A bottle of tequila just sold for $35,000 at Sotheby’s. Head to your local store and you can walk out with a bottle of Casamigos for about $40. Tequila fans will be raising a glass to both extremes on July 24 for National Tequila Day, though one of those toasts takes a lot more saving up than the other.
Tequila used to be background noise, poured into a margarita without much thought. That’s changed. A growing slice of drinkers now treat tequila the way collectors treat scotch or bourbon, tracking production methods, following distilleries online and comparing bottles the way some people compare vintages.
That taste change collided with a wild swing in supply. Blue Weber agave takes six to eight years to mature, so growers are always guessing at demand years ahead of time. In the early 2020s, they guessed big, and it’s catching up now. Agave prices have collapsed from around 30 to 32 pesos a pound in 2021 to just 2 to 5 pesos today, as all that early planting finally matured.
Tequila stopped being just a shot
The clearest sign of that change is who’s actually buying tequila now. One group still orders it without knowing or caring what’s in the glass. The other is a growing crowd of enthusiasts who read up on production, follow distilleries online, and treat tequila less like a party drink and more like a hobby, the way some people treat bourbon or craft beer. That second group is exactly why reposado and añejo bottles now regularly clear $100 without anyone blinking.
Mexico’s ‘tequila lake’ problem
The oversupply behind those higher prices is almost hard to believe. Cristóbal Casillas Silva, José Cuervo’s director of agriculture operations, says roughly three out of every four mature agave plants in Mexico won’t get harvested at all this year. They’re just sitting in fields drawing pests, because there’s nowhere for the extra supply to go. It’s a strange kind of problem for an industry that’s usually terrified of running out of the one plant it can’t operate without.
A shorter list of ‘serious’ brands
While growers deal with the glut, spirits companies have been placing fewer, bigger bets. Bacardi paid $5.1 billion for Patrón in 2018. Pernod Ricard followed in 2022, picking up a majority stake in Código 1530, the ultra-premium brand co-founded by George Strait. Even José Cuervo’s parent company, Becle, posted a sharp drop in first-quarter profit this year. A brand doesn’t need a buyout to make this list, though. Clase Azul stayed independent, and its Día de Muertos bottle just pulled in that record $35,000 bid at Sotheby’s.
That’s tequila right now. It’s a plant that takes most of a decade to grow, a glut nobody quite planned for, and a shrinking circle of bottles people are actually willing to save up for. So this National Tequila Day, maybe skip the $40 pour you already know by heart. Grab something a notch up instead, a reposado or añejo, whatever your local shop’s tequila obsessive is excited about this month.
Jennifer Allen is a retired professional chef and long-time writer. Her work appears in dozens of publications, including MSN, Yahoo, The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. These days, she’s busy in the kitchen developing recipes and traveling the world, and you can find all her best creations at Cook What You Love.