Starting in the mid-1970s and continuing until his death in 2021, Tomas Estes was one of the most influential people in modern tequila. A fully revised version of his book, The Tequila Ambassador, was published this spring, and for this episode we talk to the team members who helped bring it together: his longtime friend and colleague Phil Bayly, his son and Tequila Ocho global ambassador Jesse Estes, and the book’s editor, Mitch Wilson.
With a career that started in the mid-1970s and that continued until his death in 2021, bar owner and Tequila Ocho co-founder Tomas Estes helped change the way we drink, and think about, tequila. The Tequila Ambassador V.O., a fully revised version of his book, was released this spring, and for this episode we talk to the team members who helped bring it together: his longtime friend and colleague Phil Bayly, his son and Tequila Ocho global ambassador Jesse Estes, and the book’s editor, Mitch Wilson.
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Paul Clarke
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Radio Imbibe from Imbibe magazine. I'm Paul Clarke, Imbibe’s editor in chief.
And if you take a wide angle view of any category of spirits, then you can see how that spirit's popularity and appeal may change over the course of years and decades. And if you take this kind of look at spirits today, then it's abundantly clear that we are currently living in agave’s moment.
It wasn't always this way, and it wasn't very long ago at all that spirits like tequila and mezcal were easily dismissed on the global scene, a time when the international market was awash in lower quality agave spirits, which dragged down their overall reputation. A few individuals helped to change that perception, starting in the closing decades of the 20th century. They traveled to Mexico, tracked down superlative examples of well-made, well-loved tequila and mezcal, and then found a way to introduce their friends, their colleagues, their customers and their guests to these spirits and show them how good agave spirits could be.
In Europe starting in the 1970s, a lot of the heavy lifting on improving tequila's reputation was done by Tomas Estes. Originally from California, Tomas had traveled to Mexico many times as a young man, and he brought that love for tequila and agave spirits to a new European audience, starting with the opening of Cafe Pacifico in Amsterdam and then extending to a range of other establishments over the years. Tomas not only introduced this new audience to the beauty of well-made tequila and the culture it represented, but his name became synonymous with a deep, appreciative love of agave spirits. This reputation was further cemented with the launch of Tequila Ocho, which he developed in partnership with Carlos Camarena. and the publication of his book The Tequila Ambassador in 2012.
Tomas Estes passed away just over three years ago, and at the time of his death he was involved in putting together a revised version of the Tequila Ambassador. That new version, entitled The Tequila Ambassador V.O., or Version Original, was finally released this spring from Wonk Press. covering not only everything you could want to know about the production and culture of tequila, but also featuring detailed aspects of Tomas Estes’ life and the voices of some of his friends and colleagues who helped bring agave spirits the kind of attention they deserve.
For this episode, we're talking about the Tequila Ambassador V.O. with three people who helped make the project happen: Tomas’ longtime friend and colleague Phil Bayly, who did much of the photography and co-designed the book; Mitch Wilson, the book's editor; and Jesse Estes, son of Tomas Estes and global brand ambassador for Tequila Ocho.
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Paul Clarke
Phil, Jesse, Mitch, Welcome to Radio Imbibe.
Mitch Wilson
Thanks for having us.
Jesse Estes
Thanks for having us.
Phil Bayly
Great to be here. Welcome, Paul.
Paul Clarke
Absolutely. And I wanted to have you on the podcast because you're all involved in one way or another with a book that was just recently published, The Tequila Ambassador V.O.. The book, of course, is from Tomas Estes, and it’s a follow up, in a way, to a previous work titled appropriately, The Tequila Ambassador. And that initial version came out originally in 2012, and the book was a significant entry into tequila's modern history and the role that Tomas Estes played in that modern history. What were the reasons that Tomas and the three of you returned to the book and to the topic that ultimately led to the publication of this V.O. edition?
Phil Bayly
This is Phil. So, Tom had the book originally published with Simon Difford and Class magazine, which is a fantastic book, but it didn't really fulfill Tom's dream of the book. He wanted simply, because his voice changed a lot from the editing, and I pushed him. I remember when we were in Hong Kong finishing an Agave Love session and suggested to him that we should just redo the book because Tom owned the words, but he didn't actually own the book itself, the photos and the layout and everything. And Tom's immediate reaction was, No way, I don't want to do this. And a number of years I kept pushing him and pushing him because I suggested, I've got the photos. We can put the book together and finally convinced him that we should actually do this. And he agreed. we brought in Mitch in 2019 to help edit because Mitch had helped edit my book Agave Love, and that's how it all started. And looking back on it, we go like, Oh my God, what were we thinking, because it was so much work, it was years, years in the making.
