Heineken in Trouble With Mexico Over Tequila

Uh oh, Dutch beer giant Heineken is in trouble with Mexico over tequila and facing a law suit. We’ve ben there Heineken, we’ve been there.

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Apparently, Heineken has a beer called Desperado (which they stopped selling in the U.S. a few years ago) and it claims that beer is aged in tequila barrels and has “75 percent tequila flavoring.”

But tequila has what’s called a protected designation of origin, which means that to call something tequila it has to be made “from the heads of the Agave Tequila Weber Blue Variety” and 25 to 51 percent of the beverage’s alcohol content must come from tequila.

So it seems that Mexico’s Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT) aka the Tequila Regulatory Council, looked into it and in conjunction with the Public Health Laboratory in Madrid found a whopping zero percent actual tequila in the beer. Whoops.

Now the CRT is considering a law suit because as the CRT’s director-general said: “We cannot permit someone unscrupulously to affect tequila’s prestige. Either they take the word tequila off it, or they put some tequila in. [If they refuse], we’ll have no choice but to fight this.”

In its defense, a spokesperson for Heineken said: “The flavoring we use contains tequila, which we buy in Mexico from one of the members of the CRT . . . We make sure the product fully complies with all regulations and labeling requirements.”

The CRT isn’t buying it, saying Heineken would need a “world of tequila” in order to make sure their beers lived up the tequila label.

Heineken, you’re not the first to be in trouble over tequila and you won’t be the last. We’d like to say to take some advil, drink some water, and go out for pozole, but that won’t help. So you’re on your own.