Why Alto Canto's Daday Suárez built the highest tequila distillery on earth

Most craft tequila brands trace their lineage backward. A grandfather, a father, a distillery that predates the family photograph on the office wall. The story arrives before the liquid does.

Alto Canto came the other way around.

Daday Suárez is not a fifth-generation anything. 

He is a Mexico City entrepreneur with a mechanical engineering degree, twenty-plus years running a human resources firm, a philosophy degree, and a sommelier certification that shapes how he thinks about aroma and flavor. 

He came to tequila not through inheritance, but through curiosity. And then through obsession.

It nearly went a different way. Suárez had actually been in conversations to buy a small Mexican tequila brand. The deal did not close, but the months of due diligence pulled him inside the tequila world in a way that surprised him.

"Those months that we were in contact about the brand, the process, the land, everything," he says, "I fell in love with the tequila industry."

Buying a brand, he decided, would have been fast, expensive, and someone else's story. Building one from scratch would be slower, harder, but his own.

"I didn't want to just do a tequila," Suárez explains. "I wanted to be more like wine, in the sense that for me the nose is something very important."

So he did what he had done for more than twenty years as a recruiter: he found the best.

Suárez does not build companies around plans. He builds them around people. 

Without even a plot of land, much less a distillery or a recipe, he lined up nine candidates for the Alto Canto master distiller position, all scheduled to interview on the same day. 

Juan Reyes was candidate number five. Fifteen minutes into the conversation, Suárez hired him.

The technical part was obvious. Reyes had spent more than a decade at Patrón, working across production, bottling, and the innovation team. But what Suárez was watching for was something beyond experience.

"He's a dreamer," Suárez says. "This is the guy who understands the challenge and who's not going to be afraid, and the things that he doesn't know, he's going to study and read and try to solve the problem even though he doesn't know the answer yet."

Suárez frames his hiring philosophy through a quote from former Dallas Cowboys and Miami Hurricanes coach Jimmy Johnson, whose games Suárez watched for years as a Cowboys season ticket holder. "Jimmy said, get me a team that I want to coach." 

Interview for the person first, then the role. Sit with them long enough to talk about what they read and what they do for fun. If the chemistry is there, the resume becomes a footnote.

And for Reyes, he did not want just a job. He craved a canvas.

"When I gave him an open hand to do whatever he wants, we were able to work together,” Suárez recalls.

Reyes went from optimizing a big-brand system to designing a small one from a blank page. Suárez went from HR executive to first-time tequila builder. Neither had done this before. And that creates a lot of freedom.

"It's liberating," Suárez says of not carrying generations of tradition. "We were able to design a different style of tequila that excites us ."

But he is honest about the evolutionary process of starting a brand. "It's a lot of trial and error. Because you don't know many things that those founding tequila families have already been through. So it's a lot of lessons."

The most dramatic way Alto Canto defies tequila customs and conventions is the site of the distillery. 

Reyes said he could run the entire tequila production process, from cook to bottle, on his own. Suárez wanted proof. So they built a micro-distillery making twenty-liter batches. A tequila science fair project, essentially. 

After sixteen attempts, wild fermentation delivered the profile Suárez was chasing. Cleaner. Bigger nose. Rounder palate. He tasted it against Patrón, Cascahuín, Fortaleza, G4, Tapatío, and Tequila Ocho, and decided his little micro-distillery was playing in the same game.

"NOW we can build a distillery," he told Reyes. Then they went looking for land.

The altitude was Reyes's idea. He studied how thinner air and lower atmospheric pressure alters the processes and outcomes of agave cooking, fermentation, and distillation. 

Ron Zacapa, a unique rum made high in the mountains of Guatemala, was a reference point. He believed altitude would give tequila the same lift.

Suárez was, understandably, suspicious.

Reyes is from Mazamitla, the forested mountain retreat town located two and a half hours south of Guadalajara, on the other side of the giant Lake Chapala. It’s often called “The Switzerland of Mexico.”

