How The Real José Cuervo Invented Modern Tequila

José Cuervo was a real person, and he revolutionized the tequila industry in the early 1900s. He navigated bloody business rivalries, cozied up to a dictator, and survived the Mexican revolution thanks to a daring escape. After that, with his business in shambles, he had to figure out how to sell tequila in Prohibition-era America.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  You put a lot of love into the things you send during the holidays. It's baked with love, carefully packed with love, or shipped with love right from home. Because what you're sending isn't just what's inside the box. It's the time, thought, and care you put into it. And this holiday season, the United States Postal Service is delivering your love to more addresses in America than anyone else. So send it with love. Send it with USPS. The United States Postal Service. Learn more at USPS.com/holiday. I grew up on Lando Lake's cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Lando Lake's American cheese. And now Lando Lake's cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Lando Lake's cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table.

• 0:44Dan Pashman?

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• 0:59Dan Pashman?

  What's your all time favorite mention of Jose Cuervo in a song?

• 1:05Speaker 01

  So there are these border ballads that were written during the prohibition era in the 1920s that were written all along the Rio Grande Valley. And many of them are songs that the smugglers would sing to sort of entertain themselves as they were smuggling huge loads of tequila on the backs of donkeys across the brush country of Texas. There are a number of those songs that mention Jose Cuervo by name.

• 1:32Dan Pashman?

  So it sort of makes you think of Jose Cuervo as sort of like a folk hero.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You know, I love this vision of these guys out there in the moonlight with a mule train loaded with tequila, singing songs about Jose Cuervo as they make their way towards San Antonio to sell to the, to the speakeasies there.

• 2:00Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Jose Cuervo is the best-selling tequila brand in the world. It's been at the top for most of the last 100-plus years. And yet, little is known about Jose Cuervo, the person. Yes, he was a real guy. In the early 1900s, he revolutionized the tequila industry in Mexico, all while navigating bloody business feuds and a nation at war against itself. The reason people don't know a whole lot about Jose Cuervo? Many key documents about his life are very hard to find.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  During the Mexican Revolution, public records, private records, were frequently raided and destroyed in order to get rid of any documentation of bribes that had been demanded and paid by revolutionaries. And so, all of the families had a practice of keeping these records in secure places and not sharing them with anyone.

• 3:01Dan Pashman?

  This is Ted Jenoways, a journalist, author, and professor at the University of Tulsa. Ted specializes in unearthing hidden stories at the intersection of food, agriculture, and business. One of his books is about a fifth-generation family farm in Nebraska. Another is about the meatpacking industry in the Midwest. Now he's got a new one out this week called Tequila Wars: Jose Cuervo and the Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico. It's an epic story that includes revolution, generational rivalries, and the creation of a billion-dollar liquor brand. But this was not an easy story for Ted to track down. As you heard, a lot of the documents about Jose Cuervo's life and work have been destroyed, either during the violence of the Mexican Revolution or to conceal certain activities. What little remains is locked away in the family's archives.

• 3:45Dan Pashman?

  And Cuervo didn't leave much of a paper trail to begin with.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Cuervo had this tendency to kind of keep a low profile, to try to stay out of the newspapers, stay out of public view, and work behind the scenes. That also became a key way that he survived through the, especially through the period of the revolution, when many of his friends and business partners did not survive. It kept him from being put in front of a firing squad, but it makes him a really challenging subject to research.

• 4:17Dan Pashman?

  You spent 12 years working on this book.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:20Dan Pashman?

  You're rubbing your forehead as you say that, as if you're like, wow, Jay, I hadn't actually counted it up.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Well, if somebody had told me that it was going to take 12 years, I wouldn't have started on it. I would have, I would have chosen a different project.

• 4:33Dan Pashman?

  Right. Well, that's true with, I think, a lot of big projects in work and life.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 4:38Dan Pashman?

