Today we’d like to introduce you to Gerardo Madrigal.
Hi Gerardo, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I own agave farms in Nayarit, Mexico and a Tequila brand named “Tequila AMAN” that will export to Asia, United States, Mexico, Africa, UK, Europe and Middle East. My brand represents the first and only operating tequila distillery to be built in the state of Nayarit, Mexico. Everyone in the world knows Tequila is from Jalisco.
But nobody knows it can also actually come from the state of Nayarit as it is part of the Denomination of Origin for Tequila. How I got to this point in life was made possible by my well-paid stint as a Mathematics Professor at East Los Angeles College and even the term “AMAN” came from my students. How I started and how I got to where I am today is the work of 17 years since I graduated high school. I was born and raised in East Los Angeles by the famous Whittier Blvd sign on Whittier Blvd and Atlantic Blvd. For up until 12th grade, I was labeled English Language Learner (ELL) and belonged to a group tagged as the “free lunch” students that is basically “economically disadvantaged” in school language. My parents immigrated illegally in 1972 and worked blue collar lines, woke up at 3am every day to work 12-14 hour shifts. Thanks to Reagan’s amnesty program in the 80s, my parents were able to secure residency in the states. My mother worked as a seafood packager for a freezing 30 degree factory for almost 30 years. My father had a similar job packaging frozen meat for 30 years. Their strong work ethic is the reason I am hungry for life today.
I really struggled with primary and secondary school. I wasn’t good at anything and since I never saw my parents at home from their long hours at work, I never had any kind of reinforcement at home to perform well in school. After barely graduating high school, I attended East Los Angeles College where I had a fresh start to redeem myself in 2004. I started taking school seriously and out of nowhere became really good at Math. I remember I liked computers so I wanted to be a computer engineer. As I worked my way through Calculus courses, I noticed I understood the material very well and began to host study group sessions with my classmates. I knew how to do all homework problems and began to teach my classmates solutions to homework problems. “You are better than the professor at explaining” they said. It was here where I noticed I really loved to teach my classmates. I immediately switched my major to Mathematics. I transferred to the University of California Santa Barbara 2006 to 2008 where I got to live on the beach while getting my Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. Being accepted into the $40,000 Robert Noyce Scholarship Program in 2008, I attended CSULA for free to obtain my Master of Science in Applied Mathematics.
No one readily entertains this degree and these classes were always very small of about 8-10 students. I remember also being almost the only Mexican-American in the program. There I was one August afternoon at the interview for a teaching position at East Los Angeles College. ELAC has been known for its brutal hiring methods making it very difficult to get in as an instructor. I was nervous as hell and I even choked a few times explaining my teaching philosophy to the Math hiring committee and why I feel I am a good candidate for teaching at East Los Angeles College. My answer very simple: I’ve always been passionate about working with historically marginalized students, economically disadvantaged, first-generation, non-traditional, not prepared for college and other disproportionately impacted student populations. I found early in my career that students learn faster when learning is fun when it is a game and a challenge. The only way you reach and teach minority students and help them learn is to create culture in your classroom. A culture of respect and understanding, a culture in where we are here to learn, make mistakes, embrace learning as a lifelong pursuit that never ends, that it is worthy of students putting in their time and showing up to class as I once did. That they can build a strong foundation through education for themselves, their families and the family they will one day have.
I was making good money into my career as an instructor when I took a trip with my mother and father to Nayarit in 2014. I remember when my parents took me one time through airplane when I was a kid (at the time Mexicana airlines) and we landed in Guadalajara. For the first time in my life in 1994 I saw the blue agave fields. Red soils contrasting with blue agave, terroir, east-west orientation slopes, millions and millions of blue agave plants covering the mountain range of Tequila, Jalisco: the volcanoes, the waterfalls, the culture, the heritage and the people. I fell in love. I didn’t really know what they were used for when I was a kid but I just knew I loved to pass by the agave scenic route to Nayarit. When I arrived in 2014 to San Jose de Gracia Nayarit, my grandfather had a Parcel of 6.35 hectares of which he rented to a rancher for the cultivation of corn. I immediately asked my grandpa to stop renting it out to him and instead, rent it out to me. I began to study the statistics of agave for the production of both Agave syrup and Tequila. The sales of this alcoholic beverage in the world have been growing at a faster rate than the overall drinks market, as premium brands help to improve the image of tequila. The increasing interest is also reflected in the growing Merger and Acquisition activity in this industry.
Recently, Bacardi agreed to purchase Patron Spirits, maker of high-end tequila, valuing the latter at $5.1 billion. This news even sent shares of the Jose Cuervo-maker, Becle SAB, to a near-record high. The deal also follows the Pernod Ricard buying out Avion Tequila and Diageo ( DEO) acquiring Casamigos tequila. Now we have Dwayne The Rock Johnson, John Varvatos, Nick Jonas and Tesla getting into Tequila. Rumor has it that even Lebron James will be making his own project. I knew I had to jump on my own project so I started cultivating agave in 2015. It takes 5-7 years for agave to mature. Every year, I kept planting a 6 hectare lot and eventually became owner of 6 agave parcels, enough for 20,000-40,000 cases of my own AMAN Tequila per year. I knew I had to create a differentiated product that stood tall against the 2,000+ brands that exist in the world. My bottle is a contemporary take on Mexican heritage, visually aligned with a premium feel and spirit it contains. Rhomboidal geometric pattern and structures are alluding to traditional Mexican and Aztec historic artifacts, which feature similar geometry, but also evoke sharply pointed leaves of agave plants.