"I thought this guy just wants to build a distillery behind his house. But he had a point, and he proved it," says Suarez.

The point is chemistry. At 9,000 feet, water begins to evaporate at approximately 91°C, not 100°C. The lower pressure changes what the ovens do, what the still does, and how yeast behaves. It is a different kitchen, at a different temperature, with different physics.

There is no tequila distillery located higher. And it’s unlikely one will emerge. "There's not much land higher than ours," Suárez says. Above his elevation, the land is either forest reserve or agricultural, legally unbuildable.

Even so, when they crafted the first full-scale batch, Reyes was not entirely sure it would ferment, due to the low temperatures, which stresses the yeast. But it worked, spawning the Alto Canto brand that has achieved much acclaim and many awards in just two years in the market.

The distillery, Tequila El Rocio, is NOM 1636. They make only Alto Canto, no other brands. That combination is genuinely rare, and Suarez wants to keep it that way.

But building it, in his telling, was miserable. The mountain fought back. "Two trucks tilted during the construction and all the bricks fell. Twice the whole crew got COVID. It rains like six hours a day. So they can only work three or four hours." He pauses. "I understood why nobody had developed a distillery in that place. It was really, really hard."

The agave is 100% USDA organic, sourced from both the Valley, the Highlands, and Cienega. Achieving organic certification for tequila is neither easy nor inexpensive. Suárez decided to take that step while watching an episode of the series Chef's Table, on Netflix.

"There was a chef from New York, and he was serving just a carrot, and it was evidently amazing," Suárez remembers. "And he said something that just blew my mind. You cannot do a good dish with poor ingredients. You might be the best chef, but if you use poor ingredients, you cannot develop a good cuisine."

So Suárez set out to find the best agave possible. He does not obsess about geographic origin. He cares only about agave age, sugar content, and organic methods. 

At current prices, organic agave costs him roughly eight to 10 pesos per kilo, against two to three pesos for the regular market. Three to four times more for the raw materials. 

The piñas are trimmed tight, closer to the core than most producers dare. After the jima (the cutting of the penca leaves) the piñas are almost white, with just a centimeter of leaf remaining. It is called jima baja. It costs more, but also removes methanol-heavy fibers that Suárez does not want in Alto Canto, which is strictly additive-free.

Cooking takes 72 hours in traditional masonry ovens. The ovens are just 10 tons, tiny compared to the 50 to 100 ton industry standard. Slow and low, closer to a brisket than a burger. At altitude, the lower evaporation point keeps the sugars from scorching.

Extraction is by tahona. A volcanic-rock wheel, the old way, mineral-forward, gentle on the fibers.

Fermentation is open-air and ambient, meaning whatever yeasts are in the air or present in the distillery at the time, they help turn the sugars to alcohol. Conversely, most brands add commercial yeast to each batch, seeking consistency. Ambient fermentation is often called “wild” fermentation, and it’s an apt name. The process is fickle, and it has been Alto Canto’s steepest learning curve. 

For the first batch, fermentation took 14 days and yielded a mosto muerto with a very low ABV of just three percent alcohol - not really distillable. Suárez had to dump roughly 4,000 to 5,000 liters of tequila in those early days because they hadn’t yet mastered fermentation at 9,000 feet and very low temperatures. For context, the daytime temps in Mazamita are typically 20 to 25 degrees lower than in Tequila. 

Eventually, they figured it out. Today wild fermentation duration for Alto Canto runs closer to five days.

"The yeasts have been developing a micro-ecosystem inside the building, and they love it," Suárez says. "Because we don't use chemicals or anything, everything is favorable to develop this kind of nature inside the distillery." That nature includes…..wasps.

Alto Canto is distilled twice, both times in expensive copper pot stills, at low temperature, with agave fibers included. 

