The Legacy
Our History
THE BEGINING
Mr. José Trinidad Contreras began to DISTINGUISH by jimando magueyes from an early age.
There by the years of 1840 onwards by the hill of the granjenas and the soyates where in 1845 was founded the town of Valle de Mazamitla today Valle de Juárez, Jalisco is where he put the first liquor store of which you can remember in the region.
The oral tradition of the Contreras family has been preserved as a jewel of polished value with work, custom and DISTINCTION that begins fermenting green maguey from the sierra better known as raw mezcal, baked in ovens under the ground, with mallets from red oak and fermented in white oak vats.
In its beginnings, it was distilled in clay pots, passing through mud pipes and ending with a reed tube towards a pitcher, to put a sample in a clay pot in which the alcoholic strength was measured by stirring the tequila with a pine guinumo chisetilla until you see the pearl of its foam, when the tequila was ready Mr. José Trinidad sold it on the real roads until arriving at Cotija, Michoacán on the east to Tamazula, Jalisco on the west, arriving at Tizapan, Jalisco on the north. They were the difficult times of the assaults-towns and assaults-roads, were times of haciendas, scattered ranchos, rich overprotected and poor sheltered only with the devotion of the prayer that cried for mercy and protection before the assaults, it is in this environment that the production of tequila in Valle de Mazamitla, Jalisco arose in the century of the definitions and independence of Mexico as well as its project as a country.
Trinidad Contreras was not only one of the first producers of tequila in the region, he also puts the land where the town is founded, it is a voice of encouragement and faith for the rancherias and since 1841 he brought a priest to the people from time to time for masses and confessions, during which the foundation of the town of Valle de Mazamitla was prepared and the construction of the first chapel, funded in its beginning with the alms that came from the Wine Tequila.
Man of many principles, of walking in silence, of few words and many religious facts, reciters of the rosary, business makers and inculcator of the notions for the purchase-sale to their offspring in children and sons-in-law for women the house, support and rising children.
To the production of tequila as part of the life of the years of the second half of the nineteenth century in Valle de Mazamitla J. Trinidad Contreras also gives the region cheese, butter, gear, huaraches, hoes and capes, in the hands of his children Jesus, Felipe, Trino, José and Pascual are the ones who follow him in the trade supported by his offspring of 11 children.
The tradition of tequila is taken by their children Jesus and Trino and they take it until they reach the next century they form a society of brothers where one produces and the other sells, they maintained the trade by the roads and in the house by force of bullets to achieve the order with their ability to run bandits, they had good pawn and large tracts of land.
By the year 1895 when J. Jesús Contreras as well as producer of tequila, was political commissar and promoter of the creation of the Municipality of Valle de Mazamitla, Jalisco, which takes place in that same year, as well as organizing the party of the municipality organizes the kermeses in the public square.
The kermeses were always popular festivals and assisted by the people of all nearby ranches, there were rich people, good horses and weapons in the hands of the well-off, for the poor the public square created an atmosphere of freedom and at the same time of distinction with the rich, the only thing that matched the poor and the rich was the consumption of the same tequila produced by Mr. J. Jesús Contreras, said Mr. Jesus the only DISTINGUISHED is my tequila that cheers, best and is remembered the next day with another drink.
Times where living was made up of a large family, a few cows per household, pigs, chickens, corn, beans, simple clothes, work from sun to sun, Mass on Sundays, gun to the belt, a jacal according to rank, respect for the law and the fear of God, everything as common as breathing, everything as necessary as faith, all as irreplaceable, traditional and DISTINGUISHED as tequila.
The region of the Mazamitla Valley was crossed by several real roads, where Trino Contreras brother of Jesus left every six months in two shortcuts of 60 mules each to sell the tequila they produced in small factories in the pozole ravine, the cold water ravine stuck to the town and the La Lagunita ravine, where the whole family was. He was a good seller of tequila and a better drinker, he sold and bought various products in his way, going around to Mazatlan and arriving to his land with a load of gold and silver to buy more land and what was left to bury him there under a tree. They were the times of the year 1920.
Trino Contreras was the best and greatest arriero, the best exporter of tequila beyond the border of the immediate neighbors, he lived in La Lagunita where he also stored the tequila in white oak barrels, they were cut in the hill of Tigre, in demasanas (Damajuanas) of blown glass protected with leather, mat, sack of ixtle and reed, in those times half gold by cuarterones, Mr. Trino always carried a carbine on his shoulder, two pistols in his belt, a knife, a machete, a tequila apple for his personal use and a vision well set for business.
The thunder of the rifles began on the side of San José de Gracia Michoacan, in the Cristera rebellion in 1927. The new producers of tequila Pánfilo and Simón Contreras children of Jesus, give a truce to the manufacture and get into the brawl of the bullets and the hunted, despite the reprimands of his father and his uncle Trino that he no longer had to sell, then he took a break and devoted himself to see the defenders of Christ the King.
Not only the tequila ran for a while, also the corn, the beans and the cattle, the men with the Christ in the hat had finished, those who were men behind salvation rather than land and money, wanted to be martyrs, idols and saints, they wanted to defend God with a tequila in their bellies and some old weapons
The new generation of tequileros Pánfilo and Simón Contreras got tired of the skirmish over the hills and returned to their ravines to continue producing tequila in 1930.
The bullets were about to end, the woman of Panfilo had in her arms a future tequilero named José, the defenders of the town were about to resign their positions awaiting the lawsuit with the Cristeros and they never arrived, the sun and boredom made them harder, the world changed when they stopped having in 1930, legal circulation of gold and silver coins, it was not going to be easy to keep the money.
By that time the tequila brought to the town of Valle de Juárez, the first radio and the first vitola also with music brings a great boost to everyday drunkenness, three years later the first truck arrives, already by 1940 the liquor stores continue with pots of mud, the tuba in wells with cement, Pánfilo Contreras grinds the maguey with a stone wheel pulled by males the weight of honey was a test a penca, the ferment was checked with the smell, the pesalicores is the brush of pine guinumo of centuries tradition and the white oak barrels, that if it was good liquor, people got drunk with pleasure and dawned with hunger. Pánfilo Contreras and Pomposo Chávez, his father-in-law, gave his tequila a good reputation.
Pánfilo Contreras Torres tests the tequila business in different places, went to La Barca, to Teocuitatlán de Corona and finally lands in his land, raising the liquor store at the foot of the Agua Fría railing in Valle de Juárez, Jalisco.
The secrets accumulated by years, and the legacies by their predecessors, that’s where Mr. José, with the desire to get ahead, already thinks of an industry that in the town there is not, and moved by its ideals of growth and based on the great experience that the family accumulates in the production of tequila, they set out to build a factory in the city of Acatlán de Juárez in the same state of Jalisco, since it was the place where he found the quality water as he had it in the Agua Fría ravine, wellspring water element irreplaceable for an excellent quality of tequila.
Now, since 2003, the offspring of the Contreras family, taking advantage of Mr. José’s great experience as well as the amalgamation of experience and state-of-the-art technology in the production of tequila, is determined to make a product that distinguishes our families from what others can offer.
In this way the name of Tequila Distinguido is born as a registered brand, based on the families that make it up, families that have always been Distinguished in their way of BEING and DOING the things of TEQUILA.