  But, but there must have been something compelling about Jose Cuervo's story that, that kept you going when it became a slog. Like, what was so compelling about this story?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  I had initially set out thinking that Jose Cuervo was somebody who had been in a position where he was just trying to survive the revolution, that he was trying to survive a tumultuous period and, and find a way to kind of play defense. What became clear over time was that he was a really key player and that though he was often not in the public eye, he was very important in back rooms and brokering deals. And he was somebody who was very much a power broker as well as a business tycoon. And so showing how he influenced the world around him and not just how he was influenced by that world,

• 5:31Speaker 01

  you know, it just kept me constantly interested in, in what I was finding.

• 5:34Dan Pashman?

  The story starts centuries ago with Jose's great, great grandfather, who owns a small plot of land in Mexico's Tequila Valley, which is now in the state of Jalisco. He uses the land to distill agave plants, making a brandy called Vino Mezcal. Now, this drink is made all over the country, but the best stuff comes from the Tequila Valley. And so it eventually becomes called Tequila. That's how the beverage we know today got its name. Anyway, in the 1870s, Jose's father and uncle take over the business and they have very different approaches from each other. Jose's father, he's all about growing the business, building partnerships, forming alliances. Jose's uncle?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  One of his competition tools was to go out and burn the distilleries of, of competitors. So that, you know.

• 6:20Dan Pashman?

  That'll, that'll do it. Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  It definitely helped reduce the competition in the market.

• 6:26Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I mean, and that's the thing is that it's a lot of the story of the family and between the families, that there's always this push and pull between people who are looking to just kind of build by making alliances and political influence and slowly building. And then there's always somebody who's like, we should just go kill those guys who we're feuding with.

• 6:48Dan Pashman?

  This is the classic Stringer Bell, Avon Barksdale split.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  It absolutely is, yeah.

• 6:53Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, yeah. Like, are we gonna run a business? Or are we gonna go to war?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  That's it. And that pendulum swings. Anytime you see a moment where the political order breaks down, where the social order breaks down, it also means that everything in business is in upheaval. And that creates an opportunity for violence. And it also means that the whole order may flip on its head. And so everyone becomes much more sort of on edge and, you know, gun at the ready.

• 7:23Dan Pashman?

  In 1880, Jose's uncle dies, and Jose's father takes over the whole business. But when Jose turns 18, his father also dies. The business is in a lot of debt. The family has to sell it.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And Jose Cuervo was a, as a young man who had been expecting to sort of easily ascend to this position where he would be one of the captains of the tequila industry, instead found that he was orphaned and landless and still drowning in debt.

• 7:51Dan Pashman?

  Jose gets a job with his great uncle, Jesus Flores, who has agave estates and distilleries in Tequila and Guadalajara, which is the capital of Jalisco. Jose works his way up until he's practically running the place. By the time he's 30, his uncle Jesus is in his 70s and worried about who's gonna take over when he's gone. Now, Uncle Jesus is married to a much younger woman named Anna. They don't have any kids.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  As the story goes, he was on his deathbed in Guadalajara, looking out the window at the skyline of Guadalajara, and calls his wife to his bedside and says, you know, I'm at death's door. When I actually go, Jose Cuervo would make a fine husband, and he could run the business and carry this on. So she has that very much in her mind, that that's, that that's how things will go. The thing that's kind of funny is that the only person who was not informed of all of this is Jose Cuervo.

• 8:46Dan Pashman?

  So the uncle dies, leaves the fortune and the business to his wife.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 8:50Dan Pashman?

  At first. So now she is now one of the wealthiest people in Mexico.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 8:55Dan Pashman?

  Then she loops in Jose on the plan.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:57Dan Pashman?

  She calls him in and says what?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  You should be in charge, but we have to get married.

• 9:02Dan Pashman?

  Anna knows that having a woman run the business isn't really an option at the time. She could be involved, but she needs a husband out front.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  And Jose is reluctant. He is in so many ways in his life, he's cautious. And he says, you know, I need a little time to think about this.

• 9:17Dan Pashman?

