Arturo Lomeli's first tequila had a sombrero on the label.
He was 23, running a bar in Guadalajara, and had decided, with the particular confidence of someone who has never failed at anything yet, that the world needed his tequila. He called it El Teporocho. It came in a bottle shaped like a man with a moustache and a little straw hat. It sold almost nothing.
By his own admission: a disaster.
So he did what most people don't. He went back to university, completed a master's degree in luxury marketing, and returned to the industry with a completely different question. Not how do I sell tequila? But what does Mexico actually deserve to look like on a bar shelf?
The answer, it turned out, was hiding in a piece of furniture.
The Bottle Came First
Lomeli was sitting at a table one day when he noticed the leg. Gothic, carved, tapered, and when he flipped the shape upside down in his mind, he saw it. The curved, elongated silhouette that would become one of the most recognisable spirits decanters in the world.
But a beautiful shape was just the beginning. He needed someone to make it.
He found artisans in Santa María Canchesda; a small village a couple of hours outside Mexico City, who worked with ceramics using techniques passed down through generations of the Mazahua community. Each bottle would be built by hand. A mould formed from soil. Fired, polished, glazed, then painted by hand. No two identical. No shortcuts.
Each one takes no less than two weeks to make.
Lomeli wasn't just designing a bottle. He was trying to save a craft that was quietly dying. "I knew artisans were all over Mexico and that their craft was struggling to survive," he has said. "It made perfect sense to fuse the two together."
Today Clase Azul employs hundreds of those artisans, provides meals and childcare, and the ceramics workshop; Tradición Mazahua has become a celebrated institution in its own right.
Then He Had to Sell It
Armed with a ceramic decanter that cost five times more than the average bottle of good tequila, Lomeli did something quietly extraordinary: he drove it from bar to bar across Mexico and the US and asked people to pay $100 for it.
In 1997, a really good tequila cost around $18.
There was another problem. The bottle was so large it didn't fit on most bar shelves.
He did it anyway. Bar by bar, city by city. And slowly, slowly, something shifted. People saw the bottles. And they wanted them.
Not just the tequila. The bottles.
That instinct proved to be the whole business model. Because Clase Azul didn't just sell you a spirit. It sold you something worth keeping. People turn the empties into vases, lamps, candle holders, centrepieces. That was always the point, upcycling before the word was fashionable, giving someone an object genuinely worth owning.
Today the brand is reportedly valued at over a billion dollars and remains 100% Mexican-owned.
The Liquid Had to Earn It
A beautiful bottle with average tequila inside would have collapsed under its own pretension inside a year. Lomeli knew that.
Clase Azul's Blue Weber Agave grows in Los Altos de Jalisco; the highlands, where iron-rich red clay soil, altitude, and climate combine to produce agave that's sweeter and more aromatic than plants grown in the lowlands. The agaves are farmed organically and left to mature for six to eight years before harvest. Then they're slow-cooked in brick ovens for 72 hours, fermented with a proprietary yeast, and double-distilled in copper pot stills.
Master distiller Viridiana Tinoco oversees all of it.
The result is a range that spans from bracingly fresh to deeply aged, and now, with the newest expression, into entirely new territory.
The Range
Plata — Unaged. Green apple, citrus, fresh cream. The agave in its purest form, nothing added, nothing hidden.
Reposado — The one that built the brand. Eight months in American whiskey casks produces vanilla, caramel, and clove with a finish that lingers longer than it has any right to.
Añejo — Two years in barrel. The colour shifts to deep amber; the flavour to orange marmalade, hazelnut, oak, and warm spice. More contemplative. Made for slow evenings.
Gold — A blend of Plata and eight-year-old extra añejo aged in first-use French oak. Apple, apricot, almond. For when you want something genuinely rare in your glass.
Ultra — Five years aged. The pinnacle of the range. Collector's territory, full stop.
Mezcal Durango — Wild Cenizo agave from northern Mexico, pit-roasted underground. Earthy, mineral, and complex in a way tequila simply can't replicate. For the curious.
Mezcal Guerrero — Cupreata agave, lighter and more citrus-forward. Tobacco, honey, and a long, fascinating finish. A lesser-known side of Clase Azul worth knowing.
Blanco Ahumado (new) — The newest expression and arguably the most interesting. Master distiller Viridiana Tinoco pit-roasted Blue Weber Agave over volcanic rocks — borrowing from mezcal tradition — to create a tequila with genuine smoke. Smoked agave, fresh plum, red apple, and a silky mineral finish. A genuinely new direction for the brand.
So Which One Do You Start With?
If you're new to Clase Azul, the Reposado is the entry point; it's the bottle that earned the brand its reputation and it still justifies every dollar.
If you already know the Reposado and want to go deeper, the Añejo rewards the time you give it. If you're agave-curious and want to understand what mezcal brings to the table, the Durango is unlike anything in the tequila category.
And if someone you know deserves a genuinely remarkable gift, the kind that gets kept on a shelf long after it's empty, any bottle from this range will do exactly that.
We stock the full Clase Azul range at AlcVol. Shop it here.