An interview with Martin Grassl from Porfidio

In the early nineties, as the one of three gringo pioneers of the new international ‘100% Agave Standard’, I did my bit for the industry with innovative ideas on how to gentrify the category, whose reputation had been adulterated after companies, over decades, had shamelessly bundled pure agave tequila together with the 51% Agave mixtos and called them both “tequila.”

My mission to promote the all-Agave standard began by with the launch of a basic information campaign for Porfidio in the U.S., comparing the excellence of our 100% Agave product with the emetic mixtos (i.e. blended tequilas). It highlighted the legal and linguistic duplicity shrouding the word “tequila.” Unsurprisingly, such heresy alienated the old tequilero Dons, who comfortably lived off the bulk mixtos tequilas exports to the US, which made up no less than 98% (!) of their exports in 1990.

In his parallel mission, Patron’s founder Martin Crowley, the other 100% Agave “plotter” from the 90s next to me, hosted the 100% Agave Silver standard to win a share of the premium white spirits segment. For me, however, vying for a share of the prestigious Single-Malt market, 100% Agave Añejo was my watchword to gentrify the category. Our approaches were perfectly complementary, while Robert Denton, the third pioneer, manifested his métier by invoking the earthy romance of tahonas, donkeys and the Jalisco hills as “highlands.”

Three decades later, looking at today’s sales for 100% Agave Añejos, my original mission had clearly started a massive trend. The Old Guard, who had dismissed me back then in the 1990s as just another stupid gringo, moved from disdain to hostility once the 100% Agave Standard was enshrined, be it as “Silver” or “Añejo,” into the premium catalogues.

One person’s success always highlights others’ shortcomings, fomenting resentment and envy. My virtuous, albeit naïve, mission to educate US consumers about quality criteria to sell my own 100% Agave wares, thus eventually escalated into a commercial crisis in the industry and later, with the successful ascent of the 100% Agave Standard, into a sandbox replay of the Thirty Years’ War over the ownership of three historically generic words:

– Who, if anyone, should own the intellectual property (IP) rights in trademark Class 33 and the franchise income from the word “tequila,” which had, until recently, been the common linguistic patrimony of the Mexican people?

– Who, if anyone, should own the intellectual property rights to the neo-Latin botanical name “agave,” and phrases derived from it, such as “100% Agave”?

– Who, if anyone, should own the intellectual property rights over the word “mezcal” (which had begun as a Nahuatl word for distilled agave- or agave spirits)

The tequila dons of the Ancien Régime resolved to thrust Porfidio into the vanguard of this war-on-words, very much against my will. Yet I claim that “Porfidio stood one’s man,”

paraphrasing Wittgenstein here. In 2022, precisely 30 years, with a few political assassinations in-between, a final “outcome analysis” of the war settled these questions:

– A privately owned corporation (the CRT), and not the Mexican State, secured the Class 33 IP property rights in the US and India (and other countries) over the previously generic tequila word, ironically more thanks to the Obama Administration than the Mexican State.

– Fortunately, “Agave” was legally enshrined to be a generic, non-trademarkable word and thus so were derivative terms, such as “100% Agave.”

– The word “mezcal” today no longer defines “agave spirits,” its historic dictionary meaning, since Mexican law conjured up an Orwellian Newspeak term two decades ago, “destilado de agave,” subsuming the original concept. Also, the US granted the Mexican government IP ownership over Mezcal through NAFTA.02, but not Class 33 trademark status to anyone.

In summary, I look at my biography as framed by the Thucydides Trap, a cyclical version of destiny that befalls disruptive creators. Out of this disruption was born a new reality that differs, fundamentally, from the status three and a half decades before.

Porfidio

How has the industry changed since you’ve become involved in the 90s?

How can I count the ways? Spirits marketing always echoes the “truisms” of the zeitgeist. Like philosophical breakthroughs, new marketing concepts stand on the shoulders of giant salespersons, so progress owes more to incremental fine-tuning, complementary to earlier inspirations, or is contingent on a decisive rejection of the old. In this evolution, the primary determining factor is economic. The liquor industry evolves along two interlinked paths: a country’s per capita GNP against its GINI co-efficient: The more wealth there is in a country, and the more unfairly distributed it is, then the higher the sales of expensive luxury spirits. So, the US and China are apex luxury spirits markets, but Sweden is not.

Before the 90s, cheap liquor flooded the US and mixtos were a part of that equation, not an exception. Consumers did not stick with them back then out of gullibility, but because the low prices matched their lower incomes. Then came Reaganomics, the big game-changer that cut taxes for the big earners, plus the moral legitimization of widespread personal credit and spending for low earners. So, the zeitgeist called for better drinks: “Je suis arrivé!” Porfidio announced.