  I'm sure especially then, it would have been rare for a woman to propose marriage to a man. So that was awesome. But she is rich and powerful. She owns the company that's in his family's line. She's also sort of like known throughout the region to be very beautiful, like seems like there's a lot of things going here, maybe not the romance yet. But you know, in prior centuries, marriages were often more about business than about love.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And so, you know, she sees this as a sensible decision. Jose goes back to tequila and goes back to running the distillery and takes a while. He's, he's still not getting back to her. So she

• 9:56Dan Pashman?

  Come on, Jose, get it together.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  So she summons him back to Guadalajara and it's recorded by a very close friend of hers that they had this exchange where she brought him in and said, look, you said you wanted to think about it, but you've been really busy with the business. You haven't had time to think about it. So I've thought about it for both of us.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  And the justice of the peace walks in, Bible in hand.

• 10:23Dan Pashman?

  Door opens and a guy walks in holding a Bible.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Exactly. So and marries them on the spot.

• 10:27Dan Pashman?

  And that is when Jose Cuervo became in charge of the whole family's tequila business.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, yeah.

• 10:33Dan Pashman?

  And, and what would his relationship with Anna be over the years? I mean, she certainly seems like a pretty shrewd and capable person. What was her role as he took over the business?

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, she is much more gregarious than he is that, I mean, I think that story shows that she was outgoing and extremely confident. And so where Jose was the one who was kind of running Running the business and making all of the the kind of political decisions and seeing the technological opportunities. She was the one who was building the social connections and bringing together the people that they needed from the upper class in Guadalajara and later in Mexico City to establish this kind of, you know, political clout that they needed for for carrying out some of Jose's ideas. So that partnership was really a close one, and both parts of that relationship were really important.

• 11:28Dan Pashman?

  Jose takes over the business operations and quickly makes a key decision. Around this time, there's a big push internationally for food safety. The Mexican government says from now on, all tequila has to be sold in sealed bottles instead of in barrels, which are more susceptible to being adulterated. And whereas barrels were sold to cantinas, bottles can be sold directly to consumers. So companies need to distinguish themselves.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Cuervo makes the decision to say, I'm putting my name on this product and I'm the name behind this brand.

• 11:57Dan Pashman?

  And that's when Jose Cuervo, the tequila brand, was born. Jose starts growing the business, lobbying the government to build railroads and a train station in Tequila, which allows him to ship his product across the country. Now, this wasn't just good for his company, it also transformed the town of Tequila itself.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  It was sold as like, yeah, the railroad's going to come to town, it's going to be here twice a day, you'll be able to get back and forth to Guadalajara. And that also meant that there were certain necessities for the town, that there was a city clock that was installed so that everyone would know what time it was and be able to be at the platform on time. And there was a trolley that was built that would carry people from the the train station to the central plaza. And so what Cuervo was trying to do was make everyone see this as an era of modernization and opportunity and emphasize, you know, this is also going to connect us to all of these markets. Yes, I'm going to profit, but it's also going to mean a lot more jobs, it's going to be more prosperity for the whole town.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  And everybody went for that.

• 12:58Dan Pashman?

  At this time, Cuervo is producing 350,000 barrels of tequila a year, which means millions of bottles a year. They're at the top of the industry. Only the Salsa family is close. But Jose wanted more.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Cuervo was not just, you know, the largest tequila maker. He was the largest maker of intoxicating beverages in Mexico and had his eye very much on expanding into a European market and into the American market. Places where there were deeper pockets and people were willing to pay for something that was exotic and seen as a kind of luxury item. So he was absolutely building an empire and it was all going extremely well. It's just that it happens that it lands exactly at the moment that the country's unraveling.

• 13:47Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, the Mexican revolution comes for Jose Cuervo. And he has to figure out not only how to keep his business afloat, but how to stay alive.

• 14:03Speaker 02

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• 15:44Dan Pashman?

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• 16:17Dan Pashman?

  For a long time, I did not understand the point of vests. Like, why not just have a jacket? That covers your arms, too. But something clicked for me. I think I got gifted a vest, and now I am obsessed with vests. And it just adds that little bit of toastiness. And I got this new Quince Packable Puffer Vest. I love that you can just squish it up and shove it in the bottom of your bag. That way, you have it with you all day. If it gets a little chilly, break out the vest. I also got a Quince Down Quilted Vest. It is so soft and cozy. They make them for men and women, and as with everything you get at Quince, they focus on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. These are all timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays.

