FORBES: “CIERTO IS LEADING THE CHARGE”
By Kevin Gray
Cierto Tequila Becomes The First Tequila Brand To Surpass 1,000 Awards
The most-awarded tequila in history just took home eight more medals at the 2024 New York World Spirits Competition, making a compelling case that natural, additive-free tequila is the future.
If you’re noticing more agave spirits on store shelves, behind bars and in your cocktails than ever before, you’re not just imaging it. According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. (DISCUS), tequila and mezcal, combined, are now the second best-selling spirit category in the country, behind vodka and ahead of whiskey. But there’s a narrower slice of this category that’s growing even more rapidly.
Additive-free tequilas comprise less than 5% of all tequila brands, but this subset is growing nearly six times faster than the total tequila category – and even faster in markets like California (23x) and New York (14x) – per NielsenIQ data.
Cierto is one of the additive-free brands leading this charge. Spanish for “True,” Cierto is produced with estate-grown agave from the Jalisco Highlands. The plants are hand-cut, cooked slowly, and distilled in copper pots and column stills at the La Tequileña distillery by Master Distillers Enrique Fonseca and Sergio Mendoza. Before bottling, lots of tequila brands add small portions of glycerin, caramel coloring, oak extract or sugar to the liquid – all allowable per the Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT) – but Cierto and a growing number of other distillers choose to sell unadulterated spirits.
This isn’t a new way of doing things; it’s actually the old way, when tequila was exclusively an agricultural product and not an industrial one. But the additive-free tequila space is growing at the same time as global macro trends towards wellness, ingredient transparency and sustainable agriculture grow. More and more consumers are unwilling to compromise on quality, whether it’s the materials in their clothes or the foods and drinks they ingest.
Jim Ruane, Cierto’s Chief Growth Officer, believes these trends are here to stay, in part because of the significant shift in how consumers interact with the brand. When he first began presenting it to people, he would get questions about whether the brand was backed by a celebrity. Today, he’s more likely to field questions about whether the brand is confirmed additive-free and where it’s produced. He’s got good answers to both.
The Most Awarded Tequila in History
Cierto won eight medals at the recent 2024 New York World Spirits Competition, including three Double Golds and four Golds, raising its all-time tally of international medals and awards to 1,002. This year alone, that run has entailed a wheelbarrow-full of Tequila of the Year awards at other competitions, from Los Angeles to London to Singapore. All in, Cierto is the most awarded tequila in history, a claim that’s been vetted by their legal team and also approved by the CRT to include on the bottle’s labels. Yes, that means that Cierto submits itself to lots of competitions, but submission doesn’t guarantee all those best-of nods. Those wins do help a relatively young brand find its place behind bars and in consumers’ hands, however.
“As a new brand, we’ve found that awards have really helped us to credibly punch above our weight class in terms of getting noticed,” says Ruane. “I don’t think anyone is necessarily circling their calendars for each individual competition, but the steady drumbeat of press about Cierto’s victories and the cumulative impact of the 1,000+ awards total definitely pique interest.”
The brand is also out to prove a point: Additive-free tequila that’s made well, honors authentic techniques, and respects the agave plant’s inherent qualities is better than the alternative.
“Tequila has gotten a little out of whack lately with the prevalence of additives and industrial shortcuts, setting all kinds of misguided expectations for what tequila should taste like,” says Ruane. “Essentially, we’re trying to win a home run title, clean, in the steroid era.”
The Future of Additive-Free Tequila
Even as additive-free tequilas grow, the uptick is coming from new players in the market, not established brands.
“I find it hard to imagine the old-guard brands will follow suit, at least in the near term. It’s expensive and time consuming to make great-tasting additive-free tequila, and it’s really difficult to do at scale,” Ruane explains. “You can’t just turn on the spigot and, bam, you’ve got additive-free tequila.”
Some of the largest brands use younger agave plants, while the more craft-focused distilleries prefer fully matured plants, which can take seven to 10 years to reach their peak. But even if they’re using the best plants, many of the mass-market distilleries don’t have the right equipment in place, says Ruane, so they’d be looking at intensive capital investments and a five-plus year changeover. “And let’s not forget about the drastic, night-and-day change in flavor profile these brands would experience. Would they risk it?”
Brands like Cierto, Cascahuín, Fortaleza, Ocho and the many others making additive-free tequilas may never rival the sales charts of the biggest producers, but they have a head start in the all-natural, additive-free space. And that can only help their growth as consumers keep asking for better, more transparent products.
Read the full article at Forbes.com.
