Price reveals little
"Good tequila has to be expensive"
Elaborate bottles, famous names on the label, high price tags: plenty suggests that only expensive tequila can be good. This station shows what the price actually reveals and where it's worth looking instead.
Why do well-known tequila brands seem so expensive?
In recent years numerous celebrities have launched their own tequila brands, often with elaborate design, high prices and large marketing campaigns. The impression quickly forms that expensive and celebrity-endorsed automatically means especially high quality. In reality, a bottle's price mainly reflects brand-building, packaging and advertising budget, not necessarily what actually happened between the agave field and the still.
Similar effects show up in other spirits categories too, such as gin or whisky, where celebrity backing regularly leads to higher prices without necessarily changing anything about the recipe or distillation process. Tequila is by no means exempt from this broader market pattern.
What does the NOM number on the label actually reveal?
Every bottle of tequila carries a NOM number, an identifier for the distillery that follows the NOM-006 rules and is overseen by the Consejo Regulador del Tequila. This number identifies not the brand but the actual production facility. Because there are far fewer licensed distilleries than brands, many labels share the same NOM number. They're then made at the same site by the same master distillers, even though the marketing and price may seem worlds apart. A glance at this number sometimes reveals that two very differently priced bottles come from the exact same distillery.
Anyone who knows the NOM number of a favourite product can look it up with little effort and often finds surprising neighbours: budget entry-level tequilas and considerably pricier premium bottles that come from the same distillery, differing only in recipe, packaging and target audience.
So where does the high price actually come from?
Price is made up of many factors that have little to do with flavour. These include licensing fees paid to celebrity namesakes, elaborate bottles made of heavy glass, advertising campaigns, import duties, and trade margins in each country. The ageing category also plays a role: an Extra Añejo requires at least three years of ageing in barrels of up to 600 litres, which genuinely costs more than a young Blanco. A tequila marketed as Cristalino, a filtered, decolourised Añejo or Extra Añejo, is not, however, a separate category recognised by the standard, but purely a marketing term, one that nonetheless often commands a higher price.
The sheer number of new brands also drives up costs: the more labels competing for attention on the shelf, the more budget flows into packaging design and advertising space rather than into actual production. In the end, customers pay a substantial part of the bottle price for shelf visibility, not for additional craftsmanship at the distillery.
How can you recognise quality rather than relying on price?
More reliable than price or celebrity endorsement are the details the standard actually requires. These include the class stated on the label, Blanco, Reposado, Añejo or Extra Añejo, the phrase "100% Agave" rather than just "Tequila," and the distillery's NOM number. Small, little-advertised distilleries often produce tequila just as carefully as the big, expensive brands, following the very same rules, just without a famous face's marketing budget. Anyone looking for quality is better off researching the class and the production method than the name on the label.
A simple practical test helps too: tasting two tequilas of the same class and similar NOM number side by side often reveals just how small the flavour difference actually is despite a large price gap. Once you've done that comparison, you're more likely to rely on class and origin than on a familiar name on the label next time you buy.