Philly Tequila Connection

His best shotCenter City restaurateur is out to craft a high-end, affordable tequilaBy TERESA PUENTEFor the Daily News

PHILADELPHIA RESTAURATEUR David Suro lays his hand on the side of the giant vats where raw tequila ferments with a special ingredient, a yeast normally used for French champagne. The tequila bubbles and pops to the baroque strains of Vivaldi and Mozart, which play 24 hours a day in the plant in Arandas, Mexico.
"It's alive," said Suro. "It moves to the music."

Suro, 43, is the owner of Los Catrines Restaurant and Tequila's Bar at 16th and Locust in Center City, where they serve more than 75 brands of tequila.

But this tequila connoisseur and his wife, Annette, have now founded their own boutique brand of tequila called Siembra Azul, or Blue Harvest, and they're spending three months a year in Mexico perfecting the drink to make it high-end - at accessible prices. Suro said he's not aiming for volume, but for quality.

Suro has returned to his home state of Jalisco, also the birthplace of tequila, to embark on this new venture. He travels back and forth from here to Philadelphia a few times a month for the three months to produce the tequila in Arandas, a small town two hours from Guadalajara. It is surrounded by fields of blue agave plants, which grow in the red earth of the region known as Los Altos de Jalisco.

He is one of the first Mexican immigrants to return to his homeland to produce an original brand of tequila, bucking a trend as many of the major tequila companies, previously owned by Mexican families, are now in the hands of multinational owners.

"Many of the big tequila makers have been sold off," said Sergio Vivanco Lozano, director of sales for Viva Mexico tequila in Arandas. Suro partnered with the Vivancos to lease their plant to make Siembra Azul for three months of the year.

Export of the tequila from Mexico to the United States is expected to begin by June. At first, the 750-milliliter bottles will be sold in a limited number of states, including Pennsylvania, New York, Nevada, Texas, Illinois and California. Suro also plans to serve it at his restaurant. The bottles will run $25 to $28 for blanco and $32 to $35 for the reposado.
"This is part of my culture, and I have dedicated more than 20 years to studying tequila," said Suro, who immigrated to Philadelphia when he was 23.

Suro's dream
It was amor that brought Suro, a native of Guadalajara, to the City of Brotherly Love. He fell in love with an Italian-American woman and Philly native while she was on vacation in Cancun. He soon followed her back to the United States. He was just a young man, but he had a dream to open a restaurant with Mexican dishes that go beyond the routine of fajitas and chimichangas, which are more Tex-Mex than Mexican.

"At that time there were only a few Mexican restaurants in the city [Philadelphia]," he said. "The city has been very generous to me. I've tried to create my own Mexico in Philadelphia."
His goal is to share more of the best of Mexico with his customers in the United States. Suro also aims to change the public's perceptions about tequila.

It's not simply a party drink abused by college students on Spring Break.
"I want to change the stereotypes that surround tequila," Suro said.
To do that, he enlisted the help of Leopoldo Solis Tinoco, considered Mexico's tequila "guru," and Rogelio Luna-Zamora, Mexico's leading academic expert on tequila from the University of Guadalajara.

Solis said quality tequila is a drink to be savored, much like wine. It's best to serve it in a globular or brandy glass and not a shot glass, he added.
To use a small shot glass is like tying a bouquet of flowers with a string instead of letting them breathe in a nice vase, explained Solis, who is the project director in charge of production on the ground in Arandas.
"The glass is key," Solis said.

It also isn't necessary to use salt and lime with tequila, or even sangrita, a tomato-based drink often served in Mexico. A good tequila should be smooth and there's no need to alter the palate with a dash of salt and lime. "Tequila is very fine and should be consumed in its natural state," Solis said.

In the garden of the distillery, Solis also demonstrates the proper way to smell and drink tequila. First, one should turn to the right and tilt the head upward to smell the tequila, then smell it at eye level and smell it again with your head tilted downward. Repeat the same on the left side. You should notice subtle differences in the smell.
One can also gently swirl the tequila by moving the glass from the base. A low-quality tequila will smell bitter and like acetone, he said. Siembra Azul should smell sweet with hints of chocolate and vanilla.

"This is what we call the prueba de fuego, or trial by fire," added Solis.
After sniffing and swirling your tequila, you are ready to drink it. There are five simple steps. First you should fill your lungs with air. Second, tilt the glass and sip about a tablespoon size in your mouth. Third, let the tequila roll over your tongue for about eight seconds. Fourth, exhale over the tequila, and fifth swallow. It should go down easy and leave one with a warm feeling in the stomach.

"A good tequila is like a good friend and always leaves you with a good taste in your mouth," Solis said.

A golden process
Tequila has been exported to the United States for more than a century, but over the last 25 years, tequila consumption has been on the rise. Sales in the United States grew by 1,500 percent from 1975 to 1995. Of the 98 tequila distilleries in Mexico, Jalisco is home to 96. Only five regions in the country are allowed to make government-certified tequila. Other countries have tried to make a tequilalike drink, but it's not tequila without certification from the Mexican government.

The workers who harvest the tequila are called jimadores, which comes from the indigenous word jima. Tequila is made from the blue agave plant and it must mature seven to 11 years before it can be harvested.

For Siembra Azul, they are selecting the best agave plants from the area fields, when most tequila makers harvest entire fields. The prickly blue leaves are cut off the agave and the plants, which can weigh nearly 100 pounds, are sliced up so they look like shaved pineapples. They then cut out the hearts from the agave, whose insides are whitish.

Next they go into an oven the size of a small bedroom, where they are vaporized for 24 hours. As the sweet juices cook in the agave, they change to a golden yellow color and become pulpy. The agave is sweet to the taste. Afterward, the ovens are cleaned before another batch is vaporized. This eliminates the bitter sugars left behind. Most other distilleries do not clean out their ovens, Suro said.

From there, the chunks of cooked agave are put on a mill, where they are ground up into pulp. The juice is then extracted into a large vat. From there it goes to the fermentation process for seven days in a huge tank.

From there it goes to the distillation process. They have designed special stills that bend at an angle to prevent impurities from seeping back into the product. The tequila then distills at a low temperature. Solis compares it to cooking a steak on a low-flame grill.

"What happens to steak if you cook it too high?" he asks as he walks through the high-ceilinged, red brick distillery. "It turns out hard and tough. We don't want that."
In all, the whole process, including two distillation steps, takes about a week and a half to produce tequila blanco, or white tequila. Siembra Azul also makes two other kinds of tequila. Reposado is aged a minimum of two months and anejo is aged a minimum of one year in sweet, smoky white oak barrels imported from the Ozarks in the United States.

Siembra Azul also is 100 percent agave, which means it is made from pure agave. If you are looking for a quality tequila, it's important to check for that 100 percent agave label.
This year they will produce 120,000 bottles of Siembra Azul to be sold in the United States. Suro hopes that eventually his tequila will reach the Mexican market on the shelves next to the famous brands of Cazadores, Herradura and Don Julio.

"Our desire is to be one of the very best tequilas," Suro said.
Suro also said that his tequila won't come with a nasty hangover.
Yes, he even recommends drinking an entire bottle at once. (This guy kicks ass!)

"I can guarantee that 100 percent," he said.