Quietly this past December, an exciting little spirit launch happened, bringing Mexico and the East End just a little closer together (and not a moment too soon during this brutal winter).
Part-time Orient resident Sofia Paloma Juárez went on quite a journey to found her tequila brand, Casa J — but it was one that not only released a super premium, artisanal tequila into the world, but wove a path for Juárez from the North Fork to Jalisco and back again.
For several years, Juárez has worked in the marketing end of luxury brands, with high-end Champagnes like Veuve Clicquot and Ruinart, D’Ussé Cognac and other super-premium labels. “I’m born and raised in New York City and I’ve been building brands my whole career. So much so, it lead me to start my own consultancy company,” says Juarez of her namesake entrepreneurial venture, started about eight years ago. She launched a canned cocktail called Two Chicks, and it snowballed successfully into more.
Sofia Paloma Juárez in Jalisco working on her inaugural batches of Casa J Tequila. (Photo credit: Lena Nicholson); Casa J Tequila launched at the end of December. (Photo credit: Josh Dickinson)
All the while, there was something gnawing at her. Juárez’s parents divorced when she was only three, and she was raised by her Italian-American mom; her dad, a native of Guadalajara in Jalisco, moved back to Mexico after the divorce and Juárez and he were, save for some phone calls and letters, mostly estranged for two long decades.
“I grew up with a great understanding of my Italian cultural heritage and the hospitality behind that,” she says. “My grandfather and my uncle owned a liquor store together, so this was always in my blood.”
Around the time she started her own 360-brand marketing venture, she found herself wanting to reconnect with the father she never had the opportunity to connect with. She traveled to Jalisco to spend time with him — a chef, who introduced her not only to the culture she never really knew, but the food of her family via recipes passed down through generations, all paired with artisanal tequila.
“Here we were reconnecting over tequila and over culture and over history, and him really sharing that connectivity of his family and passing it on to the female lineage,” Juárez says. “This really sparked something.”
Over the next eight years, she visited whenever she could and began work in earnest to figure out how to express this new-found connection and passion for the other half of her history. Thinking about the story of Madame Clicquot from her work with the storied Champagne house, something clicked: She wanted to dig in and build her own tequila brand — but most of the examples she found were all full of machismo; masculine identities fronting the brands that take up most of the shelf space. “Whereas females make up more than 70% of tequila consumers,” she says. “They deserve a community to feel a part of as well.”
With years of research and reconnecting, she had all her tequila maestros lined up; had the liquid product pin-pointed — she just needed funding. She applied to be part of Distilled Ventures Pre-Accelerator, a Diageo-funded program for young spirits entrepreneurs that accepts less than 1% of applicants. Juárez’s well-thought-out plan, deep experience in the spirits sector and fantastic story that lead her to Mexico won them over. It helped get her off the ground.
And the spirit itself: She visited over 50 distilleries before finding the right one in which to make the spirit that she and her maestro tequilero, with whom she’s worked closely for the last five or so years, wanted to bring to the world: sourced from the lowlands of Amatitán and Los Vallas in Jalisco (the Mexican state where all blue weber-based tequila must be sourced by law) and made in small, small batches, with the agave hand-crushed and then cooked in ancestral, stone pit ovens.
It’s quite a full-circle moment for Juárez — as a young entrepreneur coming into her own, but also as a daughter finding her father and the common ground between them.
“I told him: We want to bottle a memory of the first time I smelled that scent of Jalisco.”
Casa J’s Pear y Coco
Ingredients
- 1 oz full-fat coconut milk
- 1 egg white
- 1 oz Casa J Tequila
- 2 oz clarified pear juice
- 1/2 oz agave syrup
- 1/4 oz pear eau de vie
- 3 drops sea salt tincture
- 1 slice pear
Directions
To make the clarified pear juice:
- Blend ripe pears with 2 oz of water, then strain through a fine mesh or cheesecloth to remove pulp.
- Add a small amount of pectinase enzyme or milk to clarify, and let it rest for 1–2 hours. Once the liquids have separated, filter the clear layer through a coffee filter for your clarified pear juice.
To make the cocktail
- To prepare the coconut foam, place 1 oz coconut milk and 1 egg white into a separate cocktail shaker without ice, and dry shake until frothy — about 20 seconds.
- In a separate shaker with ice, combine tequila, clarified pear juice, agave syrup, pear eau de vie and sea salt tincture. Shake until well chilled, about 10 to 15 seconds.
- Pour cocktail ingredients into a chilled coupe or tulip glass; top with the coconut foam. Garnish with the pear slice. ¡Salud!
Casa J Tequila, $129.99, is currently sold at North Fork Craft Wine & Spirits (122 South St. Greenport, 631-477-0024) and online; keep your eyes peeled for it soon in Bogey’s (54655 Rte. 25, Southold, 631-765-5434) and One Kourt (219 Main St., Greenport, 631-905-8690). Check the website for updates and recipes.
