Rooted in tradition from the inside out, Sangre de Vida Tequila is inspired by expressions of love and life, beauty and decay combined with the spiritual impact of the celebration Dia de los Muertos.
Sangre de Vida Tequila’s attention and dedication to the smallest details is what sets every aspect of Sangre de Vida apart from any other tequila. It begins with staying true to a 500 year old process that starts with the careful harvesting of Blue Weber agaves, carefully slow steam roasting the piñas in centuries old brick ovens and fermenting for over 5 times longer than most mass produced tequilas. Sangre de Vida embodies the artisan feel from the moment it catches your eye to the moment it touches your lips. Truly, the life blood of the people.
Agave
Quality Blue Agave Tequilana Weber requires between 6 years and 14 years of growth before reaching maturity. We require that the raw sugar content of freshly cut agave contain 23 – 28 degrees brix sugar content. Our agave piñas are trimmed very close to the heart leaving a white appearance with very little green leafy exposure. This helps eliminate the oily-waxy taste and texture and lends to cleaner fermentation/distillation process and resulting final flavor.
Cooking
The agave piña ‘hearts’ are slowly steam-roasted in hornos (centuries old traditional thick stone walled brick ovens) for 36 – 54 hours. This traditional art of slow cooking in brick ovens prevents the cooked agave from caramelizing while softening the fibers and transforming the carbohydrates into fermentable sugars. These ovens also help retain the sweet natural mellow flavors of the carefully grown agave.
The sugar is extracted from the cooked agave with a molino. As the agave fibers pass through the milling heads, the agave is squeezed releasing the sugar concentrated sweet juice. All the while the fibers/juice is being washed with de-ionized/reverse osmosis treated water. This molino system is an almost exact, but smaller, replica of the milling systems used in the process of sugar cane for sugar production.
Fermentation
We utilize a medium-slow fermentation system. Average fermentation requires 48 – 60 hours. Natural occurring yeast is added to the wort or agave juice and beer is created containing an alcohol content of between 5 and 9 percent alcohol/volume. Many mass produced tequilas are fermented for only 10 – 12 hours. This results in a more neutral final tequila flavor. Typically, the slower the fermentation process, the more full-bodied tequila/agave flavor.
Distillation-Single Batch
We distill the fermented beer twice. A slow distillation process is utilized (approximately 5 hours per 5000 liter pot). We use alembic stills commonly known as pot stills. The first distillation separates and concentrates alcohol from the fermented wort. The resulting alcohol content is approximately 25% alcohol/volume. The first distillation creates what is known as “ordinario” tequila. It is quite high in volatile alcohols such as methanol, isopropanol, and ethyl acetate. The second distillation enriches the alcohol content to approximately 55% alcohol/volume, which is the final product.