Van Life in Tequila, Mexico (EP - 16)

Hey guys not sure if we shared with you but my ear infection got a little worse and uh you know the antibiotics are helping i'm starting to feel better but anyway we uh we're slowed down a bit that's the moral of the story and now we're just starting to move and we just got to tequila and we're parked here in the agave fields and i'm on this little dirt trail back through these agave farms and back here there's some waterfalls so check this out so this is definitely the graffiti wall that we were reading about right before i walked down here and it said i would come to a tea in the road and i did and so off to the left there's like this little donkey trail it looks like this it's kind of dirt kind of falling off the trail right there looks like a donkey path and there's one to the right that looks easier so i remember two things i thought it was left after the graffiti wall i mean i'm i'm pretty sure i remember that but then i also remember just take the easiest path and that's definitely the one to the right all right so i messed it i got some local knowledge it was definitely the path to the right they looked at me crazy for even thinking about going to the left i'm so glad they walked by guys local intel is the absolute best i promise all right so i go this way the okay that other one was no good you guys are awesome thank you so much be safe have fun all right take care so here's the left path the other one was a path to certain death this one is to the river and the waterfalls which is where i'm headed so wish me luck that's so cool gonna be okay so guys some kind of way i still have to figure out how to get down there that's probably about 25 feet i haven't seen what it looks like i just see what these kids are doing to get down in there i can get a pretty good view of it from up here but man you know you always want to get that money shot let's see here i don't know how you get down all right guys so if you know me i couldn't give up after i shut the camera off i gave it one last effort and i literally came down a wall just as straight up and down as the one i was showing you of those kids so i made it down here at the bottom there's a nice pool to splash around and some of those rocks right there the kids are using to slide on and then you've got a couple level of waterfalls right here and the stone face it's just like a light brown it's absolutely gorgeous a little trickle of water and as an added bonus there's another little fall down here and if you can see just over that pipe but just below that pipe there's a rock ledge i think there might be another waterfall drop right there so i'm going to go check that out it's gonna be okay we're gonna be okay good morning guys so we're at a cafe there's a couple blocks from where we slept we slept on the streets of tequila last night had no issues it was perfectly safe um we are two blocks away from this little coffee shop we're gonna get some breakfast we're gonna explore tequila a little bit more today because we're both finally starting to feel better and then we're gonna do a tequila tour life is a winding road no telling where it goes driving through days and nights won't stop if i figure out where the road goes even if i'm falling down i will keep on searching for my eyes you can say i lost my mind i will keep on holding my head high even if the sky is falling down jumping from cliffs so high trusting our wings to fly sometimes we're crashing down but we get up and start from the ground and i i really if i let me figure out where the road goes even if i will keep on searching for my eyes you can say i lost my mind i will keep on holding my head high even if the sky is falling down even if the sky is falling down first thing i do when i get to tequila now i have a tequila i got a haircut and shave so what's the story of patrón this is what i read online patrón is not in this area it's a couple hours away we might try to swing by there it depends on if we get to that part of mexico but from what i was reading online last year 2019 was their 30th anniversary and when patrón started here and they started making the 100% agave tequila they're the first people that exported the 100% agave tequila out of mexico into the united states mexico used to keep that good stuff here for themselves which i can't blame them but um patrón's the first one that did that and they employ 1600 people in the tiny little town where they have their distillery and they could easily automate their you know they have the money to automate but they would end up losing 75 of their employees and they refuse to do that and they still use the old traditions to make their tequila awesome yeah so we're actually in tequila we're leaving tequila now going to another town to go to the horadoura tequila tour yeah kurt likes horadoura but uh there it is del horadoura but we're in the state of jalisco and so jalisco houses the region of the blue agave and the region where all tequila comes from you ready kurt i'm meditating are you gonna taste some tequila oh yeah to that drink okay so yeah so this is the bottling area in casa herradura we have three tequila brands which is herradura, el fumador, and antiguo. We use water or any other detergents it's 100% tequila that way we keep it 100% pure. Very cool. That's the actual factory before we go in i'm going to explain to you guys about the agave plants so these are the agave plants right here okay this is this is the type of plant we need to make tequila all right in mexico there's around 150 different varieties but we can only use this variety to make tequila which is called agave tequilana weber blue agave all right so this plant right here they're around two years old right now when we plant them when they're baby ones we plant them and once they turn three years old they start having sprouts they reproduce by themselves every single plant grows from 10 to 12 babies in its life stage every single plant they grow around the plants from the roots yeah we saw them taking them up oh that's right they're doing it right now and then they replant them yeah correct so like how much does one