For Eduardo “Lalo” González, entering the tequila business is something close to a birthright. As a kid growing up in Mexico in the state of Jalisco, he watched as his grandfather, legendary tequilero Don Julio González-Frausto Estrada, and father turned their passion for the spirit into a thriving business that would eventually become one of the world category leaders, seeding within him the dream of one day putting his own stamp on the spirits world as a master tequila maker himself.
But despite seemingly having his destiny already written, González insists that the development and eventual launch of his Austin, Texas-based tequila label LALO, available in the U.S. in a single blanco expression, had more to do with building the right team around him than leaning on his family name.
“It was a dream to me to have my own brand of tequila and to express my own ideas onto a brand, but, to be honest, I didn’t know how to do it or how to put my ideas together,” González told BevNET last week. “I needed someone with business structure and also someone creative.”
Fitting those two pieces — in the form of co-founders David R. Carballido, also the brand’s creative director, and his husband Jim McDermott, who serves as CEO — into place was critical in getting the brand off the ground back in 2017. Before joining up with his childhood friend González to work on LALO, Carballido had already established a track record of working on creative projects for some of the spirit industry’s biggest names, including helping to launch Don Julio 70 Anejo Claro, one of the more notable releases in the wave of cristalino tequilas to hit the market in recent years.
Having seen consumers’ taste turn back towards clear tequila, Carballido and González began producing a pure blanco expression in small batches for friends and family in Guadalajara. The result was an approachable, all-occasion premium tequila that is steeped in traditional production methods and respect for the crop, but also one that stands out in its elegant simplicity.
“Cristalino is just a process to make the liquid crystal clear; it can be a Reposado or an Añejo,” said Carballido. “And now that in the U.S. and Mexico cristallino is such a big trend, I feel from a personal perspective, I saw an opportunity where everyone is focusing on cristalino because they want to come back to blancos, so there should be a blanco, something that is not pretentious or with a big bottle.”
Considering González’s family lineage and roots in Mexico, it’s no surprise that LALO places a strong emphasis on quality and authenticity. The tequila is produced from hand-picked, fully matured Jalisco Highland agave and distilled twice in copper pot stills; during fermentation a proprietary yeast is introduced to add subtle fruit notes. The product is meant to honor the memory of his father and grandfather, Gonzalez said, but also to “honor Mexican culture, honor the agave, the people and the land, and to tell a different story of Mexico.”
When McDermott met González and Carballido and saw the warm response the brand received when served at a wedding in Guadalajara, he came on board to help elevate LALO from a product to an actual business, first by acting as an informal advisor before coming on full-time as CEO. LALO tequila is now available for purchase at liquor stores in Texas, California and Colorado and is available to ship in 47 states, as well as in bars and restaurants. Faced with increasing competition from a slew of celebrity-backed tequilas, the brand has embraced a “very specific strategy,” McDermott said, of line pricing with bigger brands at $46.99 despite their relatively small size.
“We’re not concerned right now with our margins profile,” he noted. “We are willing to invest in the future and realize we are going to pay the premium price for fully mature agave with how we are going to make it and being slow in the way we produce. We intentionally want to price with the mass produced premium set — Patron, Don Julio, Casamigos or whatever that is. We want to offer consumers a way to consume this product and not just collect it.”
For every calculated step towards growth, however, LALO remains at heart a small, proudly Mexican brand fueled by the shared passion of its founding team, and a company that is defining itself as much by what it isn’t doing as what it is.
“We are having fun and we are following the honest path of where this tequila was made for: serving with friends, not being super expensive and nothing pretentious,” said Carballido. “By controlling that aspect, that’s what gives us the freedom to just be ourselves.”