• 17:00Dan Pashman?

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• 17:24Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. Last week on the show, we explore a century-old cookie rivalry between Oreo and Hydrox. Nowadays, Hydrox cookies are known as a cheap knockoff of Oreos. But did you know that Hydrox actually came first? I talked with reporter Mackenzie Martin about the Kansas City origins of Hydrox, which all started with a businessman named Jacob Luce, who created the Luce Wiles Biscuit Company.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  So, Luce Wiles seized chocolate trending, and in 1908, they do something no one has done before. They put two crisp, bitter, dark chocolate wafers around a layer of sweet vanilla cream, and they call it Hydrox, America's first chocolate sandwich cookie. And it's an immediate hit. Hydrox isn't intended to be an everyday cookie. It's a special event, billed as the aristocrat of cookies.

• 18:16Dan Pashman?

  But Luce Wiles had to fight off competitors, including a company you might have heard of: Nabisco. Mackenzie tells us why Oreo came out on top, and Hydrox got banished to obscurity. Plus, I sample my first Hydrox. This episode's a lot of fun. It's a great story. Check it out wherever you got this one. All right, back to my conversation with Ted Jenneways, whose new book is Tequila Wars: Jose Cuervo and the Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico. Since Jose Cuervo was a little kid in the 1870s, Mexico had been ruled by a dictator: Porfirio Diaz. The country's constitution had term limits for president, but Diaz ignored the ban on running again and kept getting re-elected in sham elections full of fraud and intimidation. The Cuervo family, now, they had cozied up to Diaz for decades. It was the only way for their business to survive.

• 19:01Dan Pashman?

  But by 1909, the country was on the brink of a revolution. The Mexican people wanted Diaz out.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  It was a really perilous moment in the history of Mexico, because Diaz had actually promised not to run again in 1910, and then he did. There was a lot of discontent about the fact that he was going to hold on to power. And that's really the moment that Cuervo said, I've got to step forward into politics and try to make sure that Diaz remains in control so that there's not, you know, a bloody revolution to overthrow him, but also let people know that there is reform coming, that there is change happening, that this is not just more of the same. We hear you, we're going to address those issues. And that required him to be involved.

• 19:45Dan Pashman?

  So he's kind of trying to play both sides.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Exactly, for sure.

• 19:48Dan Pashman?

  Stay friends with the dictator while showing the revolutionaries that he's working on stuff that's going to make them happy.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:55Dan Pashman?

  And am I correct in assuming that he was playing both sides basically because really what he was focused on was his business?

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 20:01Dan Pashman?

  And he thought that that was the best way to help his business to survive and to grow?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, the thing you want is stability. You know, you see it now, that the main thing that the people in business want is a kind of predictable marketplace. And so for Cuervo, he understood, especially at this moment, you know, they had finally gotten the railroad in 1909. And so he's finally getting his product to market in large quantities. He's finally starting to get access to the US. The last thing he wants is a bloody revolution that tears the country apart and leaves him without the opportunity to capitalize.

• 20:40Dan Pashman?

  But change comes too quickly for Jose to manage. Diaz, the dictator, is forced out, and suddenly there are rival revolutionary factions fighting for control of the country. The main roads in and out of Tequila are taken over by militias. And Jose is not the only distiller in town. So this is a big problem for all of them.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  All of Tequila found itself targeted multiple times.

• 21:02Dan Pashman?

  Caught in the crossfire because they happen to be the town that's on this road that's crucial in these battles.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Yes. And, you know, they're filled with tequila, so that makes them appealing to revolutionary troops who are moving along there.

• 21:14Dan Pashman?

  Also, like, being a place where there's a lot of tequila is not the best way to reduce fighting.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:18Dan Pashman?

  It's really not. Like barrels and barrels of tequila don't tend to pacify armies.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  And in fact, they had a tendency when they showed up to stick around for a while because they kind of liked this as a base of operation.

