El Tesoro is a brand of tequila

Tequila

Tequila is a spirit made from the blue agave plant, primarily in the area surrounding the city of Tequila, northwest of Guadalajara, and in the highlands of the western Mexican state of Jalisco....

 produced at a distillery in Jalisco, Mexico, where the family that founded the distillery is still involved in the business. In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, the brand is marketed by Beam Inc.

Beam Inc.

Beam Inc. is a spirits company established on October 4, 2011 from the remainder of the Fortune Brands holding company after it sold and spun off various other product lines to form a business focused exclusively on spirits and directly related products...

. The producer claims to use labor-intensive traditional methods for making the tequila.

History

Don Felipe Camarena was an agave

Agave

Agave is a genus of monocots. The plants are perennial, but each rosette flowers once and then dies ; they are commonly known as the century plant....

 grower who was raised in a family that had previously been making tequila in the Mexican state of Jalisco

Jalisco

Jalisco officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Jalisco is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is located in Western Mexico and divided in 125 municipalities and its capital city is Guadalajara.It is one of the more important states...

 since the early 1800s. However, after 50 years of producing tequila, the family's distillery had been destroyed during the Mexican revolution of 1910.

Camarena started out by growing and selling agave plants to other distillers, and then in 1937 he opened La Alteña Distillery in Jalisco, 20 miles away from the previous family distillery. His distillery was located near a blue agave growing area and near hot spring

Hot spring

A hot spring is a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are geothermal hot springs in many locations all over the crust of the earth.-Definitions:...

s which served as a consistent source of energy. Camarena then passed the business on to his son, Felipe J. Camarena Orozco, who then passed it on to his daughters and to his son Carlos Camarena, who is now the third generation of Master Distiller for the distillery.

The actual brand El Tesoro de Don Felipe began as the product of a joint venture established in 1990 between the Camarena family and the premium tequila promoters Robert J. Denton and Marilyn S. Smith.

Somehow, the Fortune Brands

Fortune Brands

Fortune Brands was a holding company founded in 1969 as American Brands and later renamed in 1997 and split apart in 2011. The corporate headquarters was in Deerfield, Illinois in the United States. The company historically had a significant diversity of product offerings...

 holding company ended up owning the distillery, or perhaps only some marketing rights to the El Tesoro brand tequila that it produces. In October 2011, Fortune Brands divested itself of its various businesses that were unrelated to spirit

Spirit

The English word spirit has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body.The spirit of a living thing usually refers to or explains its consciousness.The notions of a person's "spirit" and "soul" often also overlap,...

s, and changed the name of its remaining enterprise to Beam Inc.

Beam Inc.

Beam Inc. is a spirits company established on October 4, 2011 from the remainder of the Fortune Brands holding company after it sold and spun off various other product lines to form a business focused exclusively on spirits and directly related products...

.

Products

El Tesoro Platinum

El Tesoro Reposado

El Tesoro Anejo

El Tesoro Paradiso

El Tesoro Aniversario

Awards

Notable spirit ratings

Spirit ratings

With a growing number of microdistilleries and an expanding number of offerings from large corporate entities, a number of institutions have arisen to provide professional evaluations of individual spirits...

for El Tesoro offerings include:

El Tesoro Platinum
• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2008: Double Gold

• Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition 2007: Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2005: Double Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2004: Silver

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2003: Silver


El Tesoro Reposado
• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2008: Double Gold

• 2007 Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition "Best Tequila of the Competition"


• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2007: Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2005: Double Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2004: Best of Show


El Tesoro Anejo

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2008: Silver

• 2007 Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2007: Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2005: Double Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2004: Double Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2003: Gold

• Proof66 scores the anejo as its highest-rated tequila


El Tesoro Paradiso

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2008: Silver

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2007: Double Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2005: Double Gold

• San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2004: Silver