the front, is there a reason for this particular bird that you have here?

Sergio Vivanco 26:31

Yeah, this this label was inspired because we had a very good president in Mexico a long time ago. Some guys consider him a hero, and others say he is a bad guy, but it was Porfirio Díaz, and Porfirio Díaz wanted Mexico to be like France, so he brought a lot of things from France at that time and it was a period of time when Mexico progressed a lot.

Marissa Paragano 26:58

And "Viva México" is a rallying cry, right? It means something?

Sergio Vivanco 27:02

Viva México for us is "Long live Mexico," and come and enjoy what Mexico is. That's the meaning. And also, this is the beginning of our second name. Our name is Vivanco, so "Viva" is part of our name.

Marissa Paragano 27:18

I can't believe I never got that before. That's pretty cool. And you said it's what Mexico is. What is Mexico? What's something that you think Americans might not know about Mexico?

Sergio Vivanco 27:27

Well first of all, I want to tell you is that Mexico is not our government. That's something different.

Marissa Paragano 27:34

Yeah, well, us too.

Sergio Vivanco 27:34

Yeah. I'm very proud to be Mexican, and I love my people, and I love my country. Every time that you go to Mexico, if you start a conversation with the normal Mexicans, they are going to be very kind with you, very warm. They are going to try to say two or three words that they know in English.

Marissa Paragano 27:55

My background is Italian, and my family's been going to Mexico for 20 years, which is one of the ways I got into tequila. And one of the things that really made my family love Mexico is how everyone made us feel like family when we'd go there. Everyone was super warm and was family-oriented, which Italians can be sometimes. And, it was this wonderful accepting culture. And that's the Mexico that I know, and that's the Mexico that I think comes across in your bottle in particular because you have that family aspect, those five generations making this product.

Sergio Vivanco 28:27

Yeah, Italian and Spanish are very similar, not even because of the religion, but the principles that we have. It's very interesting. My father's name is Feliciano and the name is Vivanco. So we don't know if we are from Spain or Italians, because well, the name looks like Italian, but we don't know. I don't know yet.

Introducing Plantador Tequila

Marissa Paragano 28:50

Ha! I'm gonna believe that we're cousins. I'm telling myself we're cousins. Now we've tried all three of Viva México. I have to say, I can't pick a favorite. I thought it was going to be Reposado, and I'm sorry to tell you, I love them all equally.

Sergio Vivanco 29:03

Yeah, I love all of them. We have gained through the years prestige with NOM 1414, but all the brands that we made in our distillery are retail price $45 or more.

Marissa Paragano 29:17

Which is still a deal, in my opinion.

Sergio Vivanco 29:19

Yes, but there is a niche market that they go less, but we need to offer them something good. That's a very good opportunity for me to talk about Plantador. How does it work? Because if I said "This is better than this one," I'm not saying the truth. It's different tasting, and this was made with rum and and wild yeast, so that makes more production of alcohol than champagne yeast.

Marissa Paragano 29:50

Yeah.

Sergio Vivanco 29:50

So we have the chance to price this lower, but it doesn't mean that it's less quality. We are going to taste it, and you will know that it's different, but it's very good.

Marissa Paragano 30:03

It sounds like you're taking the efficiency from the yeast, the difference in yeast, and you're passing that savings on to the consumer, when you could have just kept it at $40. You could have made it the same price, but instead you're taking that savings in efficiency and making this a little less expensive. Is that true?

Sergio Vivanco 30:19

Yeah, let's try it. The name "Plantador" is the person who is planting the plants of agave.

Marissa Paragano 30:26

And that's one of the things that I think makes tequila so special is, it is very labor intensive. That's why I hate watching people shoot it, because anything that made it to that glass has taken years, right? Years of growing agave, years of harvesting, years of making it. And it's at least a minimum of five to six years before it even makes it to your glass. People now are starting to see jimadores and respect jimadores, and I'm loving that. But the Plantadores, this is the first time I'm hearing about them, and so it's really nice to give them some credit as well.

Sergio Vivanco 30:54

Yes.

Marissa Paragano 30:55

Cool. Well, let's pay them homage by drinking Plantador.

Sergio Vivanco 30:59

We're gonna have a very long day today, right?

Marissa Paragano 31:01

Ha! Or a short one. Okay, so immediately the nose is different.

Sergio Vivanco 31:06

Absolutely.

Marissa Paragano 31:07

Yeah, very different. What I'm getting on here, I don't know the right word, maybe a little brighter, more citrusy, more like the—

Sergio Vivanco 31:15

Let us start with the base.

Marissa Paragano 31:17

Sure.

Sergio Vivanco 31:17

The other one, its base is champagne. And if you go deeper, you will find notes of Champagne. And here you will find notes of rum.

Marissa Paragano 31:28

Yeah.

Sergio Vivanco 31:29

Caribbean rum. This is more Caribbean, and the other one is more French.

Marissa Paragano 31:34

It is. That's actually a really good way to think of it. I think knowing the history also helps understand what you're smelling, what you're tasting.

Sergio Vivanco 31:40

Yeah, it's completely different. But it's a very good product.

