ArteNOM Selección de 1414

At a glance

ArteNOM Selección de 1414 is the Reposado bottling in a curated tequila series assembled by Jake Lustig, a US-based independent bottler who launched the ArteNOM project in 2010. The conceit is simple: instead of running one distillery and one house style, ArteNOM releases small batches sourced from several different working distilleries in Jalisco, and labels each release with the producing distillery's NOM number rather than a fanciful brand identity. The number on the bottle (1414, 1146, 1579, 1123 in other releases) points the reader straight back to the facility that actually made the spirit.

The 1414 release is sourced from Destiladora del Valle de Tequila (NOM 1414NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana) is the Mexican federal product-standard system. On a tequila bottle the NOM number is the unique identifier of the distillery facility where the tequila was made — every drop in the bottle came from a plant operating under that NOM. Different brands made at the same NOM share a distillery. NOM 1414: Destiladora del Valle de Tequila (Tequila, Jalisco). Don Julio production after the 2018 Diageo move from NOM 1449.), a working distillery in the town of Tequila, Jalisco, in the Valles region. This is the same facility that today houses Diageo's Don Julio production (Don Julio moved to NOM 1414 in 2018 after consolidating its operations out of the original 1449 Atotonilco el Alto plant).

The ArteNOM concept

What Lustig built with ArteNOM is unusual in the tequila category for two reasons.

First, it is an independent-bottler model rather than a producer model. In Scotch whisky this is a familiar setup: companies like Gordon and MacPhail or Cadenhead's source spirit from working distilleries and bottle it under their own label, often with the distillery name visible. In tequila, the dominant pattern is for a brand to own (or contract-exclusively with) one distillery for a single house style, and to keep the production identity quietly behind the brand identity. ArteNOM inverts that. The brand identity is the curation; the distillery identity is what the bottle tells you about.

Second, the NOM number is the label. Tequila bottles all carry their producing NOM somewhere on the label by regulation. Most consumers never read it. ArteNOM elevates the number to the brand position, which forces the reader to engage with the production geography of tequila as a category. "1414" is not a marketing slogan; it is a regulatory identifier that, once decoded, tells you the distillery, the town, and (through the addendum lookups this site provides) the production house style.

The companion releases in the series, sourced from different distilleries, make the curatorial logic visible by contrast. The sibling page on ArteNOM 1146 documents Enrique Fonseca's Añejo at La Tequileña; other releases in the series have included a Blanco from Felipe Camarena's El Pandillo (NOM 1579), a Histórico from Cascahuín (NOM 1123), and earlier releases under additional NOMs that rotate.

What "1414" stands for, in this site's NOM directory

NOM 1414 today is the NOM of Destiladora del Valle de Tequila, a working distillery in the town of Tequila, Jalisco, in the Valles region. The Valles location matters editorially. The Valles and Los Altos (Highlands) are the two principal production landscapes for tequila, and they produce recognizably different house styles: Valles tequila tends toward earthier, more vegetal, drier agave character (volcanic ash soils, lower elevation), while Highlands tequila trends toward sweeter, more floral, more citrus-forward expressions (red iron-oxide clay soils, cooler higher-elevation growth).

The 1414 distillery's current most visible production line is Don Julio, which Diageo moved to NOM 1414 in 2018. The ArteNOM 1414 Reposado releases predate that move in their original 2010-era introduction; the precise distillery attribution at each release year is worth verifying release-by-release for any consumer trying to taste through the back-catalogue.

The Reposado slot in the ArteNOM lineup

Within the ArteNOM lineup, 1414 carries the Reposado age designation. Reposado is the middle of the three principal tequila age tiers under NOM-006-SCFI-2012A regulatory-standard NOM is a federal Mexican product norm. Unlike facility NOMs (4-digit identifiers of specific distilleries), a standard NOM defines the rules for an entire category of product: which raw materials are permitted, where the product may be made, how it must be processed, and how the bottle must be labeled. Standard NOMs are written as "NOM-XXX-SCFI-YYYY" where XXX is the standard number and YYYY is the year. NOM-006-SCFI-2012 (Tequila). The official Mexican standard governing every aspect of Tequila production: which agave species may be used (only Agave tequilana Weber var. azul), which states and municipalities qualify, how the spirit must be distilled, what additives are permitted (up to 1% by volume even in '100% agave' bottles), and how the bottle must be labeled. Enforced by the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT).: oak-aged for at least two months but less than a year, sitting between the unaged Blanco and the longer-aged Añejo. The choice to put a Valles-region distillery in the Reposado slot of the curated series is part of the editorial point of the project. A Valles Reposado, with the earthier agave base that the region produces, picks up the oak in a different register than a Highlands Reposado does. The 1414 release lets a drinker taste that contrast directly against, for example, a Highlands Añejo like the 1146 sibling release.

How to think about ArteNOM 1414 in a tasting

The honest editorial framing on ArteNOM is that the project is a curatorial frame around someone else's spirit, not an in-house production identity. The 1414 Reposado is a Reposado from Destiladora del Valle de Tequila, packaged and curated under Lustig's ArteNOM label. The reader should expect:

• A Valles-region agave character: drier, earthier, less fruit-forward than a Highlands expression.
• A modest oak signature consistent with Reposado timing.
• A clear-eyed, non-celebrity, non-storytelling presentation. ArteNOM bottles do not lean on a founder myth or a family lineage; they lean on the distillery identifier and let the consumer connect the dots.

The point of the ArteNOM series, taken as a whole, is comparative: drinking a 1414 next to a 1146 next to a 1579 should teach a reader more about tequila as a geographically diverse category than three different brands from three different marketing teams ever could. That curatorial promise is why the project occupies a small but durable spot in the premium tequila landscape.

See also