How This Tequila Got on Every American Airlines Flight

Pablo Antinori flies to Jalisco, Mexico 30 times per year. Sometimes more. 

As a Dallas-Fort Worth area resident, the direct route to Guadalajara is on American Airlines. A few years back, somewhere over northern Mexico, he held the in-flight beverage menu in his coach seat. Snacks were plentiful. Tequila? Absent. Not a craft brand. Not a big brand. Nothing.

The omission was perplexing. After all, American Airlines is a Texas-based carrier that absorbed US Airways, which itself had been built through the merger with Phoenix-based America West. Both Texas and Arizona are markets steeped in Mexican culture and tequila drinking. American is the largest U.S. airline by passenger count, and the beverage cart held vodka, whiskey, rum, gin, Baileys, and zero tequila.

When the plane landed, Antinori called a friend he knew at the airline. That contact connected him to someone else. 

Six years later, the brand Antinori co-founded, Socorro Tequila, has served over one million American Airlines passengers.

While at Southern (now Southern Glazer’s), the largest wine and spirits distributor in the country, Antinori met his business partner Josh Irving, who was then at Chopin Imports. Both watched, up close, how new brands operated.

Irving describes it as a graduate program in what not to do: Gins and whiskeys and tequilas and mezcals and vodkas and bitters all passed through his accounts, some scaling, most stumbling. He saw founders dump everything into marketing too early. He saw companies expanding too far geographically, without the ability to support key accounts.

So when Irving and Antinori decided to start their own brand, they did the unusual thing. They went toward the fire, not away from it. Most distributor veterans know exactly how brutal supplier life is and stay clear. Antinori and Irving used what they had learned as a playbook for what not to repeat.

The other piece of the founder story is Antinori himself. He is Argentine by his father, Bolivian by his mother, lived nine years in each country, then moved to Dallas at 18. His friend group in Texas was Mexican, and his palate moved with it. 

(He has said he can be more Mexican than Argentine most of the time, except during a World Cup!) 

Building a tequila brand as a non-Mexican founder is a question that follows him in every meeting, and his answer is the life he has actually lived: bicultural by upbringing, fluent in the food, the music, and the drinking traditions that built tequila in the United States into a cultural phenomenon.

Antinori and Irving visited roughly two dozen distilleries before signing with Casa Tequilera Dinastía Arandina (NOM 1610) in Arandas, in the Highlands of Jalisco. The standard most founders apply is "this will work adequately." Theirs was closer to a courtship. They were not looking for a contract. They were looking for a partner who carried tradition and who was open to evolution.

Dinastía Arandina had both. A maestro tequilero with deep family lineage and a long view, young enough to push the product forward. The distillery also controlled the agave. 

Around 400 hectares of estate agave are under the care of Antonio Hernández, who has been with the family for nearly 30 years, the first 20 inside the factory and the last 10 in the fields. 

Estate-grown agave gives you more control over the farming and harvest, but it is typically more expensive, because you have no ability to shop for the best deal. This makes Socorro's very affordable retail price even more remarkable.

The lineup is built around a blanco that is engineered to be clean, easy drinking, and continuously improving.

Brian Ashcraft, Socorro Tequila’s Director of Marketing, frames the team's internal test plainly. If someone told Ashcraft and the team that the tequila they made three years ago was better than the tequila they make now, it would be devastating to hear. Their goal is the opposite: better blanco this year than last, better next year than this.

That ethos shows up in production decisions that look small in isolation. Two weeks before the brand's sixth anniversary, the team changed yeasts to keep more of the raw agave character alive in the still. The reposado, aged four months or so in American oak, is non-chill-filtered, which preserves the aromatic compounds that low-temperature filtration strips out. 

The first casual conversation with American Airlines happened in late 2022. 

Recognizing the colossal gap in their in-air spirits lineup, the carrier created a Request for Proposals the following year, then stalled. Antinori and the team persisted for more than a year. Nothing.

Then, out of the blue, in January 2025, a contact who had not been part of the original outreach asked Socorro Tequila to respond to a new RFP. 

American asked for samples. The tequila was scheduled for imminent blind tastings. Lindsey Hiller, who leads operations at Socorro, said she would happily drop off sample bottles to American corporate headquarters. But, American said they needed the 50 ml plastic minis, the format that flies on the cart, rather than full-sized bottles. One problem…. Socorro Tequila did not make a mini.

