The process begins with growing the blue agave plants. The plants need to mature, approximately 7 years, before they produce the "pineapple" in the middle of the spiky leaves which is the part that's harvested.
A worker with a sharp knife bound to the end of a long pole cuts off most of the leaves, and another comes to harvest the "pineapples" and send them to the distillery.
Once the "pineapple" is harvested, the mother plant produces new shoots which are transplanted to begin the process anew.
The next step is to crush the agave juice out of the "pineapple." Historically this was done by a burro tethered to a huge stone wheel; the critter would walk around in circles all day until the maximum amount of juice was rendered. Now the process is motorized.
The juice is then fermented, distilled and purified into a strong liquor.
The liquor is then diluted to standard potency. It's bottled and labeled right there, and sent off to be enjoyed around the world.If the distillery fields don't have enough plants maturing at a given time, the call goes out for "pineapples" from other farms and people typically are very happy to sell their crop. So we needn't worry about a shortage any time soon.
The grounds are beautifully landscaped, in addition to being surrounded by fields of agave.
The three styles of liquor are determined by length of oak barrel-aging. The blanco liquor is bottled fresh from the distilling process. Anejo indicates it's been aged for a year. The darkest version may age as long as 5-7 years, depending on the patience and sampling of the distiller.
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