• 21:35Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, they were like, all right, yeah, we need an extra day to rest here.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:40Dan Pashman?

  There were other factors that put a target on Jose and the other tequila makers. They had private armies to protect their distilleries, so the revolutionaries wanted those weapons, as well as the cash the companies had on hand. And these revolutionaries were very skeptical of Jose Cuervo himself. He'd been playing all sides. They suspected he wasn't really on their side.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  One of the really big attacks that's dramatic hits the town of Tequila on the night of Cuervo's birthday in October of 1913. And it's especially dramatic because he's in town, all of the other tequila makers are in town because they're celebrating his birthday. So they're all gathered at his home in the courtyard of his home, celebrating when they get word that the revolutionaries are just outside of town and on their way. And so everyone mobilizes to try to defend the town, but then also there's a great effort to get the women and children together. And it culminates with the town being overtaken by the revolutionaries and they raid all of the distilleries.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  The thing that is amazing about Cuervo during the revolution, somehow or another, he always manages to just kind of slip out the back door quietly whenever that moment arrives. He's very good at just escaping at the last minute.

• 22:58Dan Pashman?

  That night, as the revolutionary forces close in, Jose makes a run for it.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  He's afraid that spies are watching, and so he hops from rooftop to rooftop, all down the block, you know, takes the gutter pipe down to the street level and makes his way to a nephew's home where he borrows his horse and rides out into the countryside. He goes into this canyon in the, in the mountains north of Tequila where he hunkers down in this sort of cluster of huts that are all along this mountain stream.

• 23:30Dan Pashman?

  I feel like this should be a movie.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  I completely agree. The film rights are available.

• 23:36Dan Pashman?

  So Jose is hiding out in the mountains, but he's not alone. All the other top tequila makers, his rivals in business, join him there, including his closest competitor, Eladio Sosa. Next time you're at the liquor store, you see a bottle of Jose Cuervo next to a bottle of Sosa tequila. Imagine these two men, Jose Cuervo and Eladio Sosa, hiding together in mud huts outside the town of Tequila, waiting for months to see what happens with the revolution. Finally, they get word that things have calmed down, the revolutionary forces have taken control of Jalisco, and there's some stability. Cuervo, Sosa, and the other tequila makers think it's safe to come back and start their businesses up again.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  And it's just a matter of weeks before Cuervo is arrested and is put on trial for treason. And once again, it's exactly the same charge as before, that he wasn't enough of a supporter of the revolutionary cause, and that what this proves is that he was actually an enemy of the revolution. All these different witnesses were called, testifying to the things that Cuervo had done for or against the revolution. But in the end, it's Eladio Sosa, his greatest competitor, who takes the stand and says, "I know that Jose Cuervo has to be in favor of the revolution,

• 24:51Speaker 01

  because when the revolutionary forces came into Tequila and were going up and down the row of distilleries, we all gave them all the money we had, and we were supporters of the revolution. These revolutionaries, they weren't bandits, they weren't thieves. That would be unconstitutional and illegal. That would make this whole revolution illegitimate. So these had to have been legal payments that were given in support of the revolution, and no one gave more than Jose Cuervo. And they're trapped. They either have to admit that they were stealing that money from Cuervo, or they have to let him go.

• 25:31Dan Pashman?

  So that that sort of forces the the judge and jury to say, yes, he must be a supporter of the revolution because he gave all this money. Or if you're going to say he wasn't a supporter of the revolution, then what you're saying is that money was stolen from him.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:43Dan Pashman?

  Which would be wrong.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:44Dan Pashman?

  Um, and illegal. Uh, and so it kind of put them in, interesting. So you put them, put them in a bit of a bind.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Yes. And so they they release him. It's this amazing thing that it is this mental calculation that Cuervo's great competitor makes, and he saves him. I mean, he saves him from years in prison or worse. To me, that's one of the the most remarkable ironies in the whole thing is that this family that he had been business competitors with and struggling with for for so many years and then would struggle with again, that in that kind of key moment, there was a recognition of their kind of shared fate.