Paul Clarke
And we should explain to listeners a little bit about the book's format, the new book's format. Yes, this book has chapters and dedicated sections to various aspects of Tomas's life and to tequila, but it has a looser, more unstructured format to it as well. With many of the photos that you mentioned, Phil, along with various interviews and shorter bits of text. How does that play to Tomas's own talents as a storyteller NS into the ways he wanted this story to be told?
Phil Bayly
Mitch
Mitch Wilson
So, one of the main things I really wanted to come through in the book was this. This narrative, this storytelling style, because Tomas had such a beautiful way of talking and telling you these stories, and It's funny you say that It's a little unstructured that the one of my, my big things with this book was trying to give it this flow and this narrative that carried on through because the previous book was very almost magazine feeling, like you'd be reading half a story, then there'd be an interview, then there'd be something else. And I really wanted this one to feel a little bit more natural. So, so yeah, a big part of it was trying to make it more personal, get more of Tomas's stories down. And one of the things we realized very early on into the book was there were almost no stories about Tomas himself in the original, it didn't really say how he became the Tequila Ambassador. It didn't really explain how he opened Cafe Pacifico or, you know, where this idea came from. And I think it barely mentioned starting tequila shots. And Phil and I had this sit down with him one day of over Zoom over there, over lockdown. And we said to Tomas, What? Why are there no stories about you in here? And he's like, Oh, I didn't really want it to be about me. And we were like, But it's called the Tequila Ambassador. It has to be. It has to be about you. He's like, Oh, if you guys think so. So COVID became this blessing where we spent the next year and a half every Sunday, we'd do these interviews, we talked to Tomas, we'd get these stories down. And so much of this new edition is, is these personal stories, which, yeah, he hadn't shared before
Paul Clarke
And you each had your own longstanding relationships with Tomas developed over the years and over the decades. How did each of your experiences bring you to this project, and what did you bring from your relationship with Tomas and apply to the book as it took shape?
Phil Bayly
I started working with Tom at the end of the seventies when Café Pacifico in Amsterdam was the only venue and I started as a resident artist and together Tom and I worked for well, about 40 years together and we opened 18 venues. And Tomas was always one of these characters that he had great communication skills. He was a great team builder. He was just a really incredible personality of having great people skills and foresight of creating something different, which is you know, that was one of his main strengths. And so going on that journey with him, that's why I thought it was so important we actually tell his story with rereleasing the Tequila Ambassador because this is his story. And fortunately, I was able to convince Mitch to come on board to actually get his whole backstory of discovering Mexico, discovering tequila, you know, creating Tequila Ocho and opening Cafe Pacifico. That whole story is now in there, which is an incredible achievement for one person to do.
Paul Clarke
And I think that's an essential part of the story, because as I said at the outset, this is a story about Tomas, and it was a story about tequila. And the two stories really are inseparable in some ways when you look at the modern history of tequila. So let's take a step back in time, if we can, which reflects the early chapters in this book. It's the 1970s. Taste for tequila is starting to take root in the United States, kind of in that infant stage. But in Europe, it's still largely an unknown. How big of a deal was it at the time when Tomas first opened Cafe Pacifico in Amsterdam in 1976? And what kind of wave did that set in motion with regard to tequila and tequila culture as it took place in Europe?
Phil Bayly
Tequila Sauza was the house tequila in those early days. And Tom had a personal friendship with the Sauza family, in particular, Mimi Sauza. That was the daughter. So they were actually bringing in Tequila Sauza, coordinating with one of the suppliers in Amsterdam. And basically before that, tequila really didn't exist. And if it did, then it was probably false tequila like was happening so much around the world. So Tom was really an instigator in creating an appreciation for good tequila and in particular the margarita. And so that was the the margarita was really the driving force behind getting tequila into the community, into the consumers hands. And of course, the tequila shot and all those things followed with that. But for me, it was all about the margarita. And Tom really set precedence of people understanding that tequila was actually a great drink. And you in the US, the margarita was probably, well, I think it was the biggest selling cocktail of of any spirit.
Paul Clarke
And the work that you did with with Tomas over the years, starting in Amsterdam, but really spreading throughout Europe and seeing this kind of wave of interest growing in tequila. What was it like to be there on the front lines where you saw people starting to understand what you had been talking about?
Phil Bayly
It was wild time, as you can imagine. I mean, I think one of the things that really was a fit with Tomas himself was that Tomas was quite a wild character as well. He was very bohemian. He was very non-conservative. And he with that spirit, he really created an image of something a little bit dangerous, a little bit forbidden, like, you know, that’s the place that you could go and get in trouble, but not really get in trouble. And in fact, he created the idea of in one night you could have a trip to Mexico and then be home that night in bed. So it was creating that excitement and unknown. So he really embraced that. And I think that was one of the big things of the Pacifico concept was creating something which was real, but at the same time they also attracted a lot of the musicians, a lot of the film artists and stuff like that. And I think that was the big starting point for all of the Pacificos from creating something special of like, what is this place and what is going on there? I mean, I remember Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. He was saying, this is the greatest, greatest restaurant in the, you know, the United Kingdom. It's like a lot of artists came and that's actually in the book. There's a part just about some of the people, some of the specials, creative people that used to associate themselves with Pacifico.
