Early history In 1758, Don José Antonio de Cuervo was issued a land grant by
King Ferdinand VI of
Spain in the town of
Tequila, Jalisco. Here his family founded the Taberna de Cuervo, the farm where they would cultivate and harvest the flowering
blue agave plant, a water-retaining plant found in central Mexico that is fermented then distilled to create tequila. The first Vino Mezcal de Tequila de Jose Cuervo was made in 1795, after Don José Antonio de Cuervo's son José María Guadalupe de Cuervo was granted a permit from
King Carlos IV of Spain to produce tequila commercially, following a time of
prohibition under King Carlos III. This was the birth of the tequila industry. By 1880, the Cuervo family had begun individually bottling tequila for commercial distribution. Cuervo was the first distiller to bottle tequila, at a time when other distillers were still using barrels. Tequila was known as "mezcal de tequila" until 1893, when tequila makers and the Mexican government dropped "
mezcal" from the name.
First Import to the U.S. 1852 marked the year when the first few bottles of Jose Cuervo were hauled across the U.S. border for the first time ever— a true testament to the tequila's rich history.
Recent history Cuervo began to dominate the tequila industry in the 1940s. In 1989, the Beckmann family sold 45% of Jose Cuervo to
International Distillers and Vintners (IDV), a division of
Grand Metropolitan PLC. In 1997, Grand Metropolitan merged with
Guinness plc to become
Diageo which would be Jose Cuervo's main distributor outside of Mexico until 2013. Starting in 2011, Diageo, the world's largest liquor maker, was in talks to acquire Jose Cuervo from the Beckmann family After it was unable to acquire the brand, Diageo announced in December 2012 that it would end the US distribution deal. In a deal first announced in March 2013, Proximo Spirits, a company owned by the Beckmann family, took over Jose Cuervo's distribution beginning in July 2013. Proximo Spirits has, therefore, been responsible for all distribution of Jose Cuervo products for over 15 years. ==La Rojeña distillery==