China: taste for tequila grows; In a decade exports tripled

Qionglai, Chengdu., In the middle of the mountains that are home to one of the largest firefly watching sites in Asia, the Mexican attraction is growing as part of the marketing of distillates. Qionglai – a county with 2,300 years of history that goes back to the ancient Silk Road – seeks to include tequila in its project to build a mecca of spirits; and even import agave juice for local production.

Rui Peng, director of the Qionglai Industrial Development Center, explained that they seek to promote the sale of tequila in this city. On the one hand, through the import of the juices extracted from the agave; However, to do so, it is necessary to overcome Mexico’s market permit difficulties and protection policieshe commented in an interview.

As Chengdu (where Qionglai is located) is one of the most important places for liquor in China, it has that base to import and produce tequila.Rui assured.

He highlighted that the general objective is to establish a base in Qionglai where liquors from all over the world are marketed, such as tequila in the case of Mexico. According to the plan explained by Rui, part of this promotion of the agave distillate consists of erecting a Mexican-style building, there to sell the liquor, while promoting the culture of the Latin American country.

Rui does not detail whether this project could be completed with finished imports of tequila, because the Mexican distillate has had a designation of origin since 1974. This means that tequila production – including the planting of blue variety Weber agave and the opening of production plants of liquor – is reserved for 181 municipalities; 125 of them in Jalisco; 30 in Michoacán; 11 in Tamaulipas; 8 in Nayarit and 7 in Guanajuato.

Any distillate produced outside of these boundaries cannot be marketed as tequila.

Sales of the liquor to China have grown in the last decade, after in 2013, following a visit by President Xi Jinping to Mexico, it was decided to repeal the ban on imports of 100 percent blue agave tequila to the Asian country.

Data reported by the Tequila Regulatory Council show that in general tequila exports to China tripled, going from 487,561 tons in 2014 to 1,548,553 tons last year. Those of the drink made 100 percent with blue agave grew by more than 758 percent, going from 66,428 tons to 570,233 per year.

Making tequila is a process of at least 10 steps before taking it to the market. After the selection and tearing of the agave, comes the extraction of juices and subsequently the cooking, fermentation, distillation, filtration, aging, mixing and packaging. And finally, marketing.