Founder's Story - Tequila, Tradition, and Triumph: How Charley Pavlosky Built Aguadios into a Collector’s Dream | S2 Ep. 152

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

In this episode, Charley Pavlosky dives into his extraordinary journey into the world of rare spirits, sharing how a chance experience in Jalisco, Mexico, inspired the creation of Aguadios Tequila. From exploring tequila's rich history to crafting some of the rarest and most exquisite spirits, Charley delivers a compelling story of passion and innovation.Key Topics Discussed:The Origins of Tequila: Charley’s discovery of a family-run Jalisco operation featuring rare organic blue Weber agave with exceptional sugar content.Crafting Perfection: How Aguadios Tequila is aged in 200-year-old Japanese Mizunara oak barrels, creating a spirit that blends tradition and rarity.Tequila as a Collector's Item: The growing trend of tequila as an appreciating asset, with limited-edition bottles becoming highly sought-after investments.Overcoming Industry Challenges: The hurdles of navigating legal and logistical processes across Mexico, the U.S., and Japan to bring a premium product to market.The Celebrity Influence: The role of high-profile celebrity tequilas in popularizing the spirit, while Aguadios focuses on authenticity and exclusivity.The Role of Humor: Charley’s background in comedy, working with legends like Robin Williams and Richard Pryor, and how humor has been a guiding force in overcoming challenges.Takeaways:Tequila is not just a drink; it’s a vessel for storytelling, tradition, and shared human experiences.Scarcity and authenticity make rare spirits like Aguadios Tequila truly remarkable.Perseverance, humor, and passion are essential to navigating challenges and achieving success.Connect with Charley Pavlosky:Trending Spirits Inc.AguadiosVisit these websites to explore Charley’s story, purchase limited-edition bottles, and inquire about private tastings or events.Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/FOUNDERSAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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And Charlie, you are the founder and CEO of Trending Spirits and Aguadillo's Tequila, which tequila to me is very fascinating. I remember going to this special tasting in Cabo a few years ago, and they were really teaching us all about the history of tequila. It's very intricate. So I'd love to learn from you, what is the origins or the interesting facts about tequila that brought you into the industry, and why are you really deciding to go all in? That's a great question, Daniel. Thank you. It happened by accident, like a lot of great

things in life. I had made many journeys to Mexico throughout the 80s and 90s at the behest of family and friends who I had down there who asked me to come and travel to their location they were living in, spend time with them. One particular friend of mine in Los Angeles at the time had a family down in Jalisco, and he asked me to go visit them while I was hiking around the local region. One day I hiked up the side of this volcano called Volcana Tequila outside of the town of Tequila. It turns out it's an ancient volcano had been dormant for 220,000 years, halfway up the slope, I happened upon a ranchero, which was my friend's

family. They welcomed me in, had a meal with them. When I left for the rest of my journey, they gave me a bottle with a cork in it and said, take this with you. So, I took that back to Los Angeles and I had never tasted anything so amazing in my life. And it was tequila made the old fashioned way through family methods that went back to, God, this family settled this land in 1835. And it turns out that they had the rarest blue Weber agave in all of Mexico, organic, and had the highest bricks content of any organic agave or any agave anywhere. The usual bricks content,

which is a sugar content in the plant is about 27 for all your premium tequilas. Their bricks content was 53, which is almost double. And they had been making their own tequila for many years. And that sort of started me on this journey of rare, unique, unbelievable spirits that were unlike any of the run of the mill tequilas. So what do you see in terms of the reception around when you talk to people about the rarity and people, are they open to like, oh, I want to try something that's more rare? Do people not care so much about it because they think, you know, tequila is tequila? What are you finding in terms of what are people saying

when you tell them this story? Depends upon who you talk to. The one thing I hear all the time is, oh, I had an experience with tequila in college and I drank too much and I got sick. And I know that they were drinking, you know, some Blanco cheap tequila that they got, you know, in college. We all drank cheap booze in college. But after I started learning about rare spirits, and this was 35 years ago now, I realized that life was too short to

drink cheap booze. So I dedicated myself to only bringing the finest and rare spirits to the table. And as I've sampled people on the new release we have, which is our inaugural release myself to only bringing the finest and rarest spirits to the table. And as I've sampled people on the new release we have, which is our inaugural release of only 1,350 bottles, and this will never be made again because there is no more. When people sample it, the first reaction is, wow, I've never tasted anything like that in my life. What is that? They know it's tequila, but they don't know the origin story. And that's what's

