Why El Velo Became Our House Tequila

The MatchaRita is one of the most ordered drinks we make. The tequila in it changed a while back, and since nobody announces that sort of thing, I want to write down what happened and why.

The Boring Reason First

Los Dos was our house tequila. It is a good bottle and I have nothing bad to say about it.

Skurnik stopped distributing it.

That is the whole reason. Not a falling out, not a quality problem, just distribution. A bar in New York can only pour what somebody will actually deliver here, and when a distributor drops a brand the bottle leaves your shelf whether you liked it or not.

This happens constantly and almost nobody outside the industry hears about it. If a drink you order regularly quietly tastes different one day, distribution is a likelier explanation than the bartender getting bored.

So we needed a house tequila.

What a House Bottle Actually Has to Do

A house bottle is not the same job as a sipping bottle. It has to be good enough that I am happy pouring it neat if you ask for it that way, and it has to survive being buried in a cocktail.

That second part is where most blancos fall down, and it comes down to proof.

The Proof Part

Most blanco tequila is bottled at 40% ABV. That is fine on its own.

Now put it in a MatchaRita. You are adding our yuzu slushy, a splash of matcha syrup, and a wasabi salt rim, and then serving the whole thing cold, which mutes everything further. A 40% blanco goes quiet in there. You taste yuzu, you taste matcha, and you get a vague sense that alcohol is involved somewhere.

El Velo is bottled at 44.5%.

Four and a half points does not sound like much written down. In a cold sweet drink it is the difference between tasting the agave and not. The extra proof carries the peppery, mineral part of the tequila up through the citrus instead of letting it sit underneath.

None of that is an El Velo trick. It is why bartenders reach for higher proof spirits in cocktails generally. What matters is that this bottle was built knowing that, and for once the marketing and the liquid agree with each other.

The Additive Part

El Velo is verified additive free, which matters more in a cocktail than people assume.

Tequila regulation allows up to 1% additives with no disclosure, and the usual ones are glycerin and syrup. They make a spirit taste rounder and sweeter neat, which is exactly why they get used.

In a drink where you are already adding sweetness on purpose, hidden sweetness is not a bonus. It is a variable you cannot control, and you end up adjusting your own recipe against something the bottle is doing quietly behind you. I would rather know what is in the glass and do the balancing myself.

I wrote about what additive free actually means in more detail in an earlier post, so I will not go through all of it again here.

What It Is

El Velo is made at La Cofradía, NOM 1137, in the Tequila Valley. The Maestro Tequilero is Carlos Hernandez Ramos.

The agave is Blue Weber, farmed organically in the volcanic soil of the lowlands and harvested at a minimum of six years. It is roasted in stone and clay brick ovens, crushed in a roller mill, fermented in stainless steel and twice distilled in copper lined pot stills.

Lowland agave tends to run earthier and more peppery. Highland agave tends to run sweeter and more floral. That is a tendency rather than a law, but it is the right tendency for a drink with matcha in it, because you want something with a bit of vegetal bite pushing back.

Neat, it is grapefruit zest and a caramelised root vegetable note on the nose, then mineral and green peppercorn, finishing with lift rather than weight and a faint salinity behind it.

Try It

It is in the MatchaRita, and it is on the agave list if you want it on its own. Ask for it slightly chilled in a small glass rather than over ice.