José Cuervo
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| Type | Tequila |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Tequila Cuervo La Rojeña, S.A. de C.V |
| Distributor | Proximo Spirits |
| Country of origin | Mexico |
| Introduced | 1795 |
| Alcohol by volume | 35%-40% abv |
| Proof (US) | 70-80 |
| Color | Clear/golden/dark |
| Website | cuervo.com |
Jose Cuervo is a brand of tequila. It is the best-selling tequila in the world, with a 35.1% market share of the tequila sector worldwide and a 33.66% share of the US tequila sector as of July 2013. As of 2012, Jose Cuervo sells 3.5 million cases of tequila in the US annually, and a fifth of the world's tequila by volume.
Jose Cuervo is family-owned and is run today by the Beckmann family of Mexico, descendants of Don Jose Antonio de Cuervo. Juan-Domingo Beckmann, son of Juan Beckmann, is the sixth-generation leader of the company. In July 2013 Proximo Spirits took over US distribution of Jose Cuervo from Diageo, which had managed it since 1997.
In 1758, Don Jose Antonio de Cuervo was issued a land grant by King Ferdinand VI of Spain in the town of Tequila, Jalisco. Here his family founded the Taberna de Cuervo, the farm where they would cultivate and harvest the flowering blue agave plant, a water-retaining plant found in central Mexico that is distilled to create tequila. The first Vino Mezcal de Tequila de Jose Cuervo was made in 1795, after Don Jose Antonio de Cuervo's son Jose María Guadalupe de Cuervo was granted a permit from King Carlos IV of Spain to produce tequila commercially, following a time of prohibition under King Carlos III. This was the birth of the tequila industry.
By 1880, the Cuervo family had begun individually bottling tequila for commercial distribution. Cuervo was the first distiller to bottle tequila, at a time when other distillers were still using barrels. Tequila was known as "mezcal de tequila" until 1893, when tequila makers and the Mexican government dropped "mezcal" from the name. Cuervo's first bottled tequila was sold in 1906.
Upon the death of Don Jesus, his wife, Ana Gonzalez Rubio, inherited La Rojeña and in 1900 married Jose Cuervo Labastida, head of La Constancia. From then on, the brand became Jose Cuervo Tequila. After Ana Gonzalez Rubio's death in 1934, the estate was left to her niece Guadalupe Gallardo, who died in 1966 and left the estate to her sister, Virginia Gallardo. One of her sons, Juan Beckmann Gallardo, would manage the business. Part of Cuervo was owned by Distribuidora Bega, and, starting in 1979, the other part was owned by Grupo Cuervo, made up of Beckmann, his son Juan Beckmann Vidal, Jose Luis Campos, and Heublein Inc.
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Wikipedia