Jose Cuervo Tequila — Two Centuries in Tequila, Jalisco

The Cuervo connection to Jalisco predates Mexican independence. In 1758 José Antonio de Cuervo received land in the valley surrounding Tequila, a district where blue agave was already being cultivated and distilled on a small scale. Nearly four decades later, in 1795, his son José María Guadalupe de Cuervo obtained permission from the Spanish Crown to produce what was then known as vino mezcal de Tequila commercially.

That licence is the anchor of the brand’s identity. It allowed the family to present itself not simply as an early producer but as one of the first to make the spirit legitimately and at scale, a claim that still shapes how the name is presented today.

La Rojeña, the family distillery founded in 1812, stands in the centre of Tequila and is widely described as the oldest active distillery in Latin America. It gave the business a physical home in the town that lends the spirit its name, and it has remained a working production site as the company modernised around it.

The distillery also became part of the region’s visitor economy. As the agave landscape of Jalisco gained international recognition, La Rojeña turned into one of the most visible places where travellers encounter tequila’s history first-hand.

Control of the company moved through several branches of the extended family during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the Beckmann family eventually became its long-term stewards. Continuity of ownership is unusual among spirits brands of this age, many of which were absorbed into multinational groups.

In 2017 the family-controlled parent company, Becle, listed on the Mexican stock exchange. The listing brought outside shareholders into the business while leaving the founding family with a controlling stake.

As tequila travelled beyond Mexico in the twentieth century, Jose Cuervo became one of the names most people encountered first, particularly in the United States and Canada. The brand’s reach grew alongside tequila’s wider acceptance as a spirit for both mixed drinks and sipping.

The portfolio developed accordingly, from everyday mixing styles to more carefully aged and limited family reserves. That breadth lets the name serve very different occasions while keeping one heritage story at its centre.