Marissa Paragano 31:44

Oh my god, it's really good.

Sergio Vivanco 31:45

Very, very good.

Marissa Paragano 31:46

You know what I like about the bottle too? With my show, Tequi- Ladies, we see a lot of different bottles, and the one game that I like to play is, How Difficult Would This Be To Pour This From A Well. And if you look at this bottle, it's a perfect size. I have tiny fat hands, but my tiny fat hands still can hold this really well. It passes the well test, but also it's better than a well bottle.

Sergio Vivanco 32:05

Yeah, the bartenders are concerned about how they handle the bottles. This is very nice for serving and preparing cocktails and that kind of stuff.

Marissa Paragano 32:14

It's nice. I really like this. And I think one of the things that people, in my opinion, sometimes do wrong is, they'll find the cheapest liquor to make a cocktail, when really what they should do is find the least expensive quality liquor to make a cocktail. And so that's rum yeast and wild yeast. So if you ever wanted to know what rum yeast tastes like, there you go.

Sergio Vivanco 32:36

Exactly. 

Marissa Paragano 32:36

So I understand you also have a Gold Plantador. What is a gold?

Sergio Vivanco 32:42

That's a good question, because here in the United States, there is a lot of confusion about the gold. We have two categories of tequila according to the regulation. Two categories: one is Tequila (mixto) and the other one is Tequila 100% Agave. This tequila is what we normally call "mixto." After that, we have five classes of tequila in each category. I'm gonna say it in English, one is silver, the other one is gold, the other one is aged, the other one is extra aged, and the other one is ultra aged. In Spanish, is one is blanco, the other one is joven, and reposado, añejo, and extra añejo. What is the gold? The gold is the blanco that you add some reposado or some añejo or some extra añejo to.

Marissa Paragano 33:31

Interesting. So you're able to have the agave forwardness of the blanco and then a bit of the aging through the añejo married together.

Sergio Vivanco 33:40

Exactly.

Marissa Paragano 33:41

Okay.

Sergio Vivanco 33:41

Exactly. It's different than reposado because the reposado, it's grabbing, over time, the notes of the oak.

Marissa Paragano 33:50

Yeah.

Sergio Vivanco 33:50

Whatever the barrel is adding there. But here is the blanco, and you suddenly put something that was in the barrel. So the mix is different than the reposado. It's very interesting. This

Marissa Paragano 34:02

Oh that's interesting, so two very different ways of doing things mixed together. I'm excited to try this. Let's see. To family business.

Sergio Vivanco 34:11

Saludte.

Marissa Paragano 34:12

Knowing that there's rum yeast, I'm trying to taste for something like that. What barrels do you use in the añejo that gets mixed in here?

Sergio Vivanco 34:21

Tennessee whiskey, American oak. It's more sweeter than the Blanco, right?

Marissa Paragano 34:26

Yeah, it is. I feel like everyone should have this on their back bar, just to have, because it's pretty accessible. Even with it being sweet, it's just kind of delicately sweet. And I feel like a lot of people who are new to tequila would like this too.

Sergio Vivanco 34:39

Yeah, I will say that this this has a perfect balance.

Marissa Paragano 34:42

It does. So I have the Plantador here, and then I have the Viva right here. And if I smell the difference, it's from the yeast, right?

Sergio Vivanco 34:50

Yes. Not only the yeast, but the time of cooking, the time that the reposado spent in the barrel. It's different.

Identifying the perfect Tequila

Marissa Paragano 34:58

It's really good.  Okay, so now we've tried five different expressions from your distillery. But what's really interesting is—obviously we only tried two brands—your distillery is known for having quality across a variety of brands. I have to commend you on that because each brand is still very different, but somehow there's that binding factor of being NOM 1414. For many people, the best tequila is subjective and the perfect tequila is subjective. But for you, what is the perfect tequila?

Sergio Vivanco 35:28

Well, I'm gonna put it this way: When you bike—that this is something that I like and you like—we don't like the goal. We like the road. Our destiny is the road, not the goal. When you're making tequila, you have innovation and you have, every single day, a task to be better. But the perfect tequila doesn't exist. We will make better tequila in a few years, you will see. And that's that's my comment. I don't know if I answered your question, but it's our task, and we love what we are doing. It's like a singer. You don't know if you're going to be a star, but you like to sing, and you're every single day trying to be better. That's what we do.

Marissa Paragano 36:15

Yeah, the journey is the destination in many ways. And if you enjoy the ride and do the right steps, what you can make is pretty incredible. Well, thank you so much. It was an unbelievable honor to get to speak with you. Cheers. I love all your tequila very much. And now that it's 12:00, I can drink them all. Cheers.

Sergio Vivanco 36:35

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Harmon Skurnik 36:39

Skurnik Unfiltered is recorded at Skurnik Wines & Spirits headquarters in the Flatiron District of New York City, which is why you might hear some city noises as we go along, like horns honking. If you found the conversation interesting, please consider liking, subscribing, and leaving a review. You can stay up to date on our show and upcoming events by following @skurnikwines on Instagram and visiting our website at skurnik.com