agave plant make tequila or how much is it worth or whatever to make one liter of tequila we need around seven kilos of the plants the most common weight for this plant it's from 35 to 40 kilos that's the most common uh weight 35 so that's gonna be one plant's gonna yield four or five bottles of tequila right nice wow that's a good deal yeah all right so we're going over here and this hemidor is uh carving up this uh agave plant hola this job right here this is not out in the fields this is typically done in fields this is demonstration yeah this is just demonstration that's right this is just demonstration so remember i was telling you guys about the sprouts yeah so this is not right here okay once they get to this size or they could be a little bit bigger that's when we're gonna pull them out and this little plant it's ready to be transplanted in once we plant them remember it turns three years old and we start having sprouts okay so uh then seven to ten years old it could be a hundred percent mature and ready for harvesting so right now this is going to show us what a harvest looks like this job in spanish we call it that's right so these guys do this job they're that's right the word that's also another nahuatl word that means cuts or shave they do they start their day early in the morning from six six thirty a.m and they eat a harvest in total we get 80 to 300 plants every day the tool they do this job it's called goa oh wow they need lots of experience so they can be noticed you can see where they protect here on his on his thing that way there's no accident is that leather or is that wood it's it's metal and leather metal and leather that's right in the middle it's metal okay so we don't cut his leg off so right now he's going to show us what he purposely looks for all right wow that's pretty quick all right you guys saw once he was done cutting all the leaves off what he did is he cut the pine into half right the reason he does that it's because they have to remove this part from every single plant every single plant has only one and it's in the same exact area that's right this is the core this is not this is the parts where all those leaves start to grow out those are the baby ones so we're going to remove this part from every single plant because this part right here does not contain any starches these are bitter fibers these are the fibers like this oh look at that yeah look at that wow like spider webs that's right wow you see the little yeah yeah yeah so this is the this is the core of the fence so that just gets tossed that's right yeah we're gonna remove this from every single fence so it doesn't affect so in simple terms all this agave gets loaded up into those ovens over there and gets steamed for about 26 hours they put it onto that conveyor and it turns it really sweet and then they take it out and squeeze it press it down to make the tequila so this back here guys is the back side of the oven so after you steam it and come out uh after they steam it the agave comes out right over here and this is where it gets smashed whoa look at that it smells good yeah so this is syrup and this is what oh this is the juice they're gonna make tequila out of you eat it like sugarcane we saw over there it comes all the way down here to this state to this face to the elevated pipelines the bigger things are full of tequila blanco already the bigger things and the smaller ones those things are for the juice so all the juice comes here and it sits here for at least four days okay four to five days so it can ferment okay once it's fermented that juice creates a five percent of alcohol and it's called most of what that mash most of more that mash okay so yeah and then once this is fermented the most of what goes to the next area which is the distillery that area this is where we get tequila after two distillations we saw the very first step already which was the harvesting the second step was the steaming process in the ovens and then the crushing fourth step the fermentation and the fifth one here this is where we get tequila tequila blanco okay now we want a reposador añejo or extrañejo that's in the barrels that's right aging in the barrel so yeah this is the most umerto right here this is the most umerto right here this is fermented right the dead mash this is that's right so that'll make that'll that that still has alcohol in it though five percent five percent to get tequila out of the most umerto this needs two distillations the first distillation it's a process that takes three hours and it's called destroying this is not a tequila yet this is an ordinario it's an ordinario we can't call this tequila yet because this is only 25 percent of alcohol it's only 25 percent of alcohol and it has lots of impurities lots of bad alcohol okay this is the one that's going to need the second distillation which is the rectification for six hours so we just do this for six hours now and now we have a tequila okay this tequila here comes out of the second distillation at 55 percent alcohol it's always going to come out at 55 percent and it's always going to be clear yeah so this is the base for all tequilas from this one right here we are going to decide how many liters we're going to make with tequila recusado it's a good day that was a really really good tour most of my friends know that i've been a fan of tequila for a long time but to actually get to come to tequila to sleep in the agave fields and then to understand how the agave is processed how it's grown and then how they actually make tequila it's just been such a fascinating process and and this whole area julisco around tequila and i can't pronounce the city that we're in it's named after a tree i remember that but um so very very cool you guys it's it's starting to get hot here it's about 85 degrees day and sunny but i was told that in summertime it's going to be pushing up regularly in the hundreds up here so uh it's probably best to come here in off season when it's when it's cooler but this is definitely a tour you want to take if you like this video be sure to hit the like button 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