In This Story:
How a vote in a film studio lobby picked AsomBroso's famous bottle
How AsomBroso La Rosa helped create rosa tequila
How a Napa winery ended up sending its barrels to Jalisco
How Eros gets its sweetness from the barrel instead of a bottle
Why AsomBroso changed a 20-year recipe it knew some fans loved
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In 2002, in the lobby of a Southern California film studio, an important vote occurred.
Ricardo Gamarra and his wife spent years collecting antique bottles and decanters: pinched glass, pewter, clay vessels, and historic wine decanters. The collection filled curio cabinets on their film studio's second floor.
When Gamarra started building a tequila brand, he moved the bottle collection down to the lobby. Actors, directors, producers, and cinematographers passing through were asked to pick their favorite bottle.
They chose an 18th-century wine decanter the couple had found at an estate sale in France. That silhouette became AsomBroso, a bottle our review team calls "immediately recognizable."
AsomBroso Eros Reposado. Image courtesy of AsomBroso
For about 20 years, the popular tequila inside that bottle also contained a small amount of sweetener.
A few years ago, AsomBroso took it out, knowing some longtime fans would walk away.
"We knew that decision could cost us some longtime customers, and it did," said Sam Garcia, AsomBroso's head of sales and marketing.
That's a hard call for any brand. It's harder when the recipe is 20 years old and people like it and ask for it by name.
To understand why AsomBroso made that choice, start with the three people who built the brand. A founder who wouldn't make tequila from a distance. A restaurant operator who thought this would be the easy job. And a salesman whose entire pitch was a taste test.
AsomBroso Was Built the Hard Way
The founder came first.
Gamarra came to tequila from automotive advertising and a motion-picture production studio, not from Jalisco. He didn't just hire a distillery and wait for bottles to show up.
"Ricardo's education was hands-on," said Andy Ulmer, now AsomBroso's CEO. "He wasn't simply contracting a liquid from a distance; he wanted to understand what happened in the distillery and why," Ulmer said.
Gamarra bought the aging La Noria Tequilery in Tala and worked to get it running again. Along the way, he met Enrique Fonseca. That relationship led to AsomBroso's first U.S. launch, with tequila made at Tequileña (NOM 1146) under Gamarra's direction.
Ulmer arrived in 2006. He'd spent his career running luxury restaurants across Southern California, including a Michelin-starred venue in downtown Los Angeles, with thousands of employees combined and more than $60 million in revenue. He figured tequila would be a manageable offshoot.
I remember thinking: how difficult could building a tequila brand really be compared with coordinating a thousand people through dinner service? ... Twenty years later, I can say I dramatically underestimated the time, capital, relationships, and persistence required to establish an independent spirits brand.
What got Ulmer to sign on to the project was Gamarra. "His conviction was contagious," Ulmer said.
Then there's Garcia, who's been selling AsomBroso for nearly two decades, building the brand one tasting at a time.
"I would tell buyers, 'Put AsomBroso next to the tequila you consider the best and taste them side by side,'" Garcia said. "More often than not, the liquid did the selling."
Remember that side-by-side test. Because years later, AsomBroso would run it on itself.
Did AsomBroso Create the Rosa Tequila Category?
Gamarra's habit, Ulmer said, was to approach tequila "without assuming that every expression had to fit an established visual or sensory template."
Barrels are a good example. Reposado tequila rests in oak, and as we've reported in this publication, what a barrel held before shapes the flavor more than where the tree grew. Gamarra picked barrels that had held Bordeaux wine, a novelty at the time.
The wine-seasoned oak turned the tequila a natural rose color. That became AsomBroso La Rosa. There was one problem. It didn't fit the tequila rules.
AsomBroso La Rosa Reposado
"When the first La Rosa was bottled, its color fell outside the tequila regulatory framework as it was then being applied," Ulmer said.
According to Ulmer, Gamarra worked directly with the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT), the industry's regulatory council, to broaden the accepted color parameters and the use of wine barrels. That cleared the way for La Rosa's release.
"AsomBroso did not follow the Rosa tequila trend; La Rosa preceded it," Ulmer said.
