This feature is part of our 2024 Next Wave Awards.
Tequila Ocho doesn’t have a celebrity tie-in. It doesn’t bottle its juice in ornate, art-festooned bottles destined for a second life as a vase. Its name doesn’t pay tribute to some ancient legend or vague element of Mexican culture. Instead, it references the distilled batch sample that co-founders and agave legends Carlos Camarena and Tomas Estes decided to bottle after painstaking experimentation. The brand spends its energy organically highlighting the land surrounding the facility in the Jalisco highlands — an approach to agave that separates the 16-year-old distillery from the rest of the tequila crowd.
Credit: Karime Gazale & Fanny Reyes
These singular practices are on full display at Los Alambiques, a canary-hued distillery and visitors’ experience perched some 7,000 feet above sea level outside Arandas. Opened in 2023, it’s a love letter to agave and the surrounding terrain’s vibrant earth tones that make for a stunning destination, but it’s also a complement to the brand’s low-key philosophy.
“It’s a very unusual tequila. It’s not very commercial,” explains Jesse Estes, Tomas’s son and Tequila Ocho’s global brand ambassador. “It’s really created as a passion project.”
That passion has propelled the brand to become a backbar darling. And the chatter — and the tastings inspired by such gospel — has propelled Tequila Ocho to top-of-mind for the trade and consumers alike.
“That’s the magic of the brand,” explains Tequila Ocho creative director Fany Camarena, Carlos’s daughter. “We didn’t need to create
