The Legacy of Cazadores Tequila!!!!

n 1922, Jose Maria Bañuelos was a typical campesino from the Jalisco mountain country. He started his day's work on his farm before dawn and made every minute of the day count. Sundays were holidays, when family and friends celebrated with typical meals and ranchero music.

While his family slept, Jose Maria would gaze out the window of his small adobe brick farm to admire the majestic leaves of his blue agaves reflecting the moonlight in the clear Arandas night. He loved to watch the shadows of the deer as they ran timidly through his well-tended agave fields. Jose Maria was deeply impressed by the agility and pride he saw reflected in their movements. So much so, that he allowed wild birds to be hunted on his fields, but never the proud deer.

At that time, the agave plant was used for preparing pulque, which was consumed at local cantinas. It was a strong and treacherous drink, that made its impact felt the following day.

Jose Maria was confident that he could make a high quality distilled liquor from with the blue agave plant, worthy of the beauty and majesty of the plant's enormous leaves and the bright red Arandas soil; the same red earth where he and his ancestors had toiled for generations.

Jose Maria dreamt of achieving his goal. He tried several ways of producing his new beverage, searching for ways to smoothen its taste. He worked alone at night, careful not to disturb his family, in a small room that he had specially outfitted with his liquor making equipment, to achieve his dream.

As the months, and then years, passed, Jose Maria patiently tested different ways of producing his beverage. He methodically analyzed the color and aroma from the fermented, distilled and aged agave juice until he finally settled on the "original" recipe for his refined tequila, the key to the future success of Cazadores Tequila.

Jose Maria hid his formula in a small wooden box inside the adobe walls of his farm. And in that box was a piece of paper with the handwritten words:

"Don Jose Maria: The knowledge that has been derived from all of these months of work."

He spoke with his son, Leon Bañuelos, and made him promise that he would not open the box until he had made the irrevocable decision to put into practice all the truths written on the piece of paper it contained. If he were unable to do this, he was to pass the secret on to his own son until Jose Maria's dream could be realized. For Jose Maria, it was of the utmost importance that this invaluable secret remain in the family, and that the knowledge he had gained be preserved through the generations.

Leon never forgot his father's words. They remained etched in his memory. He learned several different trades so that he could carry out his father's work, enthralled by the memory of what Jose Maria had said to him. He knew that one day the dream would come true.

One rainy afternoon, when the entire family was gathered around the dinner table, it came to Leon that his son Felix, a strong and vigorous boy, might be the one who could turn his father's dream into a reality.

Felix continued the family traditions of loving and working the land, perseverance in one's daily chores, and honesty with oneself as well as with others. He applied his values, and his grandfather's formula, to the production of tequila. A tequila that, through his perseverance and honesty, would become one of the finest quality tequilas made in Mexico.

At first, Don Felix practiced and perfected his skill in tequila making, and for some years his tequila was produced for private consumption only. The tequila was served at family gatherings and banquets, where only the guests of his hacienda were able to enjoy it. The wide acceptance of his product led him to establish a tequila distillery in 1973, in Arandas, Jalisco, with the aim of distributing his tequila throughout Mexico, and later around the world.

In honor of the deer that his grandfather, Jose Maria, admired, Don Felix used a deer logo on his label. In his mind, the deer symbolized valor, boldness, perseverance and pride, all values he held close to his heart. To signify man's pursuit of his dreams, he chose the name Cazadores, Spanish for hunters, to identify his product.

As the saying goes, the rest is history. Cazadores, thanks to the determination and honesty of Don Felix and his eldest son Leon Bañuelos, began to grow rapidly in Mexico, and later the United States. By 1999, production had soared to over 1,000,000 9L cases in Mexico and the US.

However, by 2000, the agave shortage had driven up the cost of the precious raw material almost 2,000%. Don Felix had a difficult decision to make; Should he reduce his product's agave content to keep costs and prices in line? Or should he maintain the high quality standards of Cazadores by adhering to his goal of producing only high quality, 100% agave tequila? Don Felix was a firm believer in quality, but more importantly he believed in honesty. He could not bear the thought of his loyal consumers feeling betrayed by a drop in quality. Don Felix, therefore, chose to maintain the quality of his product and decided to pass the resulting cost increases on to the consumer, even if sales volume and profitability were lost.

In 2002, Don Felix's dream was complete. He was the founder of one of Mexico's most respected tequila distilleries, and owner of the world's fifth highest selling tequila brand in the world.