Tasting Tequila at Tommy's Mexican

Mastering Tequila, One Glass at a Time

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, February 23, 2007

Tommy's Mexican Restaurant, with a mere 275 bottles squeezed onto its shelves, no longer has the largest selection of 100 percent blue agave Tequila outside of Mexico, but likely has the most Tequila-savvy clientele. The restaurant's Blue Agave tasting club is the nation's largest, with more than 6,000 members -- not too shabby considering the restaurant is located out in San Francisco's avenues and the bar has only nine stools.

The club began around 1989, according to beverage manager Julio Bermejo, who runs the family restaurant with his father Tommy, mother and two sisters. Bermejo got the idea for the tasting club while at UC Berkeley, when he frequented Raleigh's, a bar with a beer-drinking club.

He started the Blue Agave Club a bit later, but says that, at first, "it wasn't taken seriously at all."

The rest of the story is here.

My story in today's Chronicle talks about Tommy's famous tequila tasting club. Going into it I knew that there was no discount for being in the club, and in fact you have to pay to join, so I couldn't figure out why anyone would actually do it.

As the story hopefully shows, Julio Bermejo has created a warm environment conducive to learning about tequila from people who are also in the program above you. It's a mentoring community of tequila drinkers on Monday and Wednesday nights, where you pay for drinks but get the information for free. Now that I've been there I get it- and have my own tequila club card to prove it- but I sure wish it weren't so darn far away.

Update: The first line in the story said that Tommy's no longer carries the largest selection of 100% blue agave Tequila in the country, but I didn't have space to say why that is. This is from the Tommy's website by Julio Bermejo:

The article also mentioned that Tommy's no longer has the largest selection of 100% agave Tequila in the U.S. This is true. What I say is that we carry the best selection of legally imported 100% agave tequila in the U.S. How can this be? Well, first we refuse to play the game of carrying every single 100% agave Tequila available. We have seen many people try this approach and sooner than later they revert to carrying only the best products they can get. As most of you know, there are many distilleries that put out a plethora of Tequila labels. I refuse to carry seventy products from 1 producer whom I believe to only make mediocre products. Our list continues to have at least 30 selections that are no longer made that none of our competitors can get. Tommy's continues to be the premier Tequila bar on Earth. We are grateful the Tequila industry holds us in such high esteem and we are flattered that all of our competitors come to Tommy's to learn about Tequila!