What You’ll Learn:
What it’s like to grow up in a family that owns agave fields.
Why being an agavero first is one of the keys to Zumbador's quality and price.
How López Anaya and his uncle Juan turned a family lunch into Destilería El Sabino.
What López Anaya means when he says El Sabino is still “polishing the diamond.”
How this budget brand routinely clocks 90+ point review scores.
A lot of new tequila brands start with the bottle. Then they build the story around it.
Zumbador started with agave.
That’s the most important thing to know about Roberto López Anaya and the brand he built in the Jalisco Highlands. He did not come to tequila. He grew up in it. He’s a fourth-generation agavero. The plants always come first.
“Without agave, you can't have good tequila,” he says.
López Anaya is the owner and master distiller of the fast-growing new tequila brand, Zumbador, which has received significant early acclaim for its hard-to-fathom combination of quality and affordability.
Roberto López Anaya checking quality at the El Sabino distillery. Photo courtesy of Zumbador Tequila
While Zumbador is his first brand, he perhaps comes by tequila success naturally, as the nephew of Felipe and Carlos Camarena, legendary owners and master distillers of (among other brands) G4 and Tapatio, respectively.
But, his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were not tequila makers, they were agave growers with a collection of other businesses. In fact, López Anaya spent weekends as a child traveling with his father and grandfather from his family’s home in Mexico City to visit the agave fields in the Highlands, but those trips didn’t culminate in distillery visits.
López Anaya says the fields in Jalisco are still his favorite place in the world but he wanted to be even more immersed in the world of agave. He always knew agave would be part of his life, but what he really wanted was to run both a distillery and a brand, not just the agave side. “It was always my dream to run a distillery and create a tequila brand,” he said. “Being a tequilero was my dream since I was a kid.”
And now, that dream is real.
But achieving any dream requires learning that dreams don’t just happen, they require massive effort.
“I’m having really long days from six in the morning until sometimes two the next morning. Sixteen or twenty hours on many days, because I love to be involved in every part of the business.”
He learned that drive as a child. He talks about seeing his uncles work similar hours in agave fields and their own distilleries. “That marked me,” he said. “They loved what they did.” He didn’t just inherit land, he inherited a standard.
He also grew up watching what discipline looked like in a tequila family. He talks about seeing his uncles wake up at 6 a.m. to go to the fields, then stay at the distillery until 1 or 2 in the morning trying to make every batch better. “That marked me,” he said. “They loved what they did.”
He didn’t just inherit land, he inherited a standard.
Estate-grown agave used for Zumbador. Photo courtesy of Zumbador tequila.
Zumbador is not just an agave grower's side project. It is the expression of a very specific ambition: take a family inheritance in agave, master the tequila distillation side, and build a brand that reflects both.
How did the El Sabino Distillery begin?
Zumbador is the flagship brand from Destilieria El Sabino (NOM 1643), located in the tiny tequila Mecca of Jesús Maria. It’s one of the newest distilleries in the region, and how it was created, like a lot of good tequila stories, starts with tacos.
During the early pandemic period, López Anaya was at a family gathering when he started talking with his uncle Juan about building a distillery. Juan had already built Hacienda El Ovido, (NOM 1580), and had decades of experience making tequila. López Anaya knew the tequila theory and the agave side of the family business, but he needed someone to combine it all into a working system.
He remembers putting the question directly to his uncle: would he come with him and help build it? “I told him I always wanted to be a tequilero, and I was looking to build a distillery,” López Anaya said. “Would you come with me? Because I needed someone to teach me how to make tequila. I knew the process in theory and on paper, but I needed someone with experience.”
His uncle's answer was immediate. “You’ve got yourself a partner.”
El Sabino took three years to build and began operations in 2023. Zumbador launched in 2024. Today, the distillery also produces the highly regarded brand Manuscrito, which is made by Oscar Vázquez Camarena.
The brick ovens and tahona at El Sabino. Photo courtesy of Zumbador Tequila
While young in age, El Sabino is old in tradition, utilizing stone ovens, a tahona for agave crushing, open tank fermentation (both oak and steel), and copper pot stills.
These are not inexpensive decisions. But profit is not job one here. El Sabino in general, and Zumbador in particular, are family legacies. Zumbador never feels like a project assembled with a calculator. The family and emotional roots are too deep for it to become a purely economic exercise.
Why is Zumbador Tequila so affordable?
One of the first things people notice about Zumbador is the price. Blanco is generally around $25. Reposado usually lands in the low $30s. Añejo is well below where many new brands would place it. And the high proof blanco for $39 may be the best single value in tequila right now, receiving a massive 94-point score from our reviewer at The Tequila Report.
So how is the price so low for a high quality, estate-grown, craft tequila?
Yes, the family still controls a lot of agave in the region, which gives Zumbador something many new brands don’t: real influence over the crop, and more room to keep prices grounded. But according to López Anaya, Zumbador is affordable not just because it can be, but because he wants it to be.
When the brand launched two years ago, he did not think he had earned the right to price it like a fully established premium tequila. The better move, in his view, was to get the tequila into more glasses, get more feedback on the flavor profile, and keep improving.
“We decided to enter into the more affordable end of the market because there were many more possibilities that people were going to try it,” he said. “And we were going to have more feedback, to achieve that final flavor profile.”
That says a lot about how he sees his job, and the assignment of building a brand. He is not treating early batches as finished monuments. He is treating them as part of a long process.
“It is like obtaining a diamond from a mine,” he said. “Every diamond is covered with charcoal at first. We start polishing the diamond to have it completely clean.”
That is what Zumbador is trying to do now. Not reinvent itself batch to batch. Refine itself batch to batch.