so impactful is the effect it has on people, storytelling, sharing our lives with each other. And that takes a whole different flavor because we're not making mixed drinks. We're pouring this straight and we're sipping and we're talking and we're sharing our lives with each other. And that's the great connecting point. And that's the reaction we've been getting from this. And that's the great connecting point. And that's the reaction we've been getting from this. I remember the same. I had this tequila maestro, and he was telling me about the differences, like you're

saying, between cheap, more rare, better tequila. And as I was sipping it, I almost felt like I was being brought back in history to ancestors of people, ancestors of myself. We were all probably sitting around, you know, drinking together, dipping. It wasn't about getting drunk. It was really about, you know, enjoying the experience with each other. So, I'd like to understand how has it been since you started this? I know you're doing a lot of different things.

Where have you gotten in this journey with tequila and what's next? Well, what we've done is we've created the only tequila with the rarest luebre organic agave that's been aged in Japanese mizunara oak. Now, this tequila is 46 years old by the time it gets to the glass in your hand. That's more than half a human lifetime. The barrels it was aged in are 200-year-old Japanese mizunora harvest, but were planted on Hokkaido, Japan in just around the year 1790, 1795. So, 200 years later, they're harvested and formed into barrels. The journey has been extraordinary in so far as we're bringing something to market that people have never had before and they'll never have again. Once it's gone, it's gone forever. And that's something

that connects us on a spiritual level. It's almost like we are sipping with our ancestors because the stories are ancestral. When you go back 200 years just for the barrel wood, and then you're going back to 1834 just for the family founding this plantation, and then you look at the volcano which became dormant 220,000 years ago that fed through the alluvial rains this rare blue ebber agave. We're looking at an historic event that we're capturing in a bottle, capturing in a glass. It's like capturing lightning in a bottle. It happens once in a lifetime. We never anticipated this.

It's just been the journey of curiosity for me and of learning and of education, of course, and gratitude. But from the ground to that glass, there's only two things in the tequila, water and agave. The yeast comes from the air. It's naturally fermented and there's no additives. And someone who has never had an additive free tequila, and I mean a pure tequila like this, will notice the difference.

The first thing that comes to mind is how clean it is. And you're right, it's not to get drunk, it's to sip a little and enjoy life a lot more. It's always amazing going back to understand how things were created. Like you just said, hundreds of thousands of years ago, something needed to happen for us to be here today. I mean, that's amazing. I talk about rarity and history. Why do you think the last few years tequila has become so popular?

Because I feel like if I really look at all of the alcohols, I think people are drinking less beer. I'm not sure exactly on wine. I know people are drinking less alcohol overall, I'd say, but I feel like tequila though has really, really taken off and it's become even more mainstream. Why do you think that is? Well, I can tell you why it is. And your assertion is correct. Tequila for the first time, it's become even more mainstream. Why do you think that is? Well, I can tell you why it is. And your assertion is correct. Tequila, for the first time ever in 2024, outsold whiskey in the United States of America. It is the spirit of choice. The reason that has happened is because of celebrity. A lot of celebrities have taken a fascination to tequila and they've decided to make their own tequila.

There's probably about a dozen known celebrity tequilas out there right now. It started with George Clooney. Clooney's a tequila guy. He loves tequila. He enjoys a good drink of tequila. He and his partner, Randy Gerber, decided to start with a third partner whose name I do not know at the moment. They decided to start Casa Amigos. And that sort of started the trend among a lot of celebrities when they had the kind of success they did. But bear in mind, those guys took their time, they made a good product. And a lot of the people that followed them followed the trend.

We're very, very strict in our sourcing. So, we are very selective about the agave, the process, the bottling, the packaging, the story behind it, the origin, everything that leads to that. And that's what's led to this incredible flourish in tequila activity. So, there's a lot out there. A lot of it's good, some of it's not so good, but people's awareness has been raised by folks who are known either through their work or through their celebrity status. And that's really brought it to the forefront. And so it's also brought an attention on finer tequiles. And that's kind of where we fall and that's our wheelhouse. And so it's been great for us and we're grateful for everybody who's in the market and we're grateful that it's become a collector's item. I mean, rare tequilas like ours appreciate in value. So they're like a rare watch or

a rare painting. As the years go by and there's no more left, the bottles you have increase in value. I have a collection at home with some bottles that I bought for as little as five or $600 and now they're worth $10,000, $12,000 each because the scarcity creates the rarity, the rarity exploits the price and they go for auction at very high prices, these bottles. So that's kind of a little snapshot of how it's become so mainstream and on many people's lips literally and figuratively, the spirit of tequila. I'm always interested about the alcohol