Reyes puts 25 buckets of fibers into each 600-liter first-distillation batch. The fibers add flavor, and squeeze more sugar out of an inefficient tahona extraction.

The water is pure mountain spring water, drawn on site.

Aging, when it happens, runs 4 to 5 months in new American white oak. It’s new oak only at Alto Canto, which is an unusual choice, but Suárez says he’s not going to spend years designing a spirit and then hide the flavor.

"I took all this time and energy and focus to develop this good tequila," Suárez says. "It didn't make sense to me to mix it up with used, second-tier barrels."

Alto Canto is built on a single philosophical bet. A tequila can give a big nose and impactful  flavor without bringing burn along for the ride. Suárez calls it soft, not smooth. Smooth means bland. Soft means integrated.

He compares it to wine, deliberately. A great Bordeaux at 14% doesn't punch you in the teeth the way a hot Spanish red at 17% does. That three-point ABV gap is a 20% difference in alcohol delivery, and you feel it. Suárez wants Alto Canto to carry warmth without carrying a bite.

"For me, being able to round up the alcohol note in the whole liquid, and then you get hit by the warmth and some notes at the first sip and then another notes on the second and the aftertaste, and you just felt the warmth and you don't feel the bite beside your teeth and your lips of that high alcohol note. For me, that's an achievement."

Because fermentation is wild, no two are identical. Each release reads closer to a wine vintage than to a factory production. The details of every batch are documented online, at the Alto Canto website.

Alto Canto High Proof Blanco (48% ABV)

Straight from the copper stills, no water added. The crown jewel. Bigger citrus, more mineral, a creamy weight in the mouth that undiluted tequilas rarely earn. The strength is there but the heat is not aggressive. This is the one Suarez brings to a tasting when he wants to change someone's mind. $89.99

Alto Canto Blanco (40% ABV)

The Blanco is the High Proof brought down with pure spring water. That dilution opens the nose. Cooked agave, lime, pomelo, thyme, a citrus lift that reads bright without going sharp. The palate is round, sweet-forward, and quietly mineral. $79.99

Alto Canto Reposado (40% ABV)

The Blanco rested 4 to 5 months in new American white oak. The sweetest of the three. Vanilla, honey, cherry, cinnamon, almonds, and red fruits ride on top of the agave without smothering it. Excellent neat. Also excellent in cocktails that want a tequila to hold its shape against citrus and bitters. $104.99

For all the expressions, the packaging is extraordinary. Each comes in a sleek, white cardboard box. The glass bottles are embossed with topographic contour lines that highlight the high-elevation origins of the brand. The closures are handcrafted ceramic, heavy, and striking. 

An añejo is scheduled for 2027, and Suárez is deliberately taking his time with it. He is also collecting Japanese Mizunara barrels, for an experimental project. But overall, Alto Canto is committed to creating better and better versions of their core three-piece lineup.

"I don't want to overextend my portfolio," Suárez says. He points to the success of LALO, which sells only blanco and high proof blanco, and does it beautifully.

Suárez is building on a 12 to 20 year timeline at Alto Canto, which puts him wildly out of step with most new brands. Many operate on a three to eight year investment thesis, which forces a different set of decisions on pricing, marketing, and raising outside capital. He has neither the pressure nor the appetite for any of that. His next goal is breaking even in two to three years, at which point his HR business stops subsidizing his tequila mountain.

"As long as I'm breaking even, I'm happy," he says. 

Growth is organic. Distribution is narrow (although Alto Canto is always available online). There will be no aggressive push. That, more than any single production decision, is the thing that separates Alto Canto from every other new luxury brand in the category. Suárez is not running a startup. He is planting a forest.

"I don't think we've produced our best batch yet," he says.

The name is a small confession. Alto canto. High song. The highest note in an opera, and the 9,000 feet they climbed to reach the mountaintop. Pour a glass and taste the difference. 

Alto Canto is a presenting partner of The Tequila Report.