Why a Hummingbird?
The name Zumbador means hummingbird in parts of central and southern Mexico, where the word refers to the “zoom” buzzing sound of the bird's wings.
López Anaya said the family chose the name after digging into ideas connected to agave and Mexican tradition. What they found was a meaning that fit the brand almost too well: the hummingbird as a connection between the living and their ancestors.
That symbolism shows up clearly in the way he explains the brand. If the hummingbird appears with a flower, he said, it represents “the advice that generations and ancestors give to the living person every day.”
As it says on the Zumbador website: “The hummingbird carries a deep and spiritual significance for the ancient cultures of Mexico. They represent the resurrection of the soul. This is why we have chosen a hummingbird as our symbol and why it serves as our reminder of the enduring nature of the human spirit.”
The hummingbird is not merely a decoration, or a logo. It is the brand's shorthand for connection and inheritance.
How Is Zumbador Made?
As someone who is admittedly new to the role of master distiller, Lopez Anaya admits he's learned a lot of lessons in the last few years, some of them hard ones.
He said the biggest surprise has been how difficult it is to keep everything aligned in production as ambient conditions change constantly. Temperature changes in the distillery. Rain changes humidity, delivery schedules, and more. Fermentation changes with temperature and the seasons. Distillation changes accordingly.
“There is not a formula to make tequila,” he said. “You have to adapt to your conditions to make each tequila batch.”
That mindset runs through the whole operation. López Anaya says El Sabino watches every step closely, from cooking to extraction to fermentation to distillation, then adjusts along the way. That approach is also why he does not yet make a big marketing point out of batch differences on the label. The distillery is still learning, still refining, still building toward a version of the profile he believes is cleaner and more complete.
He says today's batches are not radically different from the first ones. The core is already there. The differences are in the polishing. “You are always going to find 90 to 95% of that profile,” he said. “We are just trying to get to the ultimate diamond.”
Fermentation is one of the areas where he continues to explore options in search of the diamond, experimenting with lactic fermentation, fermentation length, and the use of more or less agave fibers in the fermentation vessels.
And given that many master distillers suggest that the fermentation step of the production chain is the largest contributor to tequila flavor, López Anaya has a lot of levers to pull to ultimately deliver that perfect batch.
What Does Zumbador Actually Taste Like?
López Anaya's own goal for the lineup is clear. He wants quality first, and he wants the tequila to stay drinkable in the broadest sense. It should work neat. It should work in cocktails. It should still taste like tequila, not like water.
“Tequila should be consumed however you like it,” he said. “People should be able to drink it the way they are willing to, and the tequila has to be compatible with whatever recipe they want to do.”
Even now with these earlier batches, Zumbador is expressive, versatile, and of course affordable.
Zumbador Blanco
Fruit and floral in the nose with different agave tones come in gently, with a hint of acidity and sweetness that blend in harmony. 40% ABV.
Zumbador Blanco High Proof
From the 94-point review at The Tequila Report:
Nose: Tropical fruit, citrus, cooked agave, light cinnamon, and earthy undertones.
Taste: Cooked agave leads the way, followed by lime, grapefruit, and a touch of salinity. The mouthfeel is rich and full, with an almost creamy texture that coats the palate.
Finish: Long and dry, with lingering notes of cinnamon and agave sweetness.
Zumbador Reposado
Zumbador Reposado is rested briefly in used whiskey barrels, including ex-Jack Daniel's barrels. The wood rounds the profile without covering it up.
Reviewers note cooked agave, toasted oak, vanilla, caramel, and some citrus and earth on the nose. On the palate, the agave stays in front while the barrel adds softness, spice, and a little sweetness.
That balance fits what López Anaya says he wants. The tequila should stay recognizable, even as it ages.
Zumbador Añejo
The Añejo spends about 14 months in used Jack Daniel’s Whiskey barrels. From the 90-point review at The Tequila Report:
Nose: Cooked agave and oak hit right off the bat, accented by cinnamon and nutmeg spices, with soft butterscotch and vanilla undertones.
Taste: Leads with strong cooked agave, oak, and light herbal notes. Almond, honey, citrus, and nutmeg spices follow.
Finish: It ends with butterscotch, oak, cinnamon and citrus notes.
What Comes Next for Zumbador?
López Anaya is ambitious, but he does not talk like someone who thinks he is finished, or even that he’s accomplished much, yet.
Zumbador is currently available at retail in 36 states, and López Anaya wants to get his tequila into even more regions of the United States.
But he talks even more passionately about maintaining quality, and continuing to experiment and improve. An extra añejo is in the planning stages, and special editions aged in different casks may also appear.
Unlike many brands, however, the key objective for Zumbador isn’t expansion.
“I am living the dream every day,” he said. “The dream is not always sales. Sales are important because it means you are going forward. But it is more to share with people a good tequila. It is more to know more people so we can get more feedback, so we can get better.”
López Anaya is not chasing scale for its own sake. He is trying to build something that honors the fields, the family, and the standard he grew up around.
And if he can keep doing that while holding the line on price, Zumbador will not just be a good value. It will be one of the clearest examples in tequila right now of what happens when an agavero gets the chance to become the tequilero he always wanted to be.
Zumbador Tequila is a presenting partner of The Tequila Report.
About the Author
Jay Baer has spent 30+ years studying tequila and agave spirits. He is the co-founder and editor of The Tequila Report. Jay is also the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, a Hall of Fame keynote speaker, and has spent three decades building and advising brands.
In addition to The Tequila Report, Jay and his business partner, Maddie Jager, are co-founders of Slingshot, an invitation-only community of emerging tequila brands. Jay lives in Bloomington, Indiana and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
You can find him on Instagram.
