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Production

Planting, tending, and harvesting the agave plant remains a manual effort, largely unchanged by modern farm machinery and relying on centuries-old expertise. The people who harvest it, the jimadores, have intimate knowledge of how the plants should be cultivated, passed down from generation to generation.

By regularly trimming any quiotes (a stalk at the center of the plant that could grow several meters high if not cut back), the jimadores prevent the agave from flowering and dying early, allowing it to fully ripen. They also determine when each plant is ready to be harvested, and using a special knife called a coa (with a circular blade on a long pole), carefully cut away the leaves from the piña (the succulent core of the plant), which can average around 70 kg (150 lb) in the valley and 110 kg (240 lb) in the highlands. If harvested too late or too early, the piñas will not have the right amount of carbohydrates for fermentation.

After harvesting, the piñas are transported to ovens where they are slowly baked to break down their complex fructans into simple fructose. Then, the baked piñas are either shredded or mashed under a large stone wheel called a tahona. The pulp fiber, or bagazo, left behind is often reused as compost or animal feed, or can be used as fuel or processed into paper. Some producers like to add a small amount of bagazo back into their fermentation tanks for a stronger agave flavor in the final product.

The extracted agave juice is then poured into either large wooden or stainless steel vats for several days to ferment, resulting in a wort, or mosto, with low alcohol content. This wort is then distilled once to produce what is called ordinario, and then a second time to produce clear "silver" tequila. A minimum of two distillations is required by law. A few producers such as Casa Noble (for their "Crystal" expression) and Corzo (for their añejo expression) have experimented with distilling the product a third time, but this has not caught on as a trend, and some have said it removes too much of the agave flavor from the tequila. At this point the tequila is either bottled as silver tequila or it is pumped into wooden barrels to age, where it develops a mellower flavor and amber color.

The differences in taste between tequila made from valley and highland agave plants can be noticeable. Plants grown in the highlands often yield sweeter and fruitier-tasting tequila, while valley agaves give the tequila an earthier flavor.