Tres Agaves Products LLC. was founded in 2008, at CEO and Founder Barry Augus' dining room table. Along with a small team, Barry wrote the first business plan and the original bottle design. The operation was initially funded by Barry's family inheritance, allowing him and his team to purchase their first Tequila bottle mold. The company started by selling cocktail-ready agave nectar out of Barry's minivan, hand delivering every order. In 2010, the company's first case of Tequila shipped to the US from Mexico and sold just a week later.[2] Their three Tequila varieties were originally crafted at the El Llano distillery ( NOM: 1109) in Jalisco, which began production in 1900.[3][4]
In late 2012, Tres Agaves entered into a sales and marketing partnership with Trinchero Family Estates. The venture made sense both in a business and a cultural sense. The joint venture allowed Trinchero to enter into the spirits business and gave Tres Agaves the ability to focus on product development while Trinchero brought Tres Agaves into more markets through its robust sales and distribution network. Of great importance was the cultural importance of family in both organizations, with Trinchero being the second largest family owned winery in the world, and family and friends having enabled Barry to start and grow his business.
In 2016, Tres Agaves purchased land from the Partida family, Barry having known and worked with David Partida for the last 20 years. The purchase allowed Tres Agaves to control its own destiny, by building a home to bring in complete control of its Tequila production operations and become a cultural site for the company and industry. Located on a plot of land in Amatitán, a town minutes outside of the town of Tequila, the Tres Agaves distillery has state-of-the-art production facilities, including a 22-ton autoclave, a four-stage roller mill and stainless steel fermentation tanks. In addition to these, the distillery has traditional production methods on site, including a tahona wheel and a stone horno.
In 2018, Tres Agaves appointed Iliana Partida as master distiller - or Maestra Tequilera - of its new distillery. A member of the Partida family, Iliana was taught by her father to produce Tequila, a tradition of the Partida's spanning four generations. In taking this role, Iliana becomes one of the very few women to be a master distillery in the Tequila industry. In fact, according to the New York Times, there are only 12 other Maestra Tequileras in Mexico at this time. [5]
