Pasote

At a glance

Pasote is a tequila brand produced at Destilería El Pandillo (NOM 1579NOM (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 1579: El Pandillo (Jesús María, Jalisco). Felipe Camarena. G4, Pasote, Volans, Terralta, ArteNOM 1579.) in Jesús María, Arandas, in the Los Altos region of Jalisco. The distillery was built from the ground up by Felipe Camarena Orozco, a third-generation member of the Camarena tequila family, and the same facility produces a small portfolio of independent brands of which G4 and Pasote are the two best known internationally. Both are entirely additive-free, both run through the same traditional production line at El Pandillo, and the two are differentiated mainly by their dilution water profile and their brand positioning rather than by any meaningful difference in process.

Pasote's distinguishing identity is the dilution: a forty percent rainwater, sixty percent local spring water ratio at bottling, where sibling brand G4 uses a fifty-fifty mix. The rainwater is collected on site at El Pandillo, which sits on the Jesús María plateau and harvests every storm that comes through the Highlands rainy season. The brand also carries a deliberately more accessible price positioning than G4, which is the family flagship at the same NOM.

The Camarena lineage and how Pasote fits into it

The Camarena name is one of the most consequential in tequila and is also one of the most easily confused. Three different operations carry some version of it:

1. La Alteña (NOM 1139NOM (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 1139: La Alteña — Tequila Tapatío, S.A. de C.V. (Arandas, Jalisco). Camarena family. Tapatío, El Tesoro, and historically Tequila Ocho.), run by Carlos Camarena, produces El Tesoro and Tapatío, with Tequila Ocho also contract-produced there for years.
2. El Pandillo (NOM 1579NOM (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 1579: El Pandillo (Jesús María, Jalisco). Felipe Camarena. G4, Pasote, Volans, Terralta, ArteNOM 1579.), run by Felipe Camarena, produces G4, Pasote, and several US-partner brands.
3. Familia Camarena, the supermarket brand owned by Beam Suntory, is unrelated to either of the two family operations above and is a marketing brand built around the family name rather than a working Camarena distillery.

Felipe Camarena is Carlos Camarena's cousin, both grandsons of Don Felipe Camarena Hernández, who established the family's modern tequila operation. Felipe Orozco worked at La Alteña under his uncle Don Felipe before founding El Pandillo in the early 2010s as an independent, purpose-built modern facility. The two distilleries are friendly but operationally separate, and the Camarena cousins represent two parallel branches of the same family tradition rather than a single operation.

El Pandillo, NOM 1579

El Pandillo opened in 2011 as a purpose-built artisanal distillery, with no inherited industrial bones to retrofit. Felipe Camarena designed and built much of the equipment himself, including:

• Felipenstein, a custom mechanical tahona (the traditional stone mill used to crush cooked agave) cobbled together from salvaged parts, sometimes called the "Frankenstein tahona" because of its visibly improvised construction. It runs slower and gentler than a roller mill and produces the same fiber-rich, juice-and-bagasse mash that a traditional volcanic-stone tahona drawn by a mule would yield, with far less labor cost.
• Igor, a 19,000-pound reclaimed steamroller repurposed as a secondary crusher.
• Modified hornos (masonry steam ovens) engineered for more even thermal contact with the agave piñas, which the brand frames as a refinement of the traditional horno rather than a replacement for it.

The plant uses no autoclaves, no diffusers, and no column stills. Distillation is double, in copper pot stills. The whole production sequence is deliberately traditional in method while being unapologetically modern in fabrication: stone ovens and tahona crushing, but the tahona is mechanical and the ovens are tuned for evenness.

The rainwater story is the second signature. Jesús María sits on the Highland plateau, and the distillery is configured to capture rainwater from its roofs into cisterns. The captured water is then blended with local spring water for fermentation and dilution. For Pasote, the bottling cut is forty percent rainwater to sixty percent spring water; for G4 the cut is fifty-fifty; for the Extra Añejo expression and some specialty releases the proportions shift further.

The Pasote lineup

The current Pasote lineup, as published on the brand's own pages and verified through US-market retail channels:

• Pasote Blanco, the unaged flagship, bottled at 40% ABV (80 proof). The brand describes a 48-hour slow cook for the agave; this is consistent with traditional masonry-horno cooking, which typically runs 36 to 72 hours.
• Pasote Reposado, rested in American oak. The brand's current page describes a six-month rest; earlier secondary press has cited eight months for the same expression.
• Pasote Añejo, eighteen to twenty months in American oak (the brand page lists eighteen; earlier secondary press cited twenty).
• Pasote Extra Añejo, the longest-aged expression in the lineup.
• Pasote Still Strength Blanco, an unaged expression bottled at a higher proof straight off the still.

Ownership: the 2024 Maguey Imports transition

For most of its commercial life Pasote was imported into the US by 3 Badge Beverage Corporation of Sonoma, California, under the founder August Sebastiani. In November 2024, 3 Badge sold Pasote (together with the Bozal mezcal portfolio) to Maguey Imports, a specialist agave-spirits importer. The transaction did not change the production arrangement at El Pandillo: Felipe Camarena continues to distill Pasote at NOM 1579, and the brand's production methods and dilution profile remain the same.

The ownership distinction matters because the brand and the distillery are separate entities. Felipe Camarena's family owns the El Pandillo distillery and the G4 brand; the Pasote brand is owned by its importer of record (now Maguey Imports), which contracts production through Felipe Camarena and the El Pandillo facility. This is a common structure in modern tequila: a US-side brand owner and a Mexican-side distillery owner, with the NOM identifying the facility rather than the brand.

Additive-free, by listing

Pasote is on the additive-free verified list maintained by the Tequila Matchmaker community, which is the de facto consumer-facing registry of brands that have submitted to the additive-free inspection protocol and passed. The brand's own packaging and marketing emphasize the same point: no glycerin, no caramel coloring, no oak extract, no sugar syrup. Tequila regulation 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). permits up to one percent abv-equivalent of these compounds before bottling without disclosure on the label; Pasote does not use them and is one of the well-known names in the additive-free movement that has grown around the tequila category since 2023.

Pasote versus G4, in proportion

Because both brands come off the same line at El Pandillo, the difference between them is narrower than the difference between most tequila brands at the same retail price. The honest reading:

• G4 is the family flagship, the brand most associated with Felipe Camarena's name, and the more widely cellared expression among US agave drinkers.
• Pasote is the more accessible-everyman positioning of the same production output, at a slightly lower price point and a different dilution profile.

The taste contrast tends to read as the rainwater-versus-spring-water mineral difference: Pasote drinks slightly drier and lighter on the mid-palate; G4 carries a touch more mineral weight. Neither is a meaningfully different spirit at the species or process level. Both come from blue agave (Agave tequilana Weber var. azul) grown in the Highlands, cooked in masonry ovens, crushed on the Felipenstein tahona, and distilled twice in copper. A tasting that pours both side by side is teaching the dilution variable, not the production variable.

See also