OUR STORY
Cristina and I met in Los Angeles in 2004. We both went to a recording school named Musicians Institute and worked in the music industry. Cristina was a live sound engineer working at legendary Hollywood places like the Roxy and the Troubadour. I worked briefly at a recording studio named The Enterprise Recording Studio and was a drummer in an LA-based rock band. Today it’s easier to find high-quality premium tequilas, but back then, it was tough. Anytime we were in Guadalajara visiting Cristina’s family, we would bring back tequila for us to sip on.
Cristina and I got married in 2007, and everyone knows that other than music, our relationship is also bonded by the love of Tequila. At our wedding in Mexico, some of our friends and family from the U.S. stayed a week in Guadalajara. At that time, we visited the town of Tequila to visit the land, look at agaves, and see how Tequila was made at a local distillery. The whole week was a Tequila fest. Cristina’s father, Miguel, had a good friend, Carlos Muñoz, who owned a fantastic, traditionally made, additive-free tequila. He gifted us 50 bottles, and we were so happy to sip on an exquisite, traditionally made Tequila all week; it was terrific. We made a lot of tequila fans that week.
We moved out of L.A. in 2009 to explore other roads and expand our horizons. I had lived in L.A. for ten years, and the endless grind as a struggling musician took its toll. Cristina had previously lived in Los Angeles and also in Spain to study Audio Engineering. So, experiencing another place and having another adventure was welcoming.
MOVING & GROWING
We ended up in Boise, Idaho. I returned to college and earned my BBA in Entrepreneurship Management from Boise State.
My creative side is always looking for new ways to grow our family business, trying to integrate vertically, and looking for ways to meet the needs of our customers at the lodge, Three Rivers Ranch, and the retail fly shops.
Cristina continued her work in Audio Engineering, finding a home at The Knitting Factory Concert House. She worked with thousands of artists over the years running ‘front of house’ and ‘monitors.’ Times were lean back then for our family. We had time to focus on learning how to run a growing business. We also had our first son, Mikael, in 2013.
THE IDEA THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
We were in Guadalajara for Christmas 2014. After sipping a lot of Tequila, Cristina’s father, Miguel, asked if I was interested in creating a brand of Tequila and serving it to Three Rivers Ranch guests. It was one of those ‘a ha’ moments that would change our lives.
We approached only one person once we got home and worked through our initial business plan & feasibility analysis: our partner & my Mother, Lonnie.
Lonnie Allen is the owner of Three Rivers Ranch in Idaho. She is the 3rd generation to run the business, but she turned it into the company it is today.
She has numerous lifetime achievements, having over 35 years of experience building successful companies. She also loves traveling, but Mexico is by far her favorite destination.
The lack of quality Tequila in Idaho at the time was a struggle, so
she was already on board when we presented the idea of creating
a high-quality, traditionally made tequila brand.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
Our first step was to plant agave; we had about 16,000 plants. At the time, Agave prices were low, and not many people were planting agave, so Miguel advised us it would be a great time to plant. Over the next few years, we learned much from leasing land, improving the soil, paying workers, and several other things.
The search for a producer was the most challenging but important thing we would ever do. Cristina’s father was the most essential part of the search. He did all of the groundwork, as he was very familiar with many distilleries since he was an agave producer in the late 1990s for almost a decade. He went to the Valley and the Jalisco highlands for months, but there was no luck. Some were not good enough, some were too dirty, others too big to even take on a small producer, and he was extremely meticulous with the quality.
During his year-long search, we learned about tequila, agaves, and the spirit industry. We read books, talked with people who knew about the industry and did as much as possible to educate ourselves. We visited Agave fields and distilleries.
We also tried to find a name. A brand name was almost as tricky as our search for a distillery partner. We came up with several name ideas, but none of them worked. A name has to pass several hurdles to be an option. It needs to be a unique name that fits who we are and one that we would all like, but it also has to be a name that is available at IMPI, the CRT (the institution in charge of regulating the denomination of origin product, tequila). It must also be available in the USPTO (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office).
On top of that, it needs to be a name that is available when translated from Spanish to English. It wasn’t easy. At one point, we consulted with a firm in Guadalajara that showed us brand names and design options in a well-polished presentation. None of the names and logos fit, and felt a bit forced. The funny thing is that the one-bottle design they pitched us is currently in the market. So it wasn’t too bad.
