This trend is also borne out on an anecdotal level. Take my recent trip to the bar of Dos Caminos, a cheerful and unpretentious Mexican restaurant in Manhattan, with Eben Klemm, senior manager of wines and spirits for the BR Guest Restaurant Group, the owner of Dos Caminos and about 20 other restaurants.

Dos Caminos has over 100 different tequilas listed in a hardbound menu more extensive than most restaurants' wine lists. Many of the tequilas sell for $15 and even $20 a shot, and one is listed at $200. A shot.

Pricing in the tequila business follows the model common in the rest of the spirits business, but which is most successfully exploited by the vodka people. The consumer associates price with quality, whereas in reality price is set by the producers' perception of what the market will bear, and has little to do with the cost of production.

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It really doesn't cost that much to make a bottle of tequila. The agave plant from which it's distilled does take from 8 to 12 years to mature, but labor costs in Mexico are low and the aging is minimal — the recently introduced super añejo category requires a minimum of just three years aging, and that's the most for a tequila. When you consider that the Scotch producers can turn a good profit on a bottle of 12-year-old single malt that sells for $45, it makes you wonder what's going on with $75 bottles of blanco, or unaged, tequila.

Keeping up with the Cuervos
As Klemm observes, "People in the liquor business develop their prices not on what their product costs but how that price is perceived next to existing products. If there's one product out there at $40 and you don't charge $40 you are admitting that your product isn't as good.

This, of course, applies to all spirits, but seems to be particularly true of tequila because it is such a new category. As Klemm observes "I think that a lot of what's happening with tequila is that the producers are still figuring out what the business is and where it can go."

That direction seems to be up — in terms of quality, which is improving all the time; price, sales and yes, even image.

That tequila has truly come of age and joined the ranks of sophisticated, high-end spirits is shown by the wide selection of different styles and ages now available, and not one of them needs a lick of salt and a wedge of lime to help it down the hatch.

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