The lesson Gamarra took from La Rosa still guides the brand. In Ulmer's words, "the finishing barrel should contribute character without overwhelming the agave."
Even though La Rosa was the first "pink tequila" many years ago, it's still on our list of the 59 Best Tequilas for Wine Lovers.
Taste Is a Better Guide Than Age
The same thinking applies to time in the barrel. Early on, AsomBroso started resting their Extra Añejo tequila in new French oak at NOM 1146.
The question was never simply how old we could make it. It was when the barrel and the spirit were in balance.
Unfortunately, they've discovered firsthand what "too long" tastes like. Ulmer said they've tasted 12-year-old barrels where "the oak had taken over, or the spirit no longer had the energy and agave definition we wanted."
Around 11 years has been a good window for the longest-aged AsomBroso, he said. But that's a call made by taste, not by calendar. That very old tequila is also how a Napa winery got involved with the brand.
Around 2007, Tim Duncan of the venerable Silver Oak Cellars invited Gamarra to a pairing dinner at the winery. At the end of the night, over a glass of AsomBroso's Extra Añejo, Gamarra asked for a favor.
Could he take two of Silver Oak's cabernet barrels back to Mexico and give the tequila a second rest in them? Duncan said he'd ask the family. A few weeks later, the answer was yes.
That became the annual AsomBroso limited release, The Collaboration. Silver Oak has sent two barrels every year for the project. This year, it sent four.
AsomBroso, Additives, and the Big Switch
For many years, the brand that pushed the regulators on color and wine-barrel aging, and waited a lengthy 11 years on extra añejo, was doing one thing the way plenty of other distilleries did: it was using sweetener.
"For roughly twenty years, AsomBroso used a small amount of sweetener in its tequila, a practice that was not unusual in the category," Ulmer said.
Tequila regulations permit four additives, called abocantes: caramel coloring, oak extract, glycerin, and sugar-based syrup. They are not harmful, and they are allowed for use. As drinkers, especially in the United States, started paying closer attention to how tequila is made, AsomBroso decided to reformulate its entire lineup to not use any abocantes.
"We saw that as a long-term product decision, not simply a label claim or a response to a trend," Ulmer said.
Deciding was easier than doing, and both were easier than explaining the change to the original customer base.
"How do you remove a component of the established profile without making a twenty-year customer feel that the brand has changed beyond recognition?" Ulmer said.
The answer was the side-by-side test, over and over, for months. The goal was to keep the texture, balance, and finish people knew, with no help from outside sweeteners.
"We went back and forth until we had profiles we believed were faithful to the house," Ulmer said.
Yet, not everyone came along for the new journey.
When people have been loyal to a flavor profile for nearly 20 years, changing it is not something you do casually. We knew some longtime customers loved the sweeter style, and we did lose some consumers who preferred the original profile.
The change brought the brand new customers "who value transparency and want the character in the glass to come from the agave, fermentation, distillation and maturation," Garcia said.
The new recipe also needed a new home. The transition "forced us to examine the entire production partnership," Ulmer said.
That search for a different distillery ended at Destiladora de Agave Azul, NOM 1424, in San Juanito de Escobedo, Jalisco. Ulmer said it had room for AsomBroso to grow without being stretched across too many outside brands.
It also grows its own raw materials. According to Ulmer, all of Agave Azul's tequila comes from 100% estate-grown agave.
And that matters. A distillery that grows its own agave decides how the plants are raised, how mature they get, and when they're harvested. That's one less variable between the field and the glass.
Moving distilleries also introduced a new tequila maker to work alongside Gamarra on the new expressions of AsomBroso.
That's maestra tequilera Zandra Gómez Santiago, who leads a mostly-female team at Agave Azul. She possesses more than 20 years of experience and was named Woman Distiller of the Year at the International Women's Spirits Competition in 2024.
Gamarra and Gómez spent months tasting together, working through how each expression should be presented within the new formulation process.
Zandra Gómez Santiago at Agave Azul
"That was a transfer of practical sensory knowledge, not merely a recipe handoff," Ulmer said.
