Hey all. Happy new year. I haven’t been active on here lately. I have a lot of family sick and I took the time to travel and spend time with them. Instead of rushing through the emotions and pretending that I am okay… I am here to tell you that I’m not.
There have been events in my life that have reminded me of the fragility of life. Kobe’s passing and the other passengers on that helicopter last week didn’t help either and my heart goes out to the victim’s and families. After flying back from Mexico the night before I was dumbfounded when I woke up finding out that my all time hero passed away on TMZ the next morning.
I will never forget that day.
I am a firm believer of not avoiding my feelings when I go through lows. Feeling sad is a part of life and I try to allow myself space and time to feel that way. I don’t know if someone needed to read this but IT’S TOTALLY OKAY TO FEEL THIS WAY. A lot of the blogs I follow shuffle through this and go on with their routines
IT’S NOT ALL TRIPS AND RAINBOWS ON MY BLOG. I wanted to write this and say that if you’re in the same boat message me. It’s not a misery needs company thing… It’s just opening up the topic for discussion. Besides talking to someone about this… how do you guys deal with your lows?
A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of being a plus one on this pretty rad trip with my friend Katie. She works for Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) and she earned a trip in Mexico to tour the Casa Herradura. We were accompanied by others from RNDC in Dallas & Oklahoma who also earned the trip.
DAY 1. We land in Guadalajara it’s about 12:30 pm. I haven’t slept of course. We grab our bags and Katie and I rush to change out of our sweat pants. It’s not super hot or super cold it’s just right with a nice breeze (all you need is a light jacket lol.. name the movie.) I threw on some camouflage pants and a black tee to blend in. We then hopped on our shuttle bus to Amatitán.
What I am about to describe to you is unimaginable. After driving through the small towns we then enter the countryside and not a countryside you are thinking. A countryside full of fields and fields of agave. Picture this agave hills for miles and mountains in the background with blue skies and some cattle and horses in between. When you look at the agave it’s dimensional in colors it gives off a blue, green, and light brown when hit by the sun and it’s crazy beautiful. I immediately perked out of my seat and got over my fatigue. The agave would spread as close as about a meter to the road we were driving on. It was insane. Every square inch is utilized there……AND FOR GOOD REASON…TEQUILA.


After pivoting our bus in and out of the small towns (no really the roads there are extremely narrow) we finally arrive to the Casa Herradura along with other busses from RNDC.

If you me… you know that I love tequila. Like I annoyingly love tequila. It was amazing to see the process (it’s a damn process too) and to learn the history of how the distillery evolved over time. Here is a small cliff note version of the process – once the agave plant is ripe trim all the leaves, then the core is split (for even cooking), next the agave ready to be be cooked in a clay oven – that juice from the cooked agave is then extracted then milled … the make a blend with that for the right fermentation for it to be distilled… then that blend is put into distillery tanks… and so forth.


We were followed by a cute donkey carrying tequila on it’s back for us to enjoy it was fun.
After we learned the process our guide gave us quick tour of one of the old Herradura mills. Casa Herradura was founded in 1870 and they still have some of the mills/ fermentation tanks in place. It looked like a torture chamber and I was glad we weren’t there at night. Not to be a child but there was a chill in the air there and you couldn’t pay me a million bucks to sleep there.
We then were done with the tour portion of our visit and got to enjoy a traditional mexican meal with drinks tequila drinks of course. I then learned that I liked the most expensive of the tequila they offered for tasting (go figure). If you haven’t tried Herradura seleccion suprema you haven’t lived. It’s just a little over $300 a bottle. It’s an anejo.

DAY 2 & 3 – I’m going to share a separate post of outfits and such. We spent the other days at an all inclusive in Puerto Vallarta.
I want to wrap up this post by saying that I am an experienced tequila connoisseur and if you are still thinking Patron is the cream of the crop you are mislead by bright advertising and you haven’t lived. Be open to try more and don’t be afraid to drink more than just silver. What’s your favorite tequila brand?
— JENNA —