The trend of aging spirits in former wine casks that has spread through the single malt Scotch industry, and even made inroads to Kentucky’s Bourbon, has now spread to Mexico. AsomBroso 100% agave Tequila has brought some unusual bottlings to the US market, including “La Rosa Reposado,” finished for three months in Bordeaux wine casks.

Actually, this is not the very first Mexican spirit I’ve seen aged in wine barrels; that distinction belongs to Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal, which has produced experimental and very limited releases of a Cabernet cask-aged Mezcal. But AsomBroso is surely the first Tequila to do so, and the first widely available such spirit.

The color alone is stunning, almost like a pale rosé wine. The wine cask is very present in the nose, offering vanilla-toasty oak and bright red berry fruit—a totally new thing in Tequila—but there’s also plenty of earthy agave aromatics that balance the wine barrel. The cask is much subtler in the mouth, which is dry and dominated by quite zesty agave. The vanilla oak comes whispering back at the very end, a teasing conclusion to an innovative Mexican spirit. Hopefully this is just the tip of the piña in terms of innovation from the Tequila industry, which offers plenty of wacky looking packages (and the AsomBroso package is hardly low key) every month but not so many truly new ideas in top quality Tequila.

AsomBroso La Rosa Reposado 100% Agave Tequila

$51.29

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