FINDING FELIPE & EL PANDILLO
In March 2015, after nearly a year of searching, Miguel called and said, “I found it; this is it!” That day, he was looking at another distillery in Los Altos de Jalisco. That particular distillery was not a good match for us; he thanked them for their time and parted ways.
That evening, Arandas had a fair in the central plaza. Miguel came across a booth serving a new brand of tequila named G4. He tasted it and was floored. He arranged to visit Felipe Camarena at his distillery in Jesus Maria, named El Pandillo.
The quality was the best, and it was the way they used to make tequila when Miguel was growing up in Jalisco. The distillery was immaculately clean. Most importantly, Felipe was a friendly and welcoming person.
Miguel met with Felipe at El Pandillo, and he expressed interest in meeting with us. A couple of weeks later, we were in Guadalajara to meet Felipe and his sons Alan & Gus.
When discussing our plans for our new brand of Tequila, we described our clientele at the Ranch as mostly whiskey drinkers. It was Felipe who suggested we start with an Extra Añejo. He said he had a profile he was saving, one that had all three sources of water: deep well, rain, and spring water.
After an additional trip or two to iron out the paperwork, we finally had a partner to make our tequila in the Late Fall of 2015.
The first thing we did with Felipe was to put our new tequila blanco into his iconic barrels in his underground Cava at Pandillo. A win, but there were more challenges up ahead… No name, no bottle, no label, no cork, no boxes, no permits, no importer, and no distributors.
After that first meeting with Felipe, it took us years for our tequila to get to market. We did everything ourselves, and I mean everything.
There is no legal team, design firm, marketing department, warehouse partner, investors, or anything. It’s just us and some amazing friends we have met along the way who are gracious enough to share their knowledge with us.
FINDING OUR NAME
As we continued our search for a name, the goal was to find something simple yet meaningful to connect us with our family & business.
The inspiration came when Cristina heard that my Grandfather used to tell my Mom, ‘to look to the stars’ when faced with a challenging situation
or problem that needed to be figured out.
In the middle of the night, back in December of 2016, Cristina was several months pregnant with my daughter Sofia. She was getting our
3-year-old son Mikael back to sleep. With the inspirational saying ‘Look to the stars,’ she began looking at star names, planets, and constellations.
She came across a name, Volans. Volans is a constellation of the flying fish in the Southern Hemisphere. It was another one of those moments,
the ‘a ha’ moments. She celebrated quietly and waited for the morning to tell me the great news.
We love the name Volans because it is a very visual name; you could almost see the brand and image of our flying fish. We are from a family that has owned a fly-fishing business since the early 1920s. We were all so happy with it, but most importantly, IMPI, the CRT, and USPTO had nothing like it registered. We began with the image and the label design; we did everything ourselves. We wanted to go after a sleek and sophisticated look, but as Felipe would say, some people are in the business of an impressive-looking bottle; we are in the business of great Tequila.
BRINGING VOLANS TO MARKET
We sourced our glass, labels, cork, and boxes locally in Guadalajara. It took us several trips to find exactly what we needed. Fortunately, so many great people and businesses cater to the industry and are fantastic to work with. It is significantly easier if you grew up in Jalisco and know the area.
It was in the spring and summer of 2018 that we learned what laws we needed to follow to get our tequila into the U.S.
We didn’t want to rely on a huge corporate importing company to import and warehouse our tequila, so we set up our warehouse in Idaho and purchased machinery to load the pallets. We got the U.S. permit to import our tequila, found a brokerage in Mexico, and another brokerage for the U.S. We were ready!
We finally bottled our first expression with Felipe Camarena in November of 2018. It was exciting to have this bottle ready. We have been working on this for about four years now; when you consider the time it took to plant agave, find a great Master Distiller, create a name, the brand, the image, our importing company, and every little detail. It was rewarding that it came to fruition.
overcoming challenges
In December 2018, our first shipment was on its way to Idaho. The trailer was on the Mexican side of the Texas border. Exciting, but ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ I was speaking with someone from the Idaho Liquor Division about trying to get our tequila listed in Idaho for sale. You see, Idaho is a controlled liquor state, which means that Idaho has total control over liquor from distribution to retail sales. This was not a surprise to us. But, I came to find out that liquor could only be shipped from out of state or the country directly to the liquor division in Boise, Idaho. No matter what. Uh oh. We put our first lot of Extra Anejo into a storage facility in Mexico until we could work through this.
