The Tequilero Who Made Patrón a $5.1 Billion Business

Master distiller Francisco Alcaraz crafted the agave spirit that changed tequila forever. Will Bacardi dilute it?

- Ted Genoways

One day in 1989, Francisco Alcaraz, then the mas-ter distiller at Tequila Siete Leguas, was leaving the company’s twin factories in Atotonilco el Alto when a man wearing sunglasses and a half-unbuttoned shirt called out to him. “Can you help me?” the man asked. Atotonilco is a quiet village, with few outsiders, in the highlands of the western Mexican state of Jalisco. To this day, Siete Leguas sits on a hilltop side street so untrafficked that the gate of its brickwork facade is often left open. It was unexpected to hear anyone speaking English there, let alone a tan, barrel-chested American dressed all in black, like Johnny Cash. The man asked Alcaraz if he knew the distillery’s owner. Of course, Alcaraz said. Lucrecia González, the late founder’s daughter, was his boss.

Right on the street, the man introduced himself as Martin Crowley and started explaining what he was doing there. Alcaraz, who’s partial to a pompadour and black leather jackets, couldn’t help but be intrigued—there’s not a lot of excitement in Atotonilco. Crowley said he was a fan of Chinaco, a high-end tequila introduced to the U.S. market two years earlier. Chinaco was as popular as it was tough to find—it was such a hot commodity, border bandits had hijacked a shipment crossing into Texas.