Jose Cuervo 2013 Proximo Spirits took over US distribution of Jose Cuervo from Diageo, which had managed it since 1997. In 1758, Don Jose Antonio de Cuervo was issued a land grant by King Ferdinand VI of Spain in the town of Tequila, Jalisco. Here his family founded the Taberna de Cuervo, the farm where they would cultivate and harvest the flowering blue agave plant, a water-retaining plant found in central Mexico that is distilled to create tequila. The first Vino Mezcal de Tequila de Jose Cuervo was made in 1795, after Don Jose Antonio de Cuervo's son Jose María Guadalupe de
Raicilla Raicilla Raicilla is a distilled spirit, originating in the south western portion of the Mexican state of Jalisco. Like tequila and mezcal, it is a product of the agave plant. Traditionally raicilla has been created and sold as a "moonshine" product without government sanction or approval. Recently a distiller, La Venenosa, has begun to market a variety of legal brands of raicilla. It is distilled in crude, primitive stills from a fermented mash made from the central stem ("piña") of the maguey plant. The mash is slow cooked, and the steam condensed on a copper cone cooled, traditionally, by spring