We began working with the Idaho Liquor Division Director, the Secretary of State, and the Governor of Idaho to help find a solution. They were very helpful and began working on a solution with the help of the Idaho State Legislature. At the same time, all of this was going on. I started working on getting a federal distillery permit from the TTB and began plans to set up a nano distillery or buy a bulk spirit and bottle it. The truth is that we didn’t really care about any other spirit; it was the only way we could import our tequila into Idaho.
The Idaho officials worked out several laws and details. The Liquor Division officials permitted us to deliver this lot of tequila to the state warehouse in Boise. They would store it for us until a solution could be worked out. This was a great relief, so our first shipment of Extra Añejo, aged 3 ½ years, arrived in Idaho on Valentine’s Day, 2019.
The federal distillery permit took forever to fill out and equally forever to process, primarily due to the 2019 Government shutdown. Nothing was opened & our permit application was on hold. The extra time allowed the State of Idaho officials to update the law so that a spirit like tequila with a Denomination of Origin could be imported into Idaho. The federal permit was no longer necessary, so we stopped pursuing that route to focus on more important things.
We took our bottle pictures, designed and built our website, sales sheets, and other marketing materials, and then began trying to find a distributor. We started by submitting our Extra Añejo to several spirit competitions and were awarded a medal in every single one, 8 in total! Finding a distributor with only an Extra Añejo was very difficult. At that time, tequila was a different landscape. Having a tequila bottle over the $110 price point was more challenging to find back then. It was also unheard of a tequila brand that only had an extra añejo. I believe we were the first tequila company ever to do that.
Finding distribution was a slow process, but we made steady gains. Idaho was the first State to support us, and at the time, a new company in Florida named Sip Tequila.
TEQUILA BLANCO
After the success of the Extra Añejo and exceeding our expectations, we had to continue and create another expression. We went back to the original idea of a Tequila Blanco. Cristina and her father, Miguel went to El Pandillo with Felipe to work on the Blanco profile.
Volans is made from a mix of three different water sources. This gentle mix of water sources gives Volans such a unique flavor profile. The first source is from a well that is over 450 feet deep. The deep well water has been moving over rocks and minerals, so it is very clean and has a lot of mineral flavors. The second is from spring water.
The spring water is an artesian spring on the mountain just above El Pandillo Distillery. It has a mineral flavor, but less so than the deep well. The water is also very clean because the distillery lies around 7000 feet above sea level, so no towns, distilleries, or farming contamination affect the water. The third source comes from above, in the form of rainwater. During the summer months, rainwater is collected from the distillery’s roof and stored in a nearly 50,000-gallon cistern. The rainwater is very soft and has no mineral.
We loved the character and flavor of how tequila made with these water blends tasted. Still, when you introduce Volans Blanco with oxygen through a process called aeration, there is surprising instant gratification. It just rounds off the edges. It’s like a great first impression on every sip.
It’s important to know that we do not oxygenate our blanco tequila before we put it into barrels before aging. The barrels do this naturally over time.
After receiving the Blanco in the fall of 2019, we opened distribution in Northern Nevada, continued work with Sip Tequila, and also expanded in our home state of Idaho. This took us into the 2020 Covid Pandemic. We kept emailing distributors, but most emails were ignored.
A few replied, but most were nervous about the shutdowns and uncertainty in the on-premise accounts. Hope was received when a couple of distributors said they were waiting to see what the industry was like after the summer of 2020. It wasn’t a flat-out ‘no thank you’ or no reply at all. There was hope!
TEQUILA REPOSADO
Despite the challenges in distribution, we moved forward and continued selling through the product we had. We traveled to Jalisco in early 2020 to work with Felipe at El Pandillo on our third expression: a single-barrel Reposado. We released 5 barrels that year.
The single-barrel reposado was incredible and is still among Tequila Matchmaker’s top-rated tequilas.
