Tequila drinking in Hong Kong moves upmarket from party animals to connoisseurs
Recent years have seen considerable growth in the international sales of premium tequila, and it’s now sipped like a serious drink by many
Until recently tequila was not a drink widely associated with connoisseurship. To most people it was party fuel, more likely to be downed as a shot than sipped as a serious drink.
There has always been more to it than that – and to mezcal, the Mexican agave-based spirit of which tequila is a regional subcategory. Recent years have seen considerable growth in the international sales of premium tequila, and the emergence of mezcal from outside the Tequila regions as a drink for export with premium expressions of its own.
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“New York, LA, San Francisco and even Charlottesville [in the US state of Virginia] have a lot of good choices for mezcal and tequila. Everyone’s effectively trying to take the Mexico City model and amend it to suit local tastes. We thought, ‘We haven’t seen an agave spirit-themed F&B outlet in Hong Kong, so let’s try and start the trend’.”
In fact, Hong Kong has had such an outlet since 2000, when the Epicurean Group’s Agave opened as a tequila bar in Lan Kwai Fong.
Agave – closed for renovation until early October – is still in business in Wan Chai, where it moved in 2005, and still has a fine collection of tequilas, including rarities imported 17 years ago and no longer commercially available. But with the relocation it morphed from bar to restaurant.