• 26:23Dan Pashman?

  But for Eladio Souza, it wasn't just the power of friendship that compelled him to help Jose Cuervo. Something else was going on behind the scenes. Back when they were hiding in the mountains, Jose proposed a plan to Souza and the other tequila makers.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  And what he says is basically, look, all of our distilleries have been hit with cannon fire. They've been burned. Our fields have been burned. The railroads have been, you know, blown up in various places. What we're going to have to do to get back on our feet is work together. And so what he proposes is that they form what at that early stage is called a union of tequila makers. And the idea was just, if you've got a field that has agave, and I've got a distillery that's up and running, we'll share resources and produce that tequila and share the profits. But over time, what Cuervo started talking about was, well, we're also going to have to control the distribution lines. We're

• 27:18Speaker 01

  going to have to have a private militia that protects our properties, and that we're all going to share in the costs of that. And we're all going to agree that we kind of stake out territory. And Cuervo had a nephew who was the German consul in Guadalajara. And so he had gotten this concept from his nephew, this idea of collaborating to get through difficult times. And this was all a German business cooperative model. And the German word for this was cartel.

• 27:53Dan Pashman?

  In other words, this, right here, is the first known Mexican cartel. With an agreement in place, the tequila makers go about rebuilding their businesses. In 1919, about six years after first fleeing to the mountains, they're back up and running, and they sense a big opportunity because the US is about to enter prohibition. But there's a one-month window before it goes into effect. And because people in the US know that a ban on booze is coming, they are very eager to stockpile.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  And what Cuervo recognizes is there's this huge market for tequila just across the line. If we can just make our tequila in high volume and get it to the border, we will be able to recover as an industry. And so they stake out their territory, they stake out their trade routes, and they actually sign a couple of different cartel agreements. The Sausas had the territory to the east, the Cuervos had the territory to the west. And what Cuervo asked out of the government was, hey, well, just get rid of the export taxes for us for this very short period of time. And he went together with Eladio Sausa to lobby the president directly.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  It was like, let us just have this short window of time. We will send all of this product across the border, and it'll make a ton of money that'll flow back into the economy, and it'll be good for Mexico. The president said no. And so they did it anyway. But what they'd started doing was keeping two sets of books. One where they showed actual export numbers that they kept privately for themselves. You ask where a secret archive comes from, that's one place.

• 29:34Dan Pashman?

  Right, right.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And also, they had a second set of books that they showed to the government. And so this is, to my mind, really the moment where this moves to truly being this criminal enterprise that they were engaged in for the rest of prohibition.

• 29:51Dan Pashman?

  So with the help of this cartel arrangement and prohibition in the US and all these things, he's finally clawed his way back. Things are looking pretty good. The cartel agreement expires.

• 30:02Dan Pashman?

  When the cartel agreement expires, like it seems like it was going well. Why wouldn't they just all renew it right away?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Well, when things are going really well, everyone starts to think that maybe they deserve more than everybody else, right?

• 30:13Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  And one of the things that was happening with this new presidential election was that there were also elections being held at the state and local level. And so there was an effort by the Cuervo's and Saus's both to try to run candidates in the town of Tequila in Guadalajara for governor and exert their influence in Mexico City. And they're trying to get a business advantage. And instead of renewing the agreement, on both sides started to think that they were recovered enough, that there was enough money that they had made that they could take over the whole market now and squeeze out their competitors.

• 30:53Dan Pashman?

  They were getting cocky.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Yes, greedy too.

• 30:55Dan Pashman?

  Right, right, greedy, right.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  And then when they hold those mayoral elections in Tequila, there's, you know, a little bit of a shootout, there's some violence that breaks out between the families. And this really removes any possibility that they're going to be in cooperation again. And so from that point forward, they are fully competitors again and are essentially warring cartels.

• 31:23Dan Pashman?

