Tomas Estes, who put tequila on a pedestal, dead at 75
Tomas Estes, who gave up a career teaching high school English to open Mexican bars and restaurants across Europe, in the process helping to transform the image of tequila from frathouse rotgut to a fine spirit that could sit on a shelf alongside cognac and single malt whisky, died April 25 at his home in Ashland, Oregon. He was 75.
His son Jesse confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.
Starting with his first restaurant, Café Pacifico, which he opened in Amsterdam as an expatriate there in 1976, Estes brought Mexican cuisine and culture to a continent that was still only vaguely aware of Latin American fare. He made most of his ingredients fresh daily, an innovation but also a necessity, since things like tortillas and guacamole were nowhere to be found in Dutch grocery stores.
Café Pacifico was an overnight success and became a regular haunt for American celebrities passing through Amsterdam — Estes liked to tell about the time that Debbie Harry, lead singer of the band Blondie, waited at the bar for two hours to get a table.
But the real star was the tequila. Estes, born and raised in Southern California, had spent his youth shuttling to Tijuana, just across the Mexican border, where he had fallen in love with the varied flavors and styles of pure-agave tequila. He brought that same love to the bar program at Café Pacifico, which in short order became renowned for having one of the best tequila collections in the world.
“Way before tequila was popular outside Mexico, he was in Europe tirelessly spreading the gospel of tequila to anyone who would listen,” said Carlos Camarena, a third-generation tequila distiller and a close friend.
In 2003 the National Chamber of the Tequila Industry, a branch of the Mexican government known by its Spanish initials CNIT, appointed Estes the official tequila ambassador for the European Union.
Five years later, he and Camarena joined forces to create their own brand, Tequila Ocho — and, once again, Estes helped shape the way people think about tequila.
Tequila must be made in the Mexican state of Jalisco and distilled from the blue agave plant; the best tequilas use it exclusively. Agaves are grown in different soils and at different elevations, resulting in nuances that a distiller has to adjust for to produce a consistent product.
Estes had a side passion for wine from Burgundy, where vintners emphasize the qualities wrought by minute differences in soil and climate, or the environment they call terroir. He and Camarena wondered if they could do the same thing for tequila: Instead of ironing out differences of terroir, what if they celebrated them?
Each batch, they decided, would be made from agaves grown in a specific field and harvested in a particular season, and each bottle would
list the details of its production.
They released Tequila Ocho in 2008, just when consumers in the United States and Europe were embracing the idea of local, authentic production, whether in their clothing or food.
Soon a wave of followers joined them, eager to hop on the single-field wagon.
“Everyone thought we were crazy,” Camarena said. “But it was a snowball that we slowly put together, then started rolling, and it took off.”