Our path to Madera began with a lightning bolt—a simple, but thrilling idea. Like all good things, it began with friends gathered around in the day's last light, a bottle and a couple glasses at hand, building off of each other's stories. One of those stories, our award-winning blanco distilled from fully mature highland and lowland agaves, felt ripe for a next chapter, for a new relationship with the land. So we decided to ask ourselves where it could go next.  We knew that it wouldn't stray too far—that we'd age it on the same land and with the same hands that we always had—but we knew it could go even deeper. In expression. In time. In the volcanic red soil of Jalisco. And as with everything we've done so far, we knew that our signature blend of patience, meaningful relationships, and a tolerance for risk could help get us there.  Which is not to say that we left it all up to chance. Guided by the hands of Maestra Tequillera Citlali Ovalde, one of the first and only female Master Distillers in Jalisco, we began to make choices that, though subtle in present tense, would prove significant with the passing of time. That meant selecting white oak barrels, as opposed to the conventional red, in pursuit of softer, sweeter notes. It also meant going under the soil, quite literally, where the region's swinging moods—stretches of cool heavy rainfall bookended by hot arid months—could be tempered, but not ignored.  Like building a relationship, the next months required attention and care—turning the barrels bi-weekly, gently acknowledging and recording the changes taking place all the time as they breathed, waiting for a moment that really sang. Nothing but time and wood and an attentive eye were added.  Even so, there were factors we will never account for. No two years map out the same course, even in a cave below the hillside, and there was no telling what the barrels would give to the juice. The process required an acceptance of the passing of time.  Then the moment came. At 21 months, longer than most añejos are allowed, we found something that spoke both to its source and to the quiet, still moments that defined the aging process. There were no sparks or crackling of wood to signal that we'd arrived. The changes expressed themselves in an amber color that seemed to glow in the daylight, a rich dry fruit and light butterscotch nose, a balanced cinnamon-toffee finish. If all that time and rain and sun drenched soil could speak, it might say something similar.  To call our añejo anything but Madera—wood in Spanish—would be to forget what happened over those months. It was wood, slow and wise and deliberate, that lent its color and its sweet and fragrant notes to the blanco as it went through the ebbs and flows of nearly two years. It's hard to quantify it all but it's there, like a soul. It's a tequila not for loud nights or making an entrance; it's a tequila to place on the table between friends new and old, and to share with those stories that announce themselves quietly, but we can never seem to forget.