that almost becomes an asset that appreciates. We had someone before that talked about wine, like these rare wines, like you said, it's only made one time that it's scarcity and there's a lot of these collectors that wanna get in on this. You also mentioned George Clooney. I'm sure their huge exit inspired a lot of people that want to just create to exit, exit

the company for billions or whatever they hope. How do you see the exit or what is the long term goal of building these spirit companies? Well, a lot of people do look at that exit. They all made a lot of money exiting that company. We didn't do it for that purpose. We did it to maintain and curate the purity in the process, the brands, and most important, the traditions of the families behind it. Because without family traditions, tequila would not be anywhere that it is now.

The great families of Mexico, the grand master distillers, well, the one that comes to mind for me is Enrique Fonseca who makes Fuente Seca. To me, not to plug somebody else's tequila, but I love their tequila. I've been a huge fan for years and years and years. And everything that guy makes, everything he touches is world class, state of the art. I've tasted every tequila he's ever made and they're all extraordinary. And that's inspiring to me. And I think some people who are in a celebrity tequila, yeah, they're looking at the exit, they're looking for a pension. We're looking to curate the rarest of the rare, the best of the best.

And we'll leave that as a legacy for this company, that we wouldn't compromise on quality. We wouldn't overmarket. We sell by hand. The batches we have coming out after this 1,300 bottles are 286 bottles of an extremely rare tequila, 300 bottles of another extremely rare tequila. We're sort of in a niche all of our own. There's no one else out there that I know of that's doing what we do, which is only curating the rarest, the most unobtainable spirits in the world.

And I aspire to find the best spirits like those that are created by people like Henry K. Ponseca. He partly inspired this journey for me because he made an amazing tequila, an ensemble tequila in 2013 and 14. And I'm lucky to still have two bottles of it unopened in my case. It was some of the best tequila ever made on the planet and it happened by accident. And it was released by K&L in California and I was lucky enough to have a few bottles. And there's another brand Uno Dos Tres, and they have a tequila that they bring out in limited quantities every year called Diablito. Numbers 001 to 1000 were the most unbelievable tequila I've ever had in my life, bar none.

I actually own bottle 033, and I don't even want to mention what that's worth now. But, my God, I enjoyed several bottles of that while the rum was going. And the flavor profile was extraordinary, and that inspired me. So I'm inspired by the giants, you know, whose shoulders I get to stand on and hopefully bring something to the market

that is just as extraordinary, just as rare, just as memorable, and just as inspiring when people get together. We only have one set of parents and Father's Day comes around and Mother's Day comes around and weddings come around and we want to celebrate those with the people we love in a special way. I cannot think of any better way than involving ourselves in the tradition of the great families from Mexico and being grateful of the great cultural things they've brought to the United States. And the spirit really is well named. It is a spirit and it's

in the bottle and we sip it, but there's something living behind it that gets inside all of us and connects us as people. And that's the magic for me of it. Yeah, I love this story. And I love the bottle. I mean, even your website too, but the bottle is something that I could see after you drink it, you wanna keep it.

Like that's what really draws me to spirits because I don't drink a lot. I don't really drink much, but I like to buy it for the bottle. Like you say, I like to let it sit there because it really looks good. It's like a it's almost like a piece of art that you have when you have people over and they're gonna see it. I'm curious from the personal perspective. I know you're into humor so I imagine when you drink tequila you're even funnier

than you are when you're not drinking tequila. But what are some of the challenges or maybe one challenge that you've had to overcome growing this organization? Well, I'll speak to the humor first, then I'll speak to the challenge. Allegedly, I'm funny. If you ask my friends, they think I'm pretty funny. I'm a little subdued in this interview because we're talking about another topic, but I had the pleasure in one of the past lives I've had. I've had many lives in this one where I was a producer of comedy in Los Angeles and I got to produce shows with and for artists like Richard Pryor

and Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall and Sam Kinison and Dice Clay, amazing revolutionary comics. And Lewis Black who we're doing a special event with Harvard at the Harvard Lampoon is inducting Lewis Black into the Lampoon on April 3rd. And I will deal is sponsoring that event and it'll be lovely to see Lewis again and be part of that. So humor comes naturally to me and the challenges and the journey have to be met with humor because in order to get the Mexican government, the United States government, and the Japanese government in accord to allow us to create this product the way we did, took a lot of patience, a lot of challenge, and a lot of lawyers, and of course, some good old hard earned money to pay all the certificates we had to acquire,

