Good Morning All! Welcome to a somewhat strange Tuesday edition of In Good Spirits. These last few weeks have been quite busy for myself due to the Rebrand of my bar and restaurant and the fact that I am also without a Manager, so last week on Friday I was unable to write a newsletter! But it worked out for the better because some major news broke over the weekend that I cover more in depth below.

On that note, if anyone knows anyone in Massachusetts who would be interested in working in an innovative craft cocktail bar, and build something really awesome with me, have them apply here.  

Tequila Matchmaker Removes ALL Brands from Additive Free Alliance List effective Immediately.

Over the weekend there was some breaking news with Tequila Matchmaker, which I will include below. Tequila Matchmaker was the reference point for so many in the community when it comes to talking about tequila and agave spirits. This comes as a continuation of the Saga between Tequila Matchmaker and the CRT (The regulatory body of tequila).

additivefreealliance

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For those of you who possibly don’t know, Tequila Matchmaker has been in a long running saga with Tequilas regulatory body. Ill try to shortly recap:

• Tequila Matchmaker is a Website that people can rate tequilas, think Rotten Tomatoes but for Tequila Brands.

• They started listing on their website if a tequila was additive free or not (don’t know what that is? Check this video out)

• This started to catch fire in the online and bar communities with lots of bartenders and content creators, myself included, started referencing TMM and speaking about Additives.

• This angered the CRT which then decided to create their OWN additive free program which I believe they quickly abandoned and then they decided to raid TMM’s headquarters in Guadalajara and get into a legal battle with TMM.

• Tequilamatch Maker decided to fight back in the media and also re-launched the Additive Free list, as a separate non-profit entity known as the Additive Free Alliance

• The latest development seems to be that the CRT was going to start going after the individual Brands if they continued to be featured on any additive free list. This comes after the CRT went after some brands for brandishing stickers that featured the TMM logo and said that they were “Confirmed additive free”

Now What? Well, it remains to be seen what this will mean for the tequila community and Tequila Matchmaker. It is still on going but TMM is adamant that they are not going anywhere and will continue to educate and maintain Tequila Matchmaker. It is a disappointing development as Tequla Matchmaker has been around for over a decade but because the Additive Free movement started to impact the sales figures of the biggest tequila brands the CRT has now started to really try to take the fight to TMM.

Sidenote: On the video from Tequila Matchmaker above, there was one comment that irked me quite a bit. Someone was saying that this is all the influencer’s faults that this is happening, for “Bad-mouthing certain brands”. Yeah, exactly its all those damn influencers and content creators who try to educate and help share what they think that are at fault. Definitely not the big brands that exert their influence over the CRT. Yup. God damn content creators….

Best thing we saw this week.

My guy Chris, @NotJustABartender, posted this video about a cocktail called “Joy” named after a women that is no longer with us. What I found beautiful about it, was not only does it honor her life but the existence of this cocktail shows the power and impact that this industry can have.

See as Chris explains, Joy taught a young bartender named McKinley how to make his first cocktail, sparking his love for cocktail making and putting him on this career path. McKinley in turn created this incredible cocktail to honor Joy.

As Chris said, his page is not and never will be “Just a recipe page”. And for that we are incredibly thankful.

We will try to send out another newsletter on Friday during our regular posting time. Hope you enjoyed this one