Your 10 Favorite New Tequila Brands

New tequila brands launch literally every day. More than 300 emerged in 2025 alone. Thus, to be one of the top 10 favorite new tequila brands is quite an achievement.

Late last year, we asked Tequila Report readers (then, Tequila Jay Baer readers) to vote on their favorite new tequila brands. More than 1,000 of you did, making this the largest independent poll of tequila preferences available.

Note that these awards recognize the brand in its entirety, not a specific bottle or expression. Also, what is “new” varies from consumer to consumer and from state to state. The Top 10 favorite new brands in the 2025 edition of the awards were ineligible to repeat.

Here are YOUR Top 10 favorite new tequila brands for 2026:

Based in Fort Worth, Texas La Pulga means “flea” and the proprietors also own the Fort Worth flea market. Made at NOM 1068 in Capilla de Guadalupe. La Pulga offers blanco, reposado, añejo expressions plus a 55% ABV blanco, a 55% ABV reposado, a sotol and a mezcal.

The most popular new celebrity tequila of recent vintage, Pantalones is fronted by actor and vibes hound Matthew McConaughey and his wife, Camila. Their irreverent marketing, fair price, and Total Wine distribution quickly this brand squarely on the radar of tequila consumers.

Made at one of the oldest continually producing distilleries in Mexico (the family-owned Tequilas del Señor NOM 1124), Authentico is co-owned by a Chicago/Florida family and the distillery itself. Organic and carbon-neutral, they offer a blanco, reposado, añejo, and cristalino lineup at an approachable price.

Organic tequila with strong Mexican roots and a mission to help improve drinking water in Mexico City through brand proceeds. Currently offering blanco, reposado, and añejo. Tahona-crushed and blanco is rested for a few weeks in bourbon barrels.

Made at the highest-altitude distillery in the industry (9000+ feet), Alto Canto utilizes very slow fermentation to achieve nuance and complexity. This new luxury brand comes in beautiful packaging, but defies the “good bottle = bad tequila” maxim. Blanco, reposado, and a terrific high-proof blanco are currently available.

Texas-based startup brand is made at the very popular Cascahuín distillery (NOM 1123) in El Arenal by the mystical distiller Chava Rosales. “Water bottle” packaging and low price are helping this brand gain a lot of fans very quickly, especially among Texas bartenders.

What if you just did everything differently? Such is the thesis of John De Rosiers, a Chicagoland chef and the owner of Cambio. From cooking methods to yeasts to filtration to barreling, Cambio is truly a laboratory of tequila “what if”. Currently a core blanco, reposado, and añejo are augmented by a river of limited-edition experiments that garner a lot of attention.

Three friends from Wisconsin decide to start a tequila brand. They find a distillery (NOM 1643) that’s just starting out, and recruit a master distiller who is also making his name for the first time (Óscar Vásquez Camarena). Sounds risky? Nah. Manuscrito gained an instant following with their Chapter One blanco and Chapter Two high-proof blanco, both exhibiting tremendous minerality.

It’s not atypical for tequila brands to eventually release a mezcal. It is definitely unusual for the sequence to work the other way around, but that’s the case with Lost Explorer. They capitalized on the popularity of their excellent mezcales to drive demand for their new tequila (blanco-only at present), made at a small distillery in Amatitan (NOM 1258).

What is this wizardry? Roberto Lopez is a fourth-generation agave grower, and his family own more than one million agave plants. Instead of only selling them to other people making tequila, what if they made it themselves? That’s the story behind El Sabino, the new-ish distillery producing Manuscrito (see above) and Zumbador, the most popular new tequila brand of 2026. Zumbador offers a blanco, reposado, and añejo designed by Óscar Vásquez Camarena and sold at shockingly affordable prices.