Before Reaganomics, at $19.99 retail, Cuervo 1800 was the most expensive tequila. In 1990, Porfidio Añejo came, saw the market and conquered at $85. It discomfited Mr. Cuervo 1800, because Mr. Porfidio’s silliness wasn’t actually silly at all. Over the years, as disposable income rose, so did luxury spirits sales, and with it, Porfidio’s, which like other luxury spirits, kicked ass in post-Communist Russia, the US, Japan, the Emirates, and in the City of London.

Looking back to Mexico, in the 90s, agave spirits, 100% or not, were only for “the peasants,” or La Raza, as white Mexicans disparagingly called them. Porfidio copied Corona beer’s example and changed that forever by invoking the magic powers of Malinchismo. Once Porfidio achieved prestige in the US, that made Porfidio, and any pure agave tequila in general, fit for upper class consumption back in Mexico. Through the forces of Malinchismo, and not much else, Porfidio became the leading 100% Agave Añejo  brand in Mexico itself in the 90s. A sociology professor has opined that “Corona [the beer] and Porfidio contributed to the social and racial democratization of Mexico.” I think that there is some deep historic truth in these wise words, and I humbly accept the credit.

When the 2008 Recession halted the age of exuberance, sales of prestige spirits like Porfidio dropped 90% overnight, in particular in London and New York, when the bankers lined up for bailout checks, and the $19.99 brands flourished again, with Tito’s as the new star. The recessions spawned a new zeitgeist. Thus, the unkempt “micro-agave-distillers” flocked en masse down from the Sierra to make tequila, like their artisan whiskey brethren from Colorado and Oregon. They did not sell objective quality, but, rather, a metaphysical ideal of “authenticity,” made by suffering people for sympathizers, aiming for social solidarity. Someone had to be blamed for their recession-induced hardship, and the large impersonal corporations fit the frame. Consumers no longer cared whether the liquor was actually flavorful, or conveyed visual beauty, or whether its price tag conveyed prestige and social cachet. Instead, spirits marketers now tapped consumers’ distaste for anything that smacked of ugly white, or corporate. This zeitgeist created a trend for the large distillers to nurture and market faux-small-batch, “craft” agave spirits, catapulting their local distillers down in Mexico into faked stardom, while camouflaging the gringo bosses and the German and Danish liquor technologists behind them, who developed the yeasts and fine-tuned the equipment.

The fashion trend then evolved from the artisanal, unshaven, sun-burnt Euro-Hispanic cowboys in boots to solidarity purchases from the unshod but authentic ethnic minorities of the Del Maguey’s narrative. Thus was born a linguistic turn from the now tarnished corporate “tequila” towards the newly hip “mezcal,” that etymologically and analytically was in fact the same spirit. In taste, this zeitgeist laterally transmuted taste buds, as mezcal’s smoke-contamination with a soupçon of extra methanol and plasticizers [temporarily] mutated from “pungent” to “exquisite.” Mezcal was now politically ultra-correct, hence the perceived taste. This move from a zeitgeist into a taste preference would temporarily alter liquor industry fundamentals when some major tequila corporations began incorporating smoke aromas into their tequilas to stay trendy. Unhygienic tahonas and donkey excreta became in name, even when actually absent, the hottest marketing thing, particularly at mega factories. Jacques Rousseau had long blazed the trail for this Primitivism.

After the recession was over and the expediently elevated paisano heroes forgotten, guru worship reattached itself to consumers like a leech, and a new zeitgeist arose once again. I call it the Age of Nietzsche. Like Übermenschen, the stars descended from Hollywood Heaven to “share” the glory of the agave, even if they were too savvy to risk kidnapping by not actually visiting their agave fields in Mexico. Casa Amigos was the trendsetter, and many others followed. The new sales script pared down on packaging as the budget was diverted to bribing up the stars.

Then, in 2022, the zeitgeist marginally adjusted again, to Planet Red, with the Sacred Initiative, called into life by another gringo superstar with a “politically inappropriate” surname from Sussex, Jenner, whose Tequila 818 was promptly smeared in a nasty press campaign for “cultural appropriation” by the fearful white competition because she was (also) white, and hence somehow politically deemed unable to claim that a tequila purchase was all about elevating a Mexican peasant out of poverty. I wonder whether the next episode in this ongoing reality show will be about Australian aborigines, Incas, extraterrestrials, or zombies who make agave spirits; or if there might arise one day in the future a retro-zeitgeist that recalibrates the American narrative to refocus on great, good or bad-tasting.

