Inside NOM 1605: Meet Karina, Our Master Distiller
Inside NOM 1605: Meet Karina, Our Master Distiller
Every bottle of Una Vida starts in one place: a brick oven in Capilla de Guadalupe, in the Los Altos highlands of Jalisco, at the distillery the world knows as NOM 1605.
That's where Karina works. She is Una Vida's master distiller — one of a small number of women leading production at a tequila distillery — and she runs the process the slow way, because the slow way is the point.
The process she guards
- Highland Blue Weber agave, grown in the red soil of Los Altos, harvested at full maturity
- Slow cooking in traditional brick ovens (hornos), not autoclaves or diffusers
- Tahona crushing — a two-ton volcanic stone wheel — to shred the cooked agave gently
- Copper pot distillation for a spirit that keeps its agave character
- Zero additives: no sweeteners, no glycerin, no shortcuts after the still
The result is the profile Una Vida is known for: natural raw agave, slightly sweet, herbal — the taste of the highlands, not a flavoring brief.
When you drink Una Vida Blanco neat, you're tasting Karina's calls: when the agave was ready, how long the ovens ran, where the cuts were made. There's no lab downstream to fix a miss. That's the job.