Another analogy we were aiming to allude to are lavishly embroidered diamond patterns used in high-end interior and product design. Aesthetics can be described as minimalist, with no unnecessary complex labeling, yet brimming with detail through the presence of the patterned surface, resulting in overall feeling of purity. As for the meaning of “AMAN,” it means dependability and trustworthiness in ancient Hebrew. I thought it best to call it that because when my professor evaluations came in from my students, a lot of their comments read “He is dependable, trustworthy, very helpful, energetic, loves his job, funny” etc. My brand proposition is to build Nayarit’s first and only operating Tequila distillery. Legally you can grow blue agave for the production of Tequila in 5 Mexican states: Jalisco, Nayarit, Guanajuato, Michoacán and Tamaulipas. The only states without a Tequila distillery are Nayarit and Tamaulipas. When my plants were ready, I knew I had to search for a global distribution channel and start meeting with distributors worldwide. I traveled to China to meet with distributors, Africa, UK, Israel, Dubai to explain my story and generated a lot of interest globally.
I recently signed with an import company Erie Beverage Imports who will put AMAN in 50 states plus all of Canada by 2025. All of these people share my vision seeking to position Nayarit as a Tequila-producing state with its goal to build the first registered distillery of Nayarit to date, so that the world turns its gaze towards this great state, to demonstrate that Nayarit is more than beautiful beaches, it is a state that is proud of its people who know how to work its land which allows its people to work and are grateful for the care the plants are given, delivering to the world, AMAN Tequila. Of course the profits will not all just go to me, a percentage of my profits will go to tuition, room and board, books and scholarships for bilingual students at East Los Angeles College. On the Mexico side, renovations of churches for our Nayarit pueblos, robotics programs in schools that have anti-pedagogical settings in Nayarit with no technology access or STEM programs. Not all students in Mexico have equal access to STEM education. With this in mind, students are less likely to have opportunities to take advanced math and science classes. Without access to these courses, students will be held back from fulfilling their potential in STEM careers. Mexico’s roads are crumbling, bridges are deficient, and water pipelines leak. STEM education in Mexico will be critically important to solving many of the world’s challenges to address a changing climate, pipeline repair, urban energy use, rapid transit and infrastructure asset resilience. I will do my part as a global Tequila brand to contribute to this cause.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Of course, you are always at the brink of failure and things are never always smooth. One example is my launch. It took two years to get my bottle done correctly by my glass company – it was very frustrating to see my bottle not coming to life because they couldn’t get it right. When we’re about to launch in February 2020, the bottles got to the distillery incorrectly. The hot stamping was chipping off and the paint was wrong. I had all of the bottles sold to a Chilean spirits importer and I had to break the bad news that I wasn’t going to be able to sell them. In March 2020, the pandemic shut everything down and my importer backed off and said he would hold until after the pandemic. On the agricultural end of my plants, there is always disease. Weevil, fungus, cold snaps, climate change, high humidity and about 10% of your crops die. If you don’t catch weevil in time, it can wipe out an entire swath of supply. With climate change, many plants remain stagnant with no growth at all and no viable reproduction. The major tequila brands are having the very same issues. Climate change changes the way of life for this plant with extremely hot temperatures and high humidity. The plants exhibit a wide range of sensitivities to temperature extremes. There is an ideal temperature at which each plant grows and develops the most competently (usually between the low 50s and high 80s). When the temperature varies outside these limits, there is not much or no growth at all causing loss of reproductive viability. Right now, there is a huge agave shortage and this will make it worse.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
AMAN Tequila will represent the first and only operating Tequila distillery of Nayarit, Mexico. To position Nayarit as a Tequila-producing state with its goal to build the first registered distillery of Nayarit to date, so that the world turns its gaze towards this great state, to demonstrate that Nayarit is more than beautiful beaches, it is a state that is proud of its people who know how to work its land which allows its people to work and are grateful for the care the plants are given, delivering to the world, AMAN Tequila.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
With risk, you always want to mitigate risk, reduce the exposure to risk. Risk is also about confidence, confidence in yourself to back yourself up every time. It’s like a football player, every time Brady throws the ball there is an element of risk. But because he backs himself 8 out of 10 times, he completes the pass. I am the Brady of the AMAN brand, I have everything to make this work and I never went too broke I made sure my investments were manageable so in the event everything didn’t work out (either my plants died of weevil, cold snap, etc.), I wouldn’t be completely broke and could always back myself up with my professor salary. Another example is an investment I made at a very renowned restaurant with my business partner in Manhattan Beach. The pandemic hit, we were shut down for seven months and when we were allowed to reopen, we were limited to operate at a small capacity and then we were shut down again.
I don’t even know if we’ll make it as a restaurant through the pandemic. Being an entrepreneur, there comes risk and you must be able to stomach that there will be losses. Will you be happy with your life if you lost half a million dollars? Will you go on about your day without it affecting you? Will you come home to kiss your wife and kids without letting it affect you? You will need to know how to stomach this and discipline your mind to take losses. As I gain global market share on my Tequila brand, I only have the fear of the unknown, as I have never been in this position before. This too shall pass I think of the first time I lectured as an official professor, there was an element of risk, but you will always overcome it and succeed. Some non-negotiable traits you should possess as a risk-taker are: vision, discipline, motivation, dedication, confidence and always be open minded.
Pricing:
- Tequila Blanco $69.99
- Tequila Reposado $79.99
- Tequila “El Profesor” Añejo $249
- Tequila Rosa Blanco $79.99
- Tequila LGBTQ Reposado $79.99
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.tequilaaman.com
- Instagram: @tequila_aman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TequilaAman/