Paul Clarke
And, you know, the book is about Tomas and his experiences to some degree, but he also invited many other people to the party. you have conversations with and from people like cool Julio Bermejo and Don Javier Delgado Corona and David Suro in this book. How integral are all of these stories when talking about how tequila culture has been shaped over recent decades and on the presence of tequila today? And why did Tomas want to include such extended conversations in the book
Phil Bayly
But it comes back to what Mitch was saying before Tom was saying, This book is too much about me. I mean, he was saying, you know, there's too many stories about me, there's too many photos of me, and we're saying this is the tequila ambassador. But Thomas really wanted to create this story of the groundwork of where tequila came from. And so you've got interviews with Don Julio from Don Julio tequila, who's now passed away and of course, Don Javier, but a lot of the key people who are involved in bringing agave spirits, not just tequila, but agave spirits to what it is today.
Paul Clarke
Now, Tomas started off as a fan of tequila and wanting to share with other people and show off how wonderful the spirit can be. But eventually, he also wound up being a co-founder of Tequila Ocho, as you mentioned. He could have gone very much along the kind of typical path of introducing a new brand of just simply working with an existing producer and putting out his own label. But he and Carlos Camarena wanted to bring something distinctive to the category, creating a tequila based on terroir. Why did they go off on their own path in this way? And how has this resonated in tequila on a larger degree since Tequila Ocho came out?
Jesse Estes
Yeah. So this is Jesse here, Tomas Estes’ son. One thing that's really interesting about the inception and the kind of creation of Tequila Ocho, that I think is very unique in any spirit, in any category, in any brand, is that it wasn't my dad's idea to create the brand that would become Tequila Ocho. It was Carlos. So Carlos Camarena was good friends with my father. One day he asked him if he was interested in creating a brand together, and my dad was. Of course, the official Tequila Ambassador receives the category representatives, so he wasn't supposed to have favorites, but he absolutely loved Tapatio and El Tesoro that were produced by Carlos and are still are produced by Carlos. And so he didn't even think twice. He just said yes. And I think, Phil touched on this, that my dad kind of had a had an eye for trends that hadn't come along yet. He was kind of a trendsetter. He was kind of an influencer before that was really a term. And so I think his idea to combine his experience with wine, which, you know, he worked with wine in different capacities for about 30 years, as well as working with tequila for about 45 years. So he combining those two worlds. And of course, now everyone's talking about terroir. But 20 years ago, people actually within the industry who are now creating quote unquote single estate tequilas, basically laughed at them and said, you know, there's no such thing as terroir in tequila. Of course, now, you know, everyone knows that that that was incorrect. But I think they were really pioneers in that sense. And an innovator is and we continue to be, I think, with tequila as much as we can. We're not interested in following the market. We're interested in creating the trends that are going to be coming up in the next few years.
Phil Bayly
Back to Tom's character. I remember when we were doing the Cafe Pacifico, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Cologne, Milan, whatever, Tom was always that sort of person where you would come up with an idea and we will put in place and then other people would start to copy it. And often I would think, What are your damn these people that, you know, people are jumping on the bandwagon and he's going, it doesn't matter, because by the time they start copying is already doing something different and it was the greatest form of flattery is when someone's copying you. So that was just the way he worked. And I thought the whole thing with tequila also at one point before he did Tequila Ocho was Carlos and he were really good friends. But Carlos always wanted to do a Cafe Pacifico with Tomas in Guadalajara, which was logistically not really possible. But and that's, I think, the ground grounding of them, creating tequila together.
Paul Clarke
Tomas was actively engaged in this book project until his death in 2021. You were all engaged in this to some degree. How did his passing reshape this project and your perspective on what it was going to look like?
Mitch Wilson
I think we in the last few months of Tomas’ life, we, you know, we, we knew he was unwell and we knew there was sort of, one that this book was going to be this legacy piece. And I remember at a certain point really realizing that, there was only a certain amount of time that we might have to make sure we got all these stories down and to ask all the questions and anything at all that we might want to know. And make sure we got it down. About three months before Tomas passed away, my own father passed away and we, we took this short pause in the books writing and, and, you know, I've had a lot of these questions which I was thinking through and things I'd been asking my own father and wanted to know and, and then our first conversation back, Tomas and I sat down and we did this interview that was spanned over a couple of days and just really sort of asked him about his life philosophy and, there's something about Tomas which transcends the tequila and transcends the brand and the restaurants and everything else, and and everyone you speak to who knows him talks about how he made them feel and how much he, you know, would remember the last thing you talked about a year ago and had this incredible way with people. And, you don't get to be that kind of person without having this incredible philosophy on life. So one of the last sections of the book, which we added in was called The Last Word, and is is this interview with Tomas that we got just before he passed. And yeah, so I think little things like this which shaped the book in a way and added these maybe more poignant and more deep and spiritual meaningful aspects to the book, which would never have been the case if, if Tomas was still here and if we were doing this with him now.
