Casa Dragones Reposado (Mizunara Cask) Tequila 750ml

Casa Dragones was founded in 2008 by former MTV executive Robert W. Pittman and Bertha González Nieves, who spent a decade at Jose Cuervo before becoming the first woman certified as a Maestra Tequilera by the Academia Mexicana de Catadores de Tequila. Production runs under NOM 1489 in the town of Tequila, Jalisco, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, using a diffusion-based extraction process that the Tequila Regulatory Council recognizes as one of the more sustainable methods in the category. Casa Dragones has built its reputation on continually experimenting with wood, and in 2018 the brand imported its first casks of Japanese Mizunara oak to push that exploration further.

This reposado is made from 100% blue Weber agave harvested in the lowlands of the Valley of Tequila, then rested exclusively in new Mizunara casks rather than the more common American or French oak. Casa Dragones worked directly with Japan's only independent cooperage to craft these casks with a custom char, since Mizunara trees must grow up to two hundred years before their twisting, knotted trunks can be milled into barrels at all. Because true Mizunara is scarcer and yields far less usable timber than European or American oak, this remains one of the only tequilas rested in it.

That rare wood shapes a distinctly different reposado. The nose opens with orange blossom and magnolia, layered with honey and sandalwood. On the palate, oak and butterscotch meet ripe apricot in a balanced, elegant mid-palate, finishing long and warm with coffee bean and a trace of mellow spice.