What Has to Be on the Label
Requirements and Marketing
Every bottle of tequila or mezcal carries words the law demands, and words that exist purely to sell. Anyone who knows the NOM number, the agave percentage, and the class can read a label correctly in a minute — the rest is left to the marketing department.
The NOM Number: The Distillery's Fingerprint
Every bottle carries a NOM number, such as NOM 1122. It stands for the Norma Oficial Mexicana and is assigned per production facility, not per brand. Because many small distilleries bottle on behalf of large companies, a dozen brand names often share the same NOM number without that being obvious at first glance.
Anyone comparing two bottles with the same NOM number is, in reality, comparing the same facility, no matter how different the label and price may look. The number says nothing about the quality of the contents, but it reliably reveals who actually did the distilling.
100% Agave vs. Plain "Tequila"
If the label reads "100% Agave," all the fermentable sugar must come from the blue Weber agave, and the bottle must be bottled in Mexico. Without this addition, a minimum of 51 percent agave sugar is enough; the rest may come from other sugars such as cane sugar or glucose syrup. In practice, this simpler kind is called "Mixto," even though the word itself is rarely printed.
Mixto may be exported in bulk tanks and bottled only in the destination country; genuine 100% agave tequila may not. That's why some cheap bottle on the supermarket shelf carries no Mexican bottling statement at all — a quiet clue to the cheaper recipe behind it.
For beginners, it's worth looking at both pieces of information together: if "100% Agave" appears alongside a Mexican address as the place of bottling, it's certainly the higher-quality version. If both are missing, it's worth taking a second look at the price, since pure Mixto tequila is cheaper to produce and usually shows that on the shelf as well.
The Class: From Blanco to Extra Añejo
Five words indicate how long a tequila spent in the barrel: Blanco, Joven, Reposado, Añejo, Extra Añejo. The class always appears on the label, usually directly under the brand name, and is not a flavor description but a time statement with a fixed legal minimum.
What these words mean in detail will be covered in the next stops on this journey. For a first glance, the order is enough: Blanco comes straight from the still, Extra Añejo has spent at least three years in the barrel, and clearly graded waiting periods lie in between.
This order is the same worldwide, whether the bottle is sold in Mexico, Germany, or the United States, because the class is part of the protected Mexican standard. A retailer can't simply label a Blanco as a Reposado just because the bottle happens to sit next to barrels on the shelf.
Consejo Regulador: The Seal of Approval in the Fine Print
In addition to the NOM number, the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT) inspects every batch before it may bear the name "Tequila." For mezcal, this task falls to the Consejo Regulador del Mezcal (CRM). Without these regulatory bodies in the background, even the finest standard would exist only on paper.
A hologram seal or a printed CRT or CRM logo next to the NOM number is an additional mark of authenticity, but not mandatory. Only the NOM number, agave percentage, and class are required — the rest is optional flourish from the respective distillery.
Counterfeits are a real problem, especially abroad, particularly with well-known brands. Anyone unsure can look up the NOM number together with the brand name on the official CRT website, since all registered facilities and their approved brands are listed there publicly — a simple cross-check that reveals more than any seal on the bottle.
What's Pure Marketing: "Reserva," "Artesanal," "Premium"
Words like "Reserva," "Premium," "Small Batch," or "Handcrafted" appear in no regulation. For tequila, any distillery may use them freely, regardless of how the drink was actually produced. They sound like quality, but legally mean nothing.
With mezcal, the situation is different: there, "Artesanal" is itself a legal term with fixed rules for cooking, milling, and distilling, as stop eight of this journey shows. So the same word can be empty marketing for one spirit and law for the other.
In the EU, only bottles from the protected Mexican region may be called "Tequila" at all. This is based on EU Spirit Drinks Regulation 2019/787 together with the 1997 agreement between the EU and Mexico on spirit drinks.