all the liquor licenses, and all the fees we had to pay just to get it across the border. It was an arduous time and we were bringing the tequila across the border during COVID. So the Mexican CRT, the regulatory body in Mexico that governs tequila, they were pretty much shut down as was the rest of the government. So it took a year and a half longer. We had to be really patient. We started this journey 35 years ago and I decided to bring it to market in 2017, 2018, we founded the company in 2019 and only now this year, 2024, have we released it. So we had a lot of challenges. Everything you could imagine from border problems, transport problems, governmental problems. I had to hire attorneys

in Mexico. I had to hire three different sets of attorneys just to get the booze across the border into the United States. And there were times, I was furious with how slow the process was, but in the end, humor always saved me. So, very grateful for the humor behind the bill. process was, but in the end humor always saved me. So very grateful for the humor being I will. My last question, because I'm very curious, has nothing to do with tequila, has more on the comedy side. So I've always felt that comedians, they're funny because they're overcoming what they had to go through growing up. They're overcoming something inside them that is not funny.

Like I feel like they're almost like many times, I don't wanna say tormented individuals, but they're not, like the humor is like a byproduct of maybe something that they went through, maybe traumas that they had, and then they become funny, and then they want the world to feel better. How do you feel about that in terms of like, was there something that you see like a reason

why people were going into comedy or maybe a similarity between all of these incredible people that you got to deal with? Oh, you're bang on, Daniel. I mean, the thing that always amazed me about working with these incredible comics, and I have stories that you wouldn't believe. And sometime we get together off camera, we'll talk about them, I'll share them with you.

I was always amazed that the people that were the most damaged and the most traumatized and had the toughest upbringings became comics. That so much of their personal lives were sad and miserable and broken. But when they got on stage, they channeled all that into a dark humor, which became light and happiness and joy and brought joy to so many people. The fact that someone's job is to make people laugh is such a great mirror to hold up to ourselves in society. But you're absolutely right. They were holding up the darkest mirror of themselves. And through that lens, they were reflecting light so that they could heal and the audience could take humor and otherwise

awful situation sometimes. And that's the fine edge that comedians walk. They're walking a razor's edge every day of how our lives are, how our society is, and reflecting it back to us through their own upbringing. And you're absolutely right. Their upbringings were tragic. Every one of them that I got to know had these very, very, very difficult and challenging and traumatic upbringings. And not ironically, as did I. So we so related to each other as

brothers in arms, you know, in the trenches together. That's why probably I was drawn to that that world, because it helped me to purge a lot of my own demons. Because laughter is the best medicine and we have to, we have to be able to enjoy our lives. your favorite player or your style. There's something every NBA fan will love about BedMGM. Download the app today and discover why BedMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BedMGM, a sports book worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

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by reflecting back to us gently who we are and learning to love each other regardless of it and regardless of our differences and regardless of how we see each other sometimes, because we're all the same inside, man. We really are. Wow, Charlie. I never thought at the beginning of this conversation, we were going to dive into something I've been thinking about for years many years because I always wanted to be a comedian and I just I've heard a lot of stories about people and I heard things about some of the individuals that you brought up and and You know in personal meetings with them and I'd love to hear more one day offline With with some of this tequila that you have some rare tequila

So if you want wanna get in touch with you, they wanna find out how they can go along for the journey, how they can purchase, how can they do so? Oh, they can go to the website, which is iguadios.com, A-G-U-A-D-I-O-S.com, and there'll be a buy page there. They can buy it on Reserve Bar,

can buy it through K&L. They can get in contact with me and I can talk to them about the origin story and I can set up special events for them at their clubs. We're in a bunch of private clubs, but we're publicly available to anyone. We just love sharing the story and we have a great crew that works with me on this project. So the website is the way to go and I hope to meet you personally and share some of the comedy stories because now your interest piques my interest. And yeah, the ones I've worked with, amazing human beings, amazing stories.

Well, Charlie, thank you so much for all that you do, all the inspiration to other people out there that maybe they have some rare spirits that they want to bring to the world. I think they're going to be inspired to do so. I'm really interested to learn more about this, investing in these tequila that will even gain money over time. This is really open to my mind. I didn't even know this existed, but I super appreciate you joining us today on Founder's Story.

That's my pleasure, Daniel. And you have a great rest of your day. And thank you for having me on. I'm really grateful.