LIQUID LUXURY It’s not just about slammers anymore. With the opening of the five-star La Casona Guest House in Mexico and Bar Patrón in Sydney, tequila has finally come of age

It’s not just about slammers anymore. With the opening of the five-star La Casona Guest House in Mexico and Bar Patrón in Sydney, tequila has finally come of age.

There’s an old saying that goes, ‘Love is like tequila shots, it’s not the quantity but strength matters.’ That’s a nice metaphor for a time gone by. Perhaps in this age, love requires more complexity, more subtlety, character and moods. Tequila has evolved into a more sophisticated tipple, too — it’s no longer the knockout, bar-slamming, lick-sip-sucking shot we ordered when we turned legal drinking age. It has become a more refined choice of flavours, notes and intensity. Patrón is the most notable tequila brand to realise the potential of a more premium tequila, and it is attracting love in the hands of the most considered cocktail drinkers around the world, men and women alike. At its headquarters, Patrón Hacienda, which sits just outside the town of Atotonilco el Alto in the central western Mexican state of Jalisco, you can be immersed in the makings of this liquid luxury. Surrounded by fields of blue agave, the root ingredient of tequila, Patrón Hacienda presents with a 16th-century Spanish-style mansion that houses the brand’s headquarters and its sole distillery. Hundreds of locals are employed, and they, the agave farmers and field workers, are Patrón’s defining ingredient. Semi-trailers full of piñas, the heart of the agave plant, are delivered, while buses of workers come and go to drive the manual process of one of the world’s biggest luxury spirit brands. The sense of community is instantly apparent. As the workers leave, they flash the spotlights of their smartphones through the bus window. Clearly, the joy of Patrón gets into your veins one way or another. Master distiller Francisco Alcaraz has built a distillery that adheres to a small-batch philosophy while achieving mass production. The piñas are hand-chopped and packed into steam ovens to be boiled for days, then are transferred to a stone pit and macerated by a large volcanic rock called a tahona to excrete the agave juice. The pulp and juice go into large vats with water and yeast to start the fermentation process, then it’s to Alcaraz’s specially designed distillery pots to produce the tequila. Patrón has now added a five-star venue called La Casona Guest House. While not open to the general public like the hacienda itself, it’s pure luxury via Mexican heritage, with 25 dazzling rooms to host trade and bartenders from around the world. The guests can appreciate Patrón’s tequila variants and further their art in tequila mixology — then, as with most luxury brand immersions, take their newfound knowlege and love of it back to their own corner of the Earth and put it to good use. To show how much Patrón resonates in Australia, chief marketing officer Lee Applbaum visited last month to open Bar Patrón, part of Neil Perry’s Rockpool group, in Sydney. Yes, it is getting into our veins, too. “Australians have a positive, glasshalf-full psyche,” says Applbaum. “In Mexico, we talk of this energy of spirit. It’s tequila, it’s Mexico, it’s warm, it’s inviting and it’s positive. It’s just like yours.” VL Bar Patrón by Rockpool, 2 Phillip Street, Circular Quay; (02) 9259 5624; barpatron.com.au; patrontequila.com