Herradura Tequila: Hacienda San Jose del Refugio, NOM 1119

Herradura made the first ever eposado and Extra Anejo... and thats just the start

Tequila Herradura is one of the foundational names of the denomination, a house whose contributions to the category extend far beyond the quality of its own bottles. Produced at Hacienda San Jose del Refugio (NOM 1119) in Amatitan, Jalisco, Herradura is the distillery that invented Reposado tequila in 1974 and created the world's first Extra Anejo with the launch of Seleccion Suprema in 1994. It has been making tequila on the same estate since 1870, drawing on agave grown in the volcanic lowlands surrounding the hacienda and fermenting with wild yeast generated by over sixteen species of fruit trees on the property.

Hacienda San Jose del Refugio sits in Amatitan, a municipality in the lowland valley region of Jalisco that lies within the Tequila Denomination of Origin. Amatitan is one of the oldest tequila-producing areas in the denomination, and its volcanic soils are recognised as among the most fertile and characterful in the lowlands. The valley climate, warmer and drier than the highland region of Los Altos, produces Blue Weber agave with a distinctly earthy, herbal, and mineral profile.

Herradura is an estate producer, growing its own 100% Blue Weber agave on land surrounding the hacienda in the volcanic lowlands of Amatitan. The agave is harvested at between six and eight years of maturity by jimadors using the traditional coa cutting tool, and it moves from field to production without leaving the estate. This level of vertical integration is increasingly rare among producers of Herradura's scale, and it gives the distillery direct control over the raw material that underpins every expression in the range.

The distillery was acquired by US beverage company Brown-Forman in 2007 for $776 million, one of the largest transactions in tequila history. Production has continued at the same hacienda, using the same estate agave and the same open-fermentation methods that defined the house long before the acquisition. Herradura remains one of the most historically significant producers in the Tequila Denomination of Origin, and its long-aged expressions continue to set benchmarks for the category it helped create.

decades. In the early nineteenth century, Jose Feliciano de la Trinidad Romo Escobedo purchased La Concordia ranch in Amatitan, and the property passed through several hands before a Roman Catholic priest associated with the Romo family established it as a working ranch and distillery. The foundations of what would become one of Mexico's most important tequila estates were laid in those early years, and the volcanic lowland soils and natural water sources that make Amatitan excellent agave-growing territory were already understood by the people farming the land.

The modern chapter of Herradura's history begins in 1870, when Felix Lopez registered the property as a formal tequila producer under the name Hacienda San Jose del Refugio. Lopez died in 1878, and his wife Carmen Rosales took over the operation alongside her brother, steering the distillery through a period of uncertainty with enough skill and determination to keep it producing. The business eventually passed to Aurelio Lopez, Carmen's son, who gave the distillery its name. The name Herradura, meaning horseshoe in Spanish, came from a piece of good fortune: a horseshoe found in the agave fields, kept as a lucky charm and eventually adopted as the brand's enduring symbol. In 1928, Aurelio's cousin David Rosales formalised the image by registering the iconic horseshoe logo.

The decades that followed saw Herradura become not just a successful distillery but an agent of change for the entire tequila industry. In the 1960s, the house introduced Anejo tequila as a commercial category, demonstrating that agave spirit could benefit from extended oak ageing in the same way as whisky or brandy. In 1974, Herradura took that logic further and created Reposado, a category that had not previously existed, defined by a period of oak rest longer than that of blanco but shorter than that of Añejo. Today, Reposado is one of the most widely consumed tequila styles globally, and its existence traces directly back to a decision made at Hacienda San Jose del Refugio in 1974. In 1994, Herradura went further still, launching Seleccion Suprema as the world's first Extra Añejo, establishing yet another category that is now standard across the denomination. That same year, the house launched El Jimador, which became Mexico's top-selling tequila. In 2007, Brown-Forman completed its $776 million acquisition of the entire Herradura portfolio, and the hacienda entered a new chapter of international ownership while production and provenance remained unchanged.

Awards and Recognition

Herradura's most decorated expression, Seleccion Suprema, has won more than 41 awards and 25 gold medals since 2006, including the Best Extra Anejo Tequila in the World designation from the Ultimate Spirits Challenge in 2014. The broader Herradura range has received consistent recognition across international spirits competitions, with the Reposado and Anejo in particular performing strongly in comparative tastings.

The house's most enduring recognition, however, is structural rather than competitive. The two categories Herradura invented, Reposado and Extra Anejo, are now among the most significant in the tequila denomination. Every reposado and extra anejo produced anywhere in Jalisco, the highlands, the lowlands, and across the Tequila Denomination of Origin owes its existence as a defined category to the decisions made at Hacienda San Jose del Refugio in 1974 and 1994. That is a legacy that no medal can fully capture.

Style in the Glass

Herradura's house style is shaped by the lowland valley terroir of Amatitan, the slow clay-oven cooking, and above all by the wild fermentation driven by the estate's native yeasts. The result is a flavour profile that is earthier and more herbal than highland expressions, with a mineral backbone that runs through every tier of the range and a natural sweetness that comes from the agave rather than from additives.

The Silver shows those qualities most directly, its 45-day rest adding only the lightest wood note to an otherwise agave-driven spirit. The Reposado is where the house style finds its most satisfying balance, the 11-month ageing integrating the oak influence with the agave character in a way that neither dominates nor disappears. The Anejo deepens and darkens the profile, moving the oak more clearly to the foreground while keeping the estate's signature earthiness present on the finish. The Ultra offers a different reading of those same components, its charcoal filtration producing a spirit that is softer and more transparent without losing the underlying complexity. And Seleccion Suprema, at 49 months, is a meditation on patience: a spirit that has had almost four and a half years to find its equilibrium between agave, oak, and time.

Herradura's production begins with a slow cook in hand-raised clay ovens, where the agave hearts are steamed for 26 hours. This extended cooking time converts the agave's complex starches and inulin into fermentable sugars while developing the depth of cooked-agave character that defines the house's flavour profile. Modern extraction equipment then separates the sweet agave juice from the spent fibres, producing a rich mosto that moves directly into fermentation.

Fermentation at Herradura is one of the most distinctive aspects of the production process, and it is where the estate's natural environment plays its most active role. The hacienda's grounds are home to over sixteen species of fruit trees, and the wild yeasts generated by this diverse botanical environment are what drive fermentation in Herradura's open-topped tanks. Each batch ferments over approximately three days, during which the estate's native microflora transform the agave sugars into alcohol and develop the aromatic complexity that characterises the finished spirit. It is a process that is entirely dependent on the specific ecology of Hacienda San Jose del Refugio, and it cannot be replicated anywhere else.

The fermented wash is double-distilled and then aged in charred American white oak barrels for longer than the denomination requires at every tier of the range. Herradura consistently exceeds the minimum ageing standards for each category, treating the minimums as a floor rather than a target.