TEQUILA BORN FROM RICH HERITAGE
AMNA TEQUILA
At only 9 years old, Gerardo Madrigal, the founder, and CEO of AMNA TEQUILA fell in love with the soils of Nayarit. The contrast of millions of blue agave plants, the terroir, the slopes of the mountain range of Tequila, Jalisco, the volcanoes, the waterfalls, the culture, the heritage, and the people. He was so in love with how the plant was shaped that every time he got in a car, he would ask his parents to pass by the blue plants.
Gerardo Madrigal’s love for farming agaves began as a boy when his parents saved their meager resources to buy him and his brothers airline tickets to Mexico on December 18, 1994. Gerardo’s parents were on a religious quest for their children to complete their catechism in the holy church of San Jose de Gracia, Nayarit. Born and raised in eastern Los Angeles, he is the youngest of five children and a first-generation college student and agave farmer.
As years passed, Gerardo studied faithfully towards a Master’s of Science in Applied Mathematics and eventually got hired on as a mathematics Professor at East Los Angeles College. He has always been passionate about working with historically marginalized students, economically disadvantaged, first-generation, non-traditional, not prepared for college, and other disproportionately impacted student populations. The term “AMNA” was inspired by his student evaluations. His students are rich in tenacity, perseverance, persistence, hope, and ambition which parallels AMNA’s brand philosophy in persevering to position Nayarit as a Tequila producing state.
Holding a professor position allowed him to invest in this versatile plant back home and start building the foundation of a brand that honors Nayarit, their lands, and the work of their farmers.
“Never give up in the face of adversity. Have courage, strength, hope, perseverance, tenacity, and ambition to dream big. It is through these core values that allowed me to begin building Nayarit, Mexico’s first operating distillery.”
A Family Bonded by Strength Of Love
These pictures of his parents were taken by Gerardo himself on December 28, 1994, on his first trip to Nayarit, Mexico. It is here where Gerardo fell in love with rural Mexico. Landing in Guadalajara from LAX one has to drive highway 15 North Guadalajara-Tepic highway and pass through the beautiful fields of Tequila, Jalisco to get to Gerardo’s parent’s hometown of Ixtlan Del Rio, Nayarit.
At only 9 years old, Gerardo fell in love with the soils contrasting with blue agave, the terroir, the east-west orientation slopes, the millions of blue agave plants covering the mountain range of Tequila, Jalisco: the volcanoes, the waterfalls, the culture, the heritage and the people. He was so in love with how the plant was shaped that every time he got in a car he would ask his parents to pass by the blue plants.
Gerardo’s parents immigrated to Los Angeles in 1972 from Ixtlan Del Rio, Nayarit in search of better pay where they would both work in freezing factories packaging meat and shrimp for 30 years. It would be here where Gerardo learned to have a hard work ethic and where he would develop his hunger for success. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagon granted amnesty to all undocumented citizens. Strong family unity, cohesion and integration will be the cultural values that Gerardo’s parents bestowed.
A Universal Language That Will Be the Foundation of AMNA TEQUILA
Gerardo studied tirelessly for a Masters in Applied Mathematics because he wanted to secure his dream job of teaching in the very East Los Angeles community he grew up in.
Oddly, Gerardo struggled with mathematics all the way through high school. It wasn’t until college that he actually built a knack for the subject. He began as a Computer Engineering major at the East Los Angeles College in 2003 and he began to notice that his colleagues never understood the math homework. Gerardo would explain the solutions better than his math professors and his peers began asking for him to confirm their work. This is where he developed a love for teaching and switched his major to mathematics.
When he graduated in 2014 with his M.S. in Applied Mathematics, he was excited and energetic to be offered a position to teach UC transfer level math courses at the very college he attended in 2003. Gerardo wanted to work in a space where students could see someone who looked like them. Gerardo’s pedagogical philosophy is that a math professor has to live and teach empathetically. He must do his best to understand what students are going through, think of their well-being, think about the struggles their families are going through and allow students to share their emotions with Professors to create a positive learning experience for a diverse population of students. It is imperative that teachers create equity-based learning environments to fill in the gaps especially for Latino and African-American populations. Gerardo picked up extra classes and worked 15-hour days.
In 2014, he decided to take his parents back to their hometown for a visit. He realized on this trip that his grandfather had a 6.35 Hectare lot in the Denomination of Origin for Tequila.
Our Founder’s First Plantation The Grandfather’s Parcel: 6.35 Hectares 2014
On the morning of December 30, 2014, Gerardo’s grandfather Manuel Madrigal Valdez showed him exactly where his land was located in San Jose de Gracia, Nayarit. He was renting out the land to a corn rancher for $500USD/year.
Being a statistician, Gerardo analyzed overall market size, share, key dynamics, and forecast for various segments and subsegments, considering the macro and micro-economic factors for Tequila exports and realized that the liters of tequila were steadily increasing per year. He predicted that agave would at least double in value by the time he would harvest his 2014 plantation and convinced his grandfather to rent it out to him. Being that Gerardo had no farming experience, his grandfather was skeptical that he would be able to farm it successfully and especially working as a professor in Los Angeles. Gerardo would quickly find the solution and had help from his agave mentor Don Jorge Chavez Aguilar, an agave farmer of 25 years, who would help and teach Gerardo how to farm and take care of his first plantation. Gerardo would continue to farm agaves in 2015 subsequently every year to present-day and involve his family in the process.
We can find the meaning of “AMNA” to be thousands of years old in biblical books. It was through his student evaluations that the name “AMNA” would inspire him to create his Tequila brand name. His students wrote that he is “dependable, trustworthy, safe” - the very meaning of the term AMNA. Safe in the meaning that Gerardo taught mathematics through a social justice lens and created an equity minded student centered classroom. He had a no fail policy in his classroom. Any student who failed an exam and took the time to learn from their mistakes would be rewarded an opportunity to retake a different version of the exam they failed for a better grade.
This would make Gerardo a popular instructor with 75 students (in a class of 40 max) showing up the first day of class to add his courses. “Math is not about when you get it, as long as you get it. No struggle, no learning. If Plan A didn’t work there’s 26 letters in the alphabet. The ultimate reward is knowledge.” His classroom values therefore reflected perseverance, persistence, ambition, hope, kindness and love. In a class primarily of Hispanic and African American students, these equity strategies are an effective tool to bridge the gap with African American and Hispanic populations in STEM.