Today, in 2025, 100% Agave brands of different zeitgeist eras are on sale at most US retailers. Despite Darwin’s dictates, the newer brands have not driven the older into extinction. Even Cuervo Gold and Pepe Lopez, the survivors of the mixtos from the 80s, linger for the economically disadvantaged. It’s called democracy. Sure, over the years, 1942 gained market share at the expense of Don Julio, which lost market share to CasaAmigos, but then, who cares when the same company owns all three brands? So, in reality, nothing has changed.

Yet, over the last three decades, I have witnessed an indexable push towards industry consolidation amongst brand owners, distributors, and retailers, but this is characteristic of all inter-war cycles in history, and so part of the natural cycle.

What do you see as the future of the agave spirits industry?

I see a brilliant future ahead for agave spirits, because agave spirits are statistically still only still a regional success story, just like baijiu in Greater China, since 90% of pure agave spirits are still consumed on the American Continent, North and South combined.

Also, the public’s awareness of the 100% Agave category is no older than 30 years, a curate time of only a split second in alcohol history. Hence, I statistically insist that the global expansion potential for agave spirits is still limitless, in particular in Europe, and, alas, India.

Is there anything you’d like to say to people who may contemplate entering and working in the agave spirits industry in some role?

When I started out in the 90s, the 100% Agave terroir was still an immaculate virgin and, hence, filled with unlimited, imaginary potential in the US. Back then, there was no global demand for “100% Agave”, and so the market demand had to be conjured into existence from ground zero.

Today, three decades later, we, the three pioneers, did the groundwork, and so the field for100% Agave distillates is already there for any new brand to enter. A new brand only demands product differentiation in that market. Often, this simply needs a larger marketing budget than one’s price-segment competitors rather than heroic creative effort.

Kotler, academia’s marketing guru, defined marketing as “identifying existing consumers’ needs and satisfying them.” However, as a serial creator myself, I disagree, because I define true marketing as the creating of products for which there is no demand at the time of conception! For example, no one knew they needed an iPad before it came into being. And no one felt they would ever want Porfidio Añejo from third-world Mexico, while politely savoring their prestigious Scottish Single Malts on the porch. However, many did know that they would want a Porfidio Cactus Bottle to decorate their home, and so the love for a new spirits category, the Anejo Tequilas, was born by Porfidio through the back door.

So, creation is visionary, always dosed with an element of compulsiveness and madness. Creators create for the sake of creation, not to satisfy others. Van Gogh did not paint his masterpieces to sell them for millions, but to auto-medicate. Ayn Rand wrote lengthy books to define the verbal antagonism between the words “creator” and “second-hander.” She defines second-handers as faux-creators who exploit a current demand (created by the real creators), which brings us back to Professor Kotler.

So, to answer the question, for any newcomer, the choice is between being a second-hander with yet another harmonized 100% Agave brand under the Tequila® Inc. franchise with a very substantial market-entry-toll, known as “marketing funds, or come up with a truly earthshaking innovation. Looking at the US zeitgeist of the day, for the U.S., a collaboration with a celebrity partner looks like the most effective way to mine human imbecility. Alas, in a classic fairy tale of the creation of a ‘100% Agave Supernova’, liquid quality, unique packaging, market-channel-bribery funds and celebrity sex appeal would beg to be packaged into one wildly lovable integrated whole. Yet I have never seen such a supernova, so there is a genuine opportunity waiting for equity funds.

However, for the young interlopers and disrupters, the Neuen Wilden, those with big brains but small budgets, I advise to shun the over-saturated US and Latin American markets and target the virgin territories out there for pure agave spirits, such as Continental Europe, India or China. To sell agave distillates outside the Americas, it calls for being a true creator, inventing culturally attuned marketing formulae that transcend the American marketing idiosyncrasies of exploiting ethnicity, Hollywood movie stars, the Wild West, and the Netflix movie Narcos. It is a formidable challenge, but one that the new generation will eventually rise to. My insider tip would be to focus with agave spirits on the inulin factor, the vegan argument, sustainability, organicness, carbon farming, desert greening, and reforestation. Other than that, there is no need for a sage to foretell that agave agriculture and agave distilling are bound by Destiny, emulating the example of whisky, to go increasingly international, hence opening up new frontiers for agave agriculture and  agave spirits production outside and beyond the context of the Mexican Wild West, the new trend. India is one one of those examples.