So Hiller made them by hand. She ordered empty 50 ml plastic bottles on Amazon, ran the labels through her home printer in Dallas, filled the bottles in her kitchen, and shrink-wrapped the tops with a hair dryer. 

Twelve bottles took about two hours. 

She dropped them off at American's corporate office. Two weeks later American called and asked for MORE samples. Another round of blind tastings to be judged against other finalists. Back to Amazon, the kitchen, and the blow dryer. But, it worked!

March 7, 2025. American Airlines called to award the contract to Socorro, set to start in early June. Ninety days or less to create a LOT of minis. 

Socorro Tequila did not have a manufacturer for the plastic bottles or the closures. Or bottling time at the distillery. Or a machine to fill minis. The standard lead time on tiny screwtops alone is 120 days. Remarkably, the brand found three million of them sitting in Arkansas, in the right color. They bought them all.

Production at the distillery ramped up, batching the blanco (the only expression available on the planes) to American's pace while keeping the standard retail lineup on shelves. Seven states had to be licensed where American has distribution centers: Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Arizona, Nevada, and California.

They made the launch date.

Education was its own issue.

Socorro Tequila is a newer brand, without a national marketing presence. So they set up inside the crew rooms at DFW, where flight attendants pass through on layovers, to put tasting notes in front of as many of the airline's 20,000-plus flight attendants as possible. A billboard went up on the road to DFW, targeting passengers. Geotargeted digital ads ran across DFW and the airline's other hub markets, surfacing in mobile feeds for travelers heading to the gate.

The first configuration on the planes’ beverage carts was one bottle of Socorro alongside gin, vodka, scotch, and bottle after bottle of Baileys. Tequila was reintroducing itself to in-flight beverage service after a long absence, and the airline was sizing demand cautiously. 

Within five months, it was four bottles of Socorro per flight. Recently, Q Mixers’ margarita mix joined the lineup in the sky, giving flyers an easy cocktail option.

Even without a marg mix, American Airlines now serves a lot of tequila.  

Every month, a staggering number of cases with Socorro minis are bound for every single American Airlines flight departing in the U.S. and around the world. The program is the largest single piece of brand trial and sampling in tequila right now. 

The brand wants agave to do the work. They lean into a crisp and clean profile. Very flexible as a straight sipper, or a cocktail mixer. The lack of chill filtering preserves flavor yet Socorro is not a bold and heavy tequila. 

It’s also extremely affordable, and delivers a standout quality-to-price ratio. 

Socorro Tequila Blanco ($34.99) is the foundation expression and the bottle that flies on American Airlines. In 2025 and 2026, Socorro Tequila Blanco won back-to-back Double Golds at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

The aroma opens on freshly cooked agave with a natural sweetness and subtle hints of fresh citrus. The palate is rich with agave, with delicate citrus notes and a subtle hint of black pepper adding gentle spice. The finish is clean and crisp. For an additive-free, estate-agave blanco from the Highlands at this price, it is one of the strongest value plays on the shelf.

Socorro Tequila Reposado ($40.99), aged 4 months or so in American oak and bottled non-chill-filtered, leads with cooked agave and cinnamon, enriched by the woody notes of white oak. The palate threads cooked agave through a balanced influence of white oak and a touch of vanilla spice. The finish lingers with gentle complexity on the palate. Light barrel influence sits behind the agave rather than in front of it.

Socorro Tequila Añejo ($45.99) carries the agave character through a longer maturation. The aroma is rich caramelized oak mixed with the earthy sweetness of cooked agave and subtle hints of vanilla and spice. The palate brings a balance of aged oak, layers of vanilla and toffee, and a gentle smokiness, with hints of five-spice adding a refined complexity as the flavors develop. The disciplined aging program shows up here. The agave doesn’t get buried.

Nothing is officially announced, but a careful perusal of this year’s Agavos Awards winners reveals Socorro Tequila Blanco 110 Singular, an unaged still-strength expression at 110 proof. Last year’s big hit, Reserva de Pablo, a five-year extra añejo that sold out almost instantly, might see a return.

The current big move is the change away from champagne yeast to a proprietary yeast strain that lets the agave shine through even more. Each Socorro release seeks continuous improvement and refinement along the way. 

If you’re in the store, in a bar, or in the air (on American Airlines), look for Socorro. 

Socorro Tequila is a presenting partner of The Tequila Report.