Even today, AsomBroso is still a tequila that would be considered by most drinkers to be on the sweeter side of the flavor spectrum. Which spurs an obvious question: If the sweetener is gone, where does that flavor come from? The answer is a series of production choices.
The agave grows on the distillery's own ranch in the Valley region of Jalisco, where Ulmer said darker, volcanic soils bring herbal, mineral, earthy, and spicy notes.
It's cooked slowly in brick ovens to build cooked-agave character, then crushed to separate the juice from the fibers.
Fermentation is where AsomBroso does something fairly unusual, employing Champagne yeast, which, Ulmer said, adds a natural perception of sweetness along with fruit, floral and citrus notes.
But then, for the Eros Reposado, another step adds distinct sweetness.
The Sticky Barrels Behind Eros
Eros Reposado is AsomBroso's best seller. Garcia said it accounts for nearly half of the brand's business.
It began with a question: how do you keep the richness and subtle sweetness people associated with AsomBroso, without adding anything to the finished tequila?
Gamarra's answer was to add it in the barrel itself.
"We opened an empty barrel and worked freshly cooked, hot agave into the staves," Ulmer said. "It was hot, sticky and definitely not glamorous, but the concept worked."
The team re-charred the barrel so the cooked agave caramelized into the wood, then filled it with blanco. Think of seasoning a cast-iron skillet, rather than sweetening a cup of coffee.
The flavor goes into the vessel first, and the vessel gives it back slowly.
The barrels are rotated every month to keep the tequila in contact with the agave-coated staves. This is unusual, as most distilleries never rotate barrels once they are filled.
Gamarra tasted the initial batch along the way and stopped the aging at nine months, the point where Eros had the balance he wanted.
What Does AsomBroso Tequila Actually Taste Like?
The house philosophy hasn't changed since La Rosa: the barrel should be noticeable, but the agave is the point.
If you're new to the brand, Ulmer's advice is to start with the Blanco, neat.
"A blanco tells you the truth about a tequila because there is nowhere for the agave and distillation to hide," he said.
All bottles are 40% alcohol by volume (ABV) and are made at NOM 1424. The brand is available in 31 U.S. states as well as Alberta, Canada.
Online purchase from AsomBroso is available, with free shipping. Plus, save 20% on all bottles with code TequilaReport
The house Blanco, unaged, and Ulmer's pick for a first taste.
Nose: freshly cooked agave, citrus, and herbal notes.
Palate: citrus and herbal sweetness, with earthy notes and a medium body.
Rested nine months in the agave-soaked American oak barrels described above.
Nose: freshly cooked agave, sweet vanilla, honey, toasted oak, and delicate floral notes.
Palate: rich cooked agave layered with honey, caramelized oak, and vanilla.
The expression that started the rosa tequila trend is back in AsomBroso's new Crown Collection packaging. It rests three months in French oak Bordeaux wine barrels, which give it its natural blush color.
The brand describes the goal as "a recognizable Bordeaux influence that complements the tequila rather than disguises it."
Nose: roasted agave, red berries, vanilla, and French oak.
Palate: sweet agave, ripe fruit, soft spice, and toasted oak, with a silky, lingering finish.
Five years in American oak barrels.
Nose: sweet spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, light honey, and butter.
Palate: buttercream with hints of oak and a medium body.
What's Next for AsomBroso
There's a new AsomBroso bottle hitting store shelves now. The Crown Collection designation puts a crown topper on the familiar decanter for the core lineup, and the Diamond Collection is reserved for the rarest aged tequilas.
"The bottle gets your attention; the tequila has to justify the price and bring you back," Garcia said.
La Rosa's return is the big move. Garcia expects it to become one of AsomBroso's leading expressions again.
And Ulmer offered a small teaser: a limited small-batch collaboration with what he calls "a leading rum company," targeted for 2027.
AsomBroso's bottle won a vote in a film studio lobby in 2002. The tequila has to win another vote every time someone pours it.
AsomBroso 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 craft tequila brands, and The Craft Tequila Conference.
Jay lives in Bloomington, Indiana and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
