Why Is Fortaleza Tequila So Hard to Find?

There is a romantic appeal to traditionally made tequila. Images of jimadors harvesting agaves in the fields of Jalisco, and master tequileros tending to the stills have always been a part of tequila marketing. Few tequila brands embody that ideal like Fortaleza.

In an industry known for deceptive production practices and eyebrow-raising celebrity endorsements, Fortaleza’s authenticity has helped it become among the most sought-after, additive-free tequilas on the globe. A search of tequila enthusiast websites or cocktail content on social media will likely find people who show off bottles of Fortaleza.

Its meteoric growth in demand is a relatively recent and fascinating phenomenon. It has become one of the most highly allocated and hard-to-acquire agave spirits. Other additive-free tequilas seem widely available, but none have captured the imagination or have become as hard to find as Fortaleza.

Related: What Are Still-Strength Tequilas, and Why Are They Collectors’ Favorites?

How Fortaleza became a hot commodity

Tequila’s popularity has risen steadily outside of Mexico for some time, but it exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic. With bars and restaurants closed, people enjoyed spirits at home. The shutdown provided ample free time to many, some of whom used it to learn about what they were actually buying.

As agave aficionados turned to social media for tequila recommendations, a growing cadre of bartenders and influencers were quick to suggest Fortaleza.

“They blew up on social media,” says Eric Ramirez, of Ramirez Liquors, a family-owned chain that boasts one of the largest selections of agave spirits in Los Angeles. “Everybody was asking me, ‘Can I get that tequila from the TikTok videos?’ It just became one of those hot items that everyone wanted at the time.”

Related: The 5 Best Sipping Tequilas You Can Actually Afford

“We had been a mostly bar and restaurant-focused brand before, and we believe during Covid that people began digging into and researching their tequilas, and then they discovered us,” says William Erickson, sales and marketing manager for Fortaleza. He’s the son of Fortaleza founder Guillermo Sauza.

Few brands have the pedigree of authenticity as Fortaleza. Guillermo Sauza is the great-great-grandson of Don Cenobio Sauza, considered among the pioneers of the modern tequila industry.

"“People love the history of Fortaleza – the story, the bottle, the agave piña on the top. And that really helped the brand explode and get to a place where we are today.” "

Lucas Assis, bartender and tequila content creator

Fortaleza’s tequila is produced through traditional methods. It uses brick ovens to cook the agave, stone wheels to crush it, and employs open-air fermentation. The process is essentially unchanged since the early 1900s.

The romantic imagery associated with tequila production isn’t just a marketing hook for Fortaleza. It’s the distillery’s daily reality.

“People love the history of Fortaleza – the story, the bottle, the agave piña on the top,” says Lucas Assis, a bartender and tequila content creator. “And that really helped the brand explode and get to a place where we are today.”

Fortaleza’s popularity has resulted in it becoming a highly allocated product. According to Erickson, Fortaleza ships about 38,000 nine-liter cases of tequila to the United States every year. The cases are divided by distributors between on-premise accounts (bars and restaurants) and off-premise accounts (retail stores). The number of cases allocated is based on the amount of the distributor’s products sold by each account.

Many retailers can’t get enough to keep customers satisfied. For Ramirez Liquors, it often has no idea when or how many cases will show up. And good luck in grabbing a bottle when it does appear.

“It sells out by the end of the day,” says Ramirez. “I was looking for a bottle for a friend and a case showed up at our bigger store. It sold out in less than an hour before I could get there. I’m one of the managers. I should be able to find a bottle, but I haven't had it in years because of how hard it is to get now.”

The challenges of meeting demand

To make tequila “the right way” isn’t easy. It’s even more difficult now that international demand is at an all-time high.

“As the global demand for tequila continues to grow, the biggest challenge faced by the industry in Jalisco is ensuring that there’s a consistent, high-quality supply of agave,” says David Rodriguez, master distiller at Patrón, the most prominent brand that currently produces additive-free tequila. “The agave plant takes time to mature, and its growth is directly linked to weather conditions and the long-term health of the land.”

Many prominent brands decided long ago to work around the volatility of agave production. Shortcuts include fermenting agave distillate with sugarcane to produce mixto tequilas and, most contentiously, using undisclosed but legal additives.

“There are tequila producers who use additives in their tequilas to maintain their quality standards,” says Rodriguez. “These additives are ingredients like glycerin, wood extract, or caramel coloring, which can make a tequila taste sweeter, feel richer, look darker, and smell like tequilas which have aged much longer.”

Such additives can correct batch-to-batch variations and cover up defects that come from underripe agave. For brands like Fortaleza, adulterating its tequila or taking shortcuts is out of the equation.

The spike in demand for additive-free tequila has affected a good portion of producers. But other than special, limited-time offerings, bottles of El Tesoro, Cascahuín, and Don Fulano are still readily available. While most enthusiasts will say that they’re all excellent tequilas, Fortaleza is unique in its scarcity.

The future of Fortaleza

Why is Fortaleza so hard to find? It’s what makes the liquid in each bottle special: the traditional production process. Fortaleza’s distillery is virtually unchanged from when it was built in the early 20th century. It’s a hands-on, labor-intensive process, and production is limited by the Fortaleza’s three small copper pot stills.

Working six days a week around the clock, Fortaleza produces around 320,000 liters every year. That may seem like a lot, but industrial tequila distilleries can produce that volume in a day.

The distillery is also unique in that it has only ever produced tequila for Fortaleza. It’s common for other distilleries to produce multiple brands of tequila. Many are designed with larger ovens, and more fermentation tanks and stills that can produce much higher volume. If consumer demand for one brand begins to increase, the distillery can shift easily to meet that demand. Fortaleza doesn’t have that kind of capacity or flexibility.

For Fortaleza, to expand its production seems like a no-brainer. Plans are in the works, but expanding such a small, craft operation has very real risks. With such a hands-on, small-batch process, scaling up production might cause small, perceptible changes in taste. For a brand that relies on authenticity and quality, that can be dangerous.

“Sometimes when you build big, you lose quality control,” says Ramirez. “When you start making a tequila that's not considered as great anymore, you definitely lose followers as quickly as you grew.”

Fortaleza is confident that it will be able to maintain the brand’s uniqueness and quality standards.

“Unfortunately, that is why our expansion plan has taken us a long time,” says Erickson. “We are going to keep making Fortaleza the same way we have done since the beginning, with a tahona and copper pot stills, and where we can control every detail of the process.”

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