In 1519 Mexico was visited by a delegation of spanish gentlemen. While they certainly took a generous interest in the country (even going as far as renaming it), they proved a tad difficult to send home again. And now the spaniards are BACK! Not quite the same fellows, but just Marc and Eduard, and not quite conquistadores in the land grabbing sense. Marc and Eduard want to conquer a bit of the market for great 100% Agave tequila!

Who’s behind the brand?  

Marc Torres and Eduard Coromina. It is that simple!

We are just two guys from Barcelona, agave-lovers, business passionates, that did not find the Tequila we were looking for in Europe, so we decided to create our own perfect Tequila.

At the beginning, it was just a hobby, for our friends and family. But it began to grow, restaurants, top cocktail bars, etc, liked our proposal… from Barcelona we jumped to Mallorca, Madrid, Italy…. so we started to produce more and more.

And after 5 years, here we are!

Who are you and what’s the story? 

Me (Marc) have family in México and have lived there. I was 2 years-old the first time i put my feet in Mexico. I consider Mexico as my second house. My family comes from the chemistry and my dad used to have business in Mexico, I even work for him managing some of his clients in center-north area of the country. Later I decided to specialize in Market Research and business strategy, work for top global companies. My passion for agave and mexican culture brought me in the Tequila business, and our target is to share our own interpretation of Tequilas with the rest of the world.

Why did you make your own tequila brand? 

Passion! I mean, if in 2017 you study the market, it wasn’t really sexy for a new Tequila Brand. Consumption in Europe was very low, fucused basically on cheap brands. Not many people knew about 100% agave, nor different Tequila profiles…

Things are to be changed. I know that in our market (Spain) the gin-tonic trend was at the begining of his end of growth. After 12 years of this trend, consumers were looking for other experiencies and many cocktail bars were opening everywhere with new cocktail proposals, so I thought that there might be some niche for a ”semi-local” brand with a high-quality product a honest storytelling. And it worked!

I believe that a new brand needs something more than money for marketing. It needs a mission, a reason to exists. Our mission was to change everything you think you know about Tequila. Our reason to exists was to show our people that a Tequila can be enjoyed, in many differend moments and shapes. That is our value as a brand, we make everyone enjoy Tequila, maybe for their very first time in life.

How old is the brand? I was under the impression Clandestina was a new brand, but Google searches indicates that is at least from 2018?…  

That’s right, the brand was created in 2018 but our sales started at the begining of 2019. We launched the Clandestina BLANCO in first place. We achieved to be in some of the TOP trend setter bars in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca, and then the Pandemia came… but somehow we managed to survive.

Today, we have the Blanco and Reposado CLANDESTINAS, and a third product was launched in 2023, our Liqueur Café mezcal-based produced in Oaxaca with mexican coffee and mezcal espadín that is having a very good entry to all our clients.

By the way, the brand was created in Barcelona, in Born District to be precise. Of course our distillery is in Los Altos de Jalisco.

It takes many, many years to get a recognized brand. Some companies believes that with a huge investment at the begining makes the job, but it doesn’t work like this, in my opinion. The ”boom” of sales in few months is a myth.

You need to build the brand every day, being strong in your own market in the first place, understand how you brands works and what it needs, and how clients and consumers intercact with the brand.

2024 will be our 6th year in the marke, we’ve got a lot of job to do, a lot to learn. A brand needs at leat 10-15 years in the market to consolidate their project. We are halfway there, not bad!

How did you manage to reach the flavour? 

First of all we imagined what was needed. We do not had to think only in our futur plans or how big we want the project to be. Neither our own ego is imporant. The most important think is how do you want people to feel when tasting your job.

We want them to be happy? Surprised? How CLANDESTINA will make you feel like?

And the we asked ourselves: Who’s our target? What do they don’t like about Tequila? What do they like about other distilates? How do they enjoy in general?

These are important questions to ask yourself when launching a new product. So we had the idea and then we made it real, after a hard but also satisfying work, to make it real.

Tequila Clandestina is an aditive-free 100% agave Tequila, so the key to our flavor is high-quality matured Agave from Los Altos, a great destililation team and a Master Distiller who understand our mission.

The fermentation process of Clandestinda takes more than 72 hours here we get a part of the smooth flavours but the distillation, the cut of heads and tails, the stabilization time before bottling…. everything makes his part.

Is your product additive free? “Additive Free” has been a success and it seems the CRT have noticed. Do you have any opinions in regard to this discussion? 

Yes CLANDESTINA is an additive free Tequila. I’m happy that working without additives is gaining better recognition in our industry, but it can also generate confusion to consumer. Not all additives are dangerous or ”bad”.

Nevertheless I’d prefer to put the focus on the age of the agaves that each brand uses, the year of the harvest, the production method (if difusor or not, artisanal, traditional…) because that way the consumer will have enough information to understand if a price is good or not, if the quality is what he/she is looking for or not.

Soon we will be typing the year of the agave harvest (Jima) in the labels of Clandestina, just like the wine industry does, this is the kind of information that, in my opinion, adds value to the brand and consumers.

So in my opinion, I’d rather have a label saying ”Difussor Free” than ”Additive Free”…. or both!

What kind of user are you attempting to reach? Is it cocktail product or are you going for the “sipping crowd“? 

Tequila CLANDESTINA was created to make everyone enjoy High Quality Tequila, our prices, according to our processes and raw materials, are more than reasonable. We are using between 8 and 9 kilos of agave per each liter of Clandestina and still we are accessible to almost all consumers.

We don’t use an expensive – exclusive bottle, we do not have offices in the center of Barcelona and we don’t drive luxury cars, so we can offer competitive prices both for premium cocktails or Tequila Lovers than just want to enjoy a great consumption experience with Clandestina!

What countries have you entered yet? 

 Apart of Spain (which is a huge market itself…), we sell to Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Andorra.

Tequila is booming these years – do you feel it too? 

Of course! We did not expect that growth so quick, and this is very good news. The Tequila industry had a problem in Europe for many years. It was seen as fast way to get drunk, a cheap distillate only for fun when partying….

It was a need to change this mind. And we wanted to contribute to this change. Think that to create a hight quality Tequila like CLANDESTINA, our agaves needs between 6 and 9 years to mature!

We needed to prestige the category, and we are doing the job.

We are giving masterclass to consumers and professionals every 15 days, on and off line.

 Are you working the business from Spain?  

We run Clandestina from Barcelona and Mexico of course! Our slogan is “Made in Mexico, dreamt in Barcelona” so this is a project based in a fussion of cultures and passionate people that want to change everything!

We have put our focus in Europe, all our production comes straight away to Barcelona which probably makes us the only Tequila Brand with this kind of exclusivity.

This also makes us more efficient, being our warehouse in Barcelona as a “hub” for europe and our importers / distributors negotiate straigh with the owners, Eduard and myself, so we add “proximity” to our proposal which is a great advantage.

 

Contact Tequila Clandestina