Phil Bayly
And that actually was the last interview, and it was interesting just to add to that, because I remember when we first started doing these, we were doing Zoom calls and he was heavily involved in getting his story down, which we achieved. We got this whole story down before he did pass, but when we first started, we'd be spending say, 2 hours on a Zoom call, and then by the end of it, it was he was having trouble even getting half an hour in. So it was really quite obvious that journey of his passing was, it was getting closer and closer, which was quite emotional to all of us.
Mitch Wilson
One of the things which I thought was a great testament to Tomas's sense of humor was just as we got up to the very complicated, very geeky, very in-depth production section, that was when Tomas passed away. That then took us another year just to fact check everything and go through all these parts. And we're calling up everyone we know in the tequila industry just to verify it, because we know with a book like this, you know, if if it's not bulletproof, if it's not if the geeks read it and they they find bits which are out of date or not correct. That, you know, you just, you just have to make this book perfect. So we're we spent a long time making sure that production section was as perfect as could be.
Phil Bayly
Actually as well is Tomas was very concerned that we would be able to, he wanted the book to be accessible to everybody. So for geeks and nerds as well as just for the average punter, so that everyone could use this as a research material or a way to get information about it, but not to be unapproachable. He wanted it accessible to everybody.
Paul Clarke
So we're heading toward the end of this episode. Any parting thoughts you'd like to share about the Tequila Ambassador V.O. or about Tomas?
Jesse Estes
Jesse here. I just think, as Phil said, I think this is a book that has something in it, I think, and I hope for everyone. So for the tequila geeks out there, you know, the whole kind of middle section of the book is really kind of in-depth about production and specific experiences my father's had in different parts of the industry that I think are very unique to his experience, but also, you know, kind of woven in with all this life philosophy, like like Mitch mentioned and kind of memoirs. And I think it epitomizes a life well lived. So I think and again, I hope that readers will find a lot of different layers to this work.
Mitch Wilson
I think a lot of people have been asking what what's the main difference between the last book and this book and other than being maybe another 200 pages longer? There's so, so much of it visually is so different. You know, what what Phil’s contributed, there's photography and really being there, documenting Tomas's life for the last 40 years, which gives it this whole other level to the book, which which it wouldn't have had before. And so many more of these personal stories. Um, and yeah, I think, I think anyone, even if you own a copy of the original, I think, anyone would still appreciate having this and would, would find this even more to discover, which is yeah, which we're really proud of
Phil Bayly
I would say everything is different about this book because it's just a whole different book. And I think one of the things I and Tomas was involved in the layout, you know, we worked together on the layout as well as the stories and, and every part of it. I think it's even if you're not a tequila enthusiast, there's something in there for you. It's that sort of book where it will tell you about tequila, but it will tell you more about life and the life of a very incredible person. And I think that for me was a real joy to be able to work on that. And have that as a legacy for Thomas, you know, working with Mitch and Jesse to actually get something down to, you know, share who this guy who this person was.
Paul Clarke
It is an absolutely beautiful book. You guys have done a wonderful job in putting this together. And like you say, it's filled with information. If you want to learn about distilling tequila, it's in there. If you want to learn about drinking tequila in Paris, in Amsterdam in 1970s and eighties, it's in there. it really covers all the bases. Phil, Mitch, Jesse, thank you all so much for being on the podcast. It's been a real treat to spend this time with you talking about Tomas and everything he's done for the world of tequila.
Phil Bayly
Thank you for having us.
Mitch Wilson
Thank you, Paul.
Jesse Estes
Thank you, Paul. Thanks for having us.
Phil Bayly
Really appreciate it.
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Paul Clarke
Head to Wonk Press dot com to pick up a copy of the Tequila Ambassador V.O. to better explore the world of tequila and the life of Tomas Estes.
And that's it for this episode. Be sure to subscribe to Radio Imbibe on your favorite podcast app to keep up with all of our future episodes. We've got plenty more stories and recipes for you on our website at ImbibeMagazine.com. Keep up with us on social media, on Instagram, Threads, Pinterest and Facebook. And if you're not already a subscriber to the print and or digital issues of Imbibe, and here's your opportunity to change that. Just follow the link in this episode's notes and we'll be happy to help you out. I'm Paul Clarke. This is Radio Imbibe. Catch you next time.