We finally found distribution partners in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nebraska. These first markets allowed us to grow in sales and, most importantly, experience. We learned a great deal about the U.S. distribution game. We were not ashamed to be new or to ask if we didn’t know something. Sometimes, you would hear some spirit industry jargon or acronyms and be somewhat lost. We didn’t mind. Occasionally, we would come across people who were not exactly friendly or willing to work with us. That just drove us to learn more about agave and tequila, motivating us to dive deeper into the tequila industry.
In November 2020, we released our reposado, one of the most popular expressions to date. It is a blend of three water sources, like our other expressions, and was aged for six months in used Bourbon Barrels made of American White Oak. They are very old barrels and have been used many times over. But they are well taken care of and give the light oak and agave forward aromas and flavors you expect from the signature El Pandillo / Felipe Camarena tequila.
Between 2019 and 2021, we grew by 3x-4x year over year. We opened markets in Texas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The industry exploded in 2021, as did Volans. We were happy to grow, but with accelerated growth comes growing pains.
MOVING TO GUADALAJARA
In the summer of 2021, we kept talking about what it would take to move to Guadalajara. We had our thriving family business, Three Rivers Ranch. Cristina was an Audio Engineer working the Front of the House and Monitors for live concerts. Our kids were in school.
Despite the comfortable life and friends, we still needed to learn more and grow our business by actively nurturing our friendships and
partnerships by moving to Guadalajara, Mexico.
Cristina grew up in Guadalajara. The move was easier because we already had a support system.
That summer I received my permanent resident status in Mexico. We were going to drive down to Guadalajara, but getting a permit to drive
our US cars in Mexico can only be done for 6 months at a time. We didn’t want to drive to the border every six months, so we just sold our car
and moved our worldly belongings into storage.
We packed our stuff into 12 bags, grabbed our 13-year-old American Eskimo dog, Ringo, and flew to Guadalajara in August 2021.
EMBRACING JALISCO
Living in Guadalajara transformed our lives and our business. It was a commitment to our brand and the spirit we love. We were no longer on the sideline or just talking a good game with a lot of smoke and mirrors and marketing dollars.
6 YEAR EXTRA AÑEJO
Chad, Cristina, and Eduardo Mejia
We began preparing for our oldest and most challenging releases we have ever done. The story begins when we first met Felipe and filled barrels in his cava. In January of 2016, we filled 10 American White Oak bourbon barrels and left them in Felipe’s underground cava. We wanted to give this expression a unique look and presentation.
A package we could show just how special the tequila is.
We collaborated with Guadalajara-based artist Eduardo Mejia. He is an amazing artist and photographer and specializes in typography, we are huge fans of his work! We worked on this package for months, it took longer than we all anticipated.
Eduardo created several unique pieces of art, the fonts, and the new Volans logo & monogram. I helped with the layout and colors, sparking inspiration from “the four horsemen” of metal music (Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth). A simple black and tan monotone design, matched with the bold artwork of Eduardo, made for a striking look.
We sourced a new bottle locally; the bottle top was made and engraved locally here in Jalisco. The label was screen printed by hand out of a family-run 100-year-old print shop here in Guadalajara and then hot stamped using a machine that was from the 19th century. Everything on this project was handmade using ‘old school’ artisanal techniques.
We opened the barrels of our 6-year extra añejo in the spring of 2022. The moment we tasted it, we knew we didn’t have to do anything – we bottled it at cask strength at 43%ABV.
This expression is made to savor. It also changes as it sits in your glass – you need to take your time with it. It’s complex with layers of floral, baking spices, citrus, dried fruit, chocolate, salty caramel flavors with a nice minerality and complex barrel notes. All the while still retaining the agave-forward notes we all love, even after 6 years in a barrel.
STILL STRENGTH BLANCO
During this time in 2022, Felipe began talking about installing a new fermentation tank so he could ferment with the agave fibers. We were so excited to hear how he would approach this and more excited to see what the tequila would taste like. Normally, after the agaves are cooked, they are shredded into the linear tahona pit, nicknamed Frankenstein. This mechanical tahona will gently press the agave fibers to extract the sugars. A small amount of water will wash the agave sugars, resulting in a very sweet mosto (or wort). This mosto will be fermented and then distilled.
