The Reception of Agave in a Tequila Factory.

A tequila factory only receives Tequila Weber Agave, blue variety. It must exclusively be that kind of agave! Besides, it must have also been planted in the territory that protects the Tequila Denomination of Origin (DOT).

This comprises 181 municipalities in 5 states of the Mexican Republic:

• Jalisco, with its 125 municipalities
• Nayarit with 8
• Guanajuato with 7
• Tamaulipas with 11
• Michoacán with 30 municipalities.

Only in these municipalities can we harvest and use the raw material Agave Tequilana Weber, blue variety for the production of Tequila.

Legal Requirements for Receiving the Agave in a Factory

The legal requirements are issued by the Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT). This council verifies the presence of the agave in the field once it has reached its maturity stage and it has been decided to proceed with its harvesting, carried out either by the producer and/or an agavera company (company that produces agave).

First, the agave must be registered at the CRT by the producer or the agavera company. This register includes:

• Name of the producer
• Address
• Municipality
• Year of plantation of the agave
• Number of plants that were planted

When obtaining the registration and the owner of the agave card, it is expected that the agave will reach its maturity stage. The agave supplier must have a purchase-sale agreement with the tequila factory that will consume it, in order to later apply for the CRT agave transfer guides.

Once the agave transfer guides have been requested, the CRT will send a technician to check on the property and verify it against the record that is held as a producer and/or agave company, in order to continue with the total or partial harvest of the farm to be worked on or, as this activity is called in the case of the harvesting of the agave: the jima.

Once the verification by the technician is done, we proceed to generate the number of guides to be used by the farm's jima. Each guide has its cost.

Delivering agave to Casa Sauza

In order to deliver the agave to Casa Sauza, the internal personnel of the field area will:

• Rate the agave on the premises to be bought and/or received at the factory.
• Generate the Freight Control of the Delivery of Agave into Factory internal guide.
• Register the company as an agave supplier.
• Request an order for the amount of kilos that will be sold to Tequila Sauza, at the price agreed upon by both parties.

Once the CRT transfer guide of agave, and the internal guide of Tequila Sauza are in order, the harvesting of the agave or jima will then take place in the farm, to later make its delivery to the factory.

The producer is requested a certificate of planting in force on the day of the jima, in order to:

• know the number of agave plants that will be harvested
• collate the information with the inventories, in order to know of any discounts in real time, both in CRT and Tequila Sauza. This eliminates the error in the entries of agave pineapples in both systems.

Once the truck is in the factory, the Raw Material Control Technician checks that both guides comply with the information given in order to finally receive the agave in the factory.

Checking the Guides at Casa Sauza

A) Checking the CRT agave transfer guide:

1. We check the folio number, date of issue and effective date. The folio number is collated with an internal guide to know if it it's still available for the reception of agave or not. If it were found as not available, no entry is given to this guide and the system sends a notice saying that it had already been received, so this guide is not duplicated.
2. In the first section of the guide, we check the data of the owner: Name of the owner, address, municipality and registration of the producer.
3. In the second section of the guide, we check the data of the property: Name of the property, municipality, location, registration of the property, year of plantation
4. In the third section of the guide, we check the data of the buying company. In our case, you must bring the information of Tequila Sauza: Name of the company, address, municipality.

B) Checking the Freight Control of the Delivery of Agave into Factory internal guide.

1. We check the smart code, which is consists on: the year of planting, the type of contract, the municipality and a random number that the system throws. This code is registered in our Pesador system to know if we already have your: information, purchase order, provider and site data, and see if it matches the one registered on the CRT guide.
2. We check the following fields: Farm name, farmer's name, jima date, farmer's CRT number, farm's CRT number, transportation line, driver's name, truck license plates, jima type (partial or total), number of jima group, total of agave pineapples (number of fraction and number of pineapples) and estimated weight of the batch of the agave that has been jimado (harvested).

If you want to know more about Casa Sauza suppliers, click on the following links:

What Certifications are Needed to Become a Sauza Supplier?

What Does it Take to Become a Sauza Supplier?

How to Achieve Zero Breakdowns in the Tequila Production Process

Casa Sauza Suppliers: Owens-Illinois Group and Environmental Care.

You can also come to Casa Sauza and visit our production plant and see it all for yourself!