  During this time, Jose Cuervo isn't just worried about the Saus's. He's also worried about issues in his own company. Remember, Jose is the quiet businessman. He likes to work behind the scenes, but his brothers are getting aggressive. They want to go on the offensive and use violence to gain an edge over the Saus's. It's just like Jose's father and his uncle all over again. Jose, he wants to keep the peace. In January of 1921, he travels to Mexico City to visit one of his brothers. They go out to dinner and then things take a turn.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  The next day, they both fall violently ill. They both are reported to be in their beds and they are fevered and unable to rise from their beds. The rumor starts that they have been poisoned. His brother Carlos was a member of the Mexican Congress. Cuervo, of course, is having this conflict with the Saus's and is a big political target himself. The rumor is that someone tried to take them out. And in many ways, I think the most likely of these targets would be Carlos, actually, because he was very outspoken. He was one of these more combative brothers, but he was the face of that combative side of the family, taking the war to the national level.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  But Carlos did not die. He was bedridden for weeks. It took him more than a month to recover, but he came back. Jose died in a matter of days. And his death meant that that the business now was functionally under the control of his more warlike brothers. And they took this not only as an attack on the family, but as an opportunity to then this was their excuse, an absolute reason to go to war with the Sausa family.

• 33:09Dan Pashman?

  And so did they?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  They did.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Within the city of Tequila itself, there were a series of gun battles that took place from essentially from that point forward through 1922, 23. These would be on the street and overtaking the village and running the other family out and then coming back and retaking the town. I mean, it was really a war for control of the town.

• 33:37Dan Pashman?

  The Cuervo brothers end up chasing out the Sausas and taking control of the Tequila Valley. Both companies would continue to do well, but Cuervo remained number one. In the many decades since, ownership of the Jose Cuervo Company has passed through different family members and remains in the family today. Sausa was sold to a European conglomerate, but if you go to the town of Tequila, you can still find remnants of the early days of the industry.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Today, on the south edge of Tequila, right by where the train station still is, there's a little cluster of small distilleries. And two of my favorite Tequilas made today are on a couple of those estates. One, Fortaleza, is owned by Guillermo Erickson Sausa, who is the great, great grandson of Sanobio Sausa, the founder of Tequila Sausa. And on the other side is a distillery called El Tequileño that is operated by Antonio Saez Cuervo and by his son. And they Are still living right there, almost side by side.

• 34:40Dan Pashman?

  Over the past 12 years, as Ted worked on his book, he often shared what he learned with both families, which led to a new chapter in the story.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  One of the techniques that I used a lot was just saying to families that as I was going through government archives and through other public sources and finding correspondence, finding land records, finding materials about their family, I would share some of that stuff and say, hey, if you're interested in this, I've got these letters from your great grandfather. And, and we start to compare notes. People get excited, oh, that, the thing that you found makes something in our records make more sense. And then you're, you're in a conversation. Different things have come out of the family collections that provide some details for, for the other families. And being able to say to them, you know, oh, well, this is something that you may want to know

• 35:32Speaker 01

  about the Cuervo's that came from the Salsa archive and vice versa. And it started them talking with each other and they have become great friends.

• 35:57Dan Pashman?

  That's Ted Jenoways. His book is Tequila Wars, Jose Cuervo and the Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico. It's out this week. And I should say for this episode, we focused on Jose Cuervo, but the book spans generations. There's a lot more than we covered here and it's a fascinating perspective also on Mexican history. So if you want to learn more, definitely check out this book. Next week on the show, we're cranking up the salad spinner, our rapid fire roundtable discussion of food news and hot topics. My guests will be comedian, actor and author Mamre Hart and Bloomberg reporter Dina Shankar. That's next week. While I wait for that one, check out last week's show about the cookie rivalry that's gone back over 100 years between Oreo and Hydrox. Hydrox cookies are known as a cheap knockoff of Oreos, but they actually came first.

• 36:40Dan Pashman?

  We dig into why Oreo reigned supreme while Hydrox was lost to obscurity. That episode's up now, check it out. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. This episode was produced by me along with managing producer- Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer-

• 37:19Speaker 04

  Andres O'Hara.

• 37:20Dan Pashman?

  Our engineer is- Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 37:29Speaker 05

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