Chad and Felipe. We were pretty happy with how the Still Strength turned out!
Fermenting with 100% agave fibers brings challenges and is much more physically demanding. The process Felipe ended up creating, initially bypasses Frankenstein. The agaves would get shredded and then would travel by conveyor belt directly into the low-lying fermentation tanks. The tanks would then get filled with water and then fermentation would happen with 100% agave fibers. After the yeast does its work and we have mosto muerto, the mosto is drained and then heads to a separate tank.
Agave fibers are very porous and retain a lot of liquid. So the agave fibers are shoveled back into the Frankenstein pit so we can extract the remaining mosto muerto. Felipe is about efficiency and reducing waste in all areas of his process. This is just one instance of where the traditional tequila-making methods of Felipe’s Grandfather meet the innovation and efficiency of Felipe Camarena. Since we began working on our initial blanco, we had a still strength in mind. We wanted the timing to be right and we didn’t want to rush the process. We wanted something that was unique, flavorful, and gave you that impression you were at the distillery trying the tequila right off the still.
The moment we finally tried the tequila that came from using the agave fibers, we knew. It was a complex agave bomb of a tequila without the extreme burn. We immediately wanted this to be a part of our still strength Blanco. Typically, Volans is made with a blend of Spring, Rain, & Deep well water. This blend is done by distilling three distinct tequilas, then blending them to make the final product. With this in mind, we began work on our still strength profile.
Our Still Strength Blanco is made up of a blend of deep well and spring water. Overall, 10% of tequila was fermented with agave fibers. We call it ‘still strength’ because it was distilled directly to 53%ABV. No water is added to bring down the ABV. This creates a very satisfying mouth feel and is paired with a fresh and robust agave aroma. When you taste it, you will notice a burst of flavors of agave, citrus, and lingering minerality. We left out the rainwater so we could highlight the minerality even further.
While we were working on the still-strength blanco, we began work on our 2023 single-barrel reposado. We wanted the release to be extra special and unique while continuing to honor the signature tequila Volans and El Pandillo are known for.
SINGLE BARREL REPOSADO
We started by speaking with Felipe over many years. We talked about why he chooses the barrels he does, how he maintains them, his time before he started Pandillo, and the expression he created. It was all enlightening, and to this day, barrels are more of an art than a science. I read books about barrels and cooperages, watched videos, made phone calls, and asked my distributors their favorite bourbons and why.
Single Barrel Reposado
In my opinion, the three most important factors in choosing a barrel are #1, the spirit needs to be the highest quality, #2, the cooperage that selected the wood and constructed the barrel, and #3, where the wood is from. If you have those three things dialed in, there is a good chance you’ll have an excellent aged expression.
I found 20 freshly dumped barrels and had them delivered to Pandillo, the brand names are not important, but they consisted of mainly American white oak with a couple of French and German oak barrels. They were mainly bourbon barrels with just a few wines from California. We filled these barrels with Volans Tequila at 45%ABV on May 3rd, 2023. We tasted all 20 barrels in one epic tasting after four months and 23 days. We selected 10 of our favorites and bottled them in August of 2023.
These 10 barrels are so different and unique. Each one offers a different perspective on a tequila reposado. They all have one thing in common: the blanco going into the barrels was the same. If you taste all 10 barrels, you’ll find a unique beauty in each one.
CONTINUING OUR JOURNEY
Over the years, it has been a real pleasure to be able to work with Felipe, his sons Alan & Gus, Carlos, Juan Carlos, Maria Elena, Eric, Aureliano, and the entire crew at El Pandillo, which are too many to list, but each has earned our respect and endless appreciation They are a truly special team of people who are dedicated to making each batch of tequila, the best they can. We feel at home there and find ourselves lingering when we have to leave.
That brings us up to date. Our story is still being written and we will continue to release fun expressions with Felipe and our extended El Pandillo Family. We enjoy being a family-owned brand based here in Guadalajara. Our goal is to continue focusing on quality, sourcing everything locally here in Jalisco, and ensuring each lot is just as good as the last. If you get a chance to visit Guadalajara, please make the time to come visit us at El Pandillo in Los Altos de Jalisco.
email us to schedule a tour of
destilería el pandillo, nom 1579
jesús maría, jalisco, méxico
