The continuing adventures of Kimberly and Willy

Tlaquepaque and the quest for Espolon

This was quite the adventure....We managed get away for a couple of days and decided to go explore Tlaquepaque and also to try and find the Espolon Tequila distillery. Tlaquepaque is an area of Guadalajara that is famous for pottery and blown glass. The area also has many restaurants and small boutique hotels. Lot's of old world charm....The gent with the horse is the milkman out doing his deliveries.

Store after store full of home furnishings....A couple of tequila shops that had hundreds of different bottles...Very tempting.

Plus a nice pedestrian only boulevard with shops on both sides....

The jardin....

All in all a beautiful little city. We stayed in a really nice B&B a block off the main boulevard. Easy access to everything.

The second objective was to find the Espolon distillery and see if they had any exotic bottles that you could not find else where, or some nice premium tequilas not found elsewhere....I had my sights set on a 3 litre bottle of Espolon Anejo....pretty much our favorite beverage.

We had a general idea where the distillery was located. We knew that it close to a city called Arandas in the Los Altos region of Jalisco. So, with a great deal of confidence, we were off. We drove up the quota (toll) road for a while and then took the Arandas exit...and were encouraged to see some signs for Espolon. We continued on to Arandas which was about 50 kilometers from the exit....No Espolon. We thought that Arandas would be this quaint little village and that the distillery would be the centerpiece of the town...Didn't quite turn out that way....Large city...50+ thousand...No Espolon...Drove through the city and went about 20 kilometers further and decided that we had gone far enough and turned around.

 On the way back through Arandas, we stopped at a tequila store and asked if they knew where the distillery was. The response was that we'd be better off buying tequila from this guy than at the distillery. Thanks, but....

We continued back towards the toll road and saw a sign for Atotonilco, a name that appeared in the address for the distillery...

Lo and behold, after 5 or so kilometers, we see this huge sign for Espolon. We were pretty amazed....We turned in towards this little village and became pretty discouraged when we couldn't find anything...cute little village though.

Again we stopped and asked....and this time we were actually pointed in the right direction as evidenced by the absolutely stunning agave field....Perfectly groomed as far as the eye could see....really spectactular sight. Similar to being in the midst of a vineyard but with that vivid teal color.

After quite a long time on a narrow, one lane stone road, we came to the building. Our quest nearly complete.

We looked around for the tasting room or visitors center...anything, any sign that this was it. After not finding anything obvious, we just went through the gate and into the building. We were met buy a young lady, who while looking quite surprised, asked us to wait a moment....

We were met by the distillery manager who informed us that the place really wasn't open to the public...Doh! Charming gentleman named Cirilo, he showed us around a bit....showed us the trophy cabinet with all of the awards that Espolon had garnered. He offered to give us a tour of the plant...which now, fully embarassed for being where we were not supposed to be, we declined.

I did get the chance to chat with him a bit and let him know that we poured more Espolon in the bar than any other brand and that the collection of empties at our house was really quite impressive. He seemed honored and gave us the name of a contact at the distribution office in Guadalajara that might be open to shipping to us directly. So, while disappointing that we did not get to taste anything exotic or get the treasured 3 liter bottle....he informed us that they don't even make a three liter anejo, we felt honored that we'd been in a place that few others had. Jeeze....it took us nearly three hours to find the place, pretty tucked away....guess we might have taken the hint that they like their privacy.

Kimberly with our new buddy Cirilio

Posted at 05:55PM Jan 25, 2009 by Willy in General  |  Comments[27]