NOM 1146 is La Tequileña, in the town of Tequila itself — the distillery behind Don Fulano and Tears of Llorona, an everyday high-proof blanco and one of the most celebrated extra añejos made, from the same address.
It is also one of the most interesting buildings in this directory, for three reasons that have nothing to do with either of those brands: it is a lowlands distillery running on highland agave, it blends pot and column distillate rather than choosing one, and it was bought from Bacardí by an agave farmer.
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NOM 1146 at a glance
| NOM | 1146 |
|---|---|
| Distillery | La Tequileña (Tequileña, S.A. de C.V.) |
| Location | Tequila, Jalisco |
| Region | Valles — the lowlands |
| Agave from | Atotonilco el Alto — the highlands |
| Behind it | Enrique Fonseca, agave grower; Sergio Mendoza blends |
| Bought | from Bacardí, in 1989 |
| Brands recorded | Don Fulano · Tears of Llorona · ArteNOM 1146 · Fuenteseca · AsomBroso · Cimarrón · Purasangre · and more |
Bottles made at NOM 1146
| Brand | Expression | Type | ABV | 100% agave? | Additive-free | Where to buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Don Fulano | Fuerte | blanco | 50% | yes | ✓ pre-2024-10 | Check price |
| Tears of Llorona | No. 3 Extra Añejo | extra añejo | 43% | yes | ✓ pre-2024-10 | Check price |
“Additive-free” records an inspection carried out before October 2024, when the public verified list was withdrawn. It is a historical record, not a check you can repeat today — here is why. A dash means no inspection was ever published, which is not an accusation.
Both ends of the category, one distillery
Don Fulano Fuerte is a blanco at 50%. Tears of Llorona No. 3 is an extra añejo aged around five years across Scotch, sherry and cognac casks, bottled at 43% rather than the usual 40%. One is unaged and loud; the other has spent half a decade in three kinds of wood.
Both were independently inspected and found additive-free before that programme stopped publishing. Two out of two is a meaningful signal for a distillery this size.
Note the proof on both. Neither is 40%, and that is a decision rather than an accident — alcohol content is set at bottling and aging never changes it. Where the rest of the range sits.
The distillery is lowlands. The agave is highlands.
This is the part worth slowing down for, because it breaks a rule of thumb this site uses elsewhere. La Tequileña sits in the town of Tequila — the Valles, the lowlands, the classic earthy-and-peppery half of the shorthand. But the agave it distils is recorded as coming from Atotonilco el Alto, in Los Altos, grown between roughly 4,600 and 5,500 feet. The aging cellar sits at about 5,400 feet.
So which is it? Neither label fits. Lowland and highland are useful words for where a thing happened, and unreliable ones for what is in the glass, because a distillery can buy its agave anywhere inside the denomination of origin. Atotonilco el Alto is also the municipality that holds Hacienda Patrón, which is a highland distillery using highland agave — the ordinary case.
The transferable point: the region on a tequila page usually describes the building, not the plant that went into the bottle. If the agave source matters to you, it is a separate question and most labels do not answer it.
A farmer who bought the distillery from Bacardí
Enrique Fonseca is a fourth-generation agave grower. His family has been farming agave since the 1880s and is reported to hold more than 3,700 acres of it, which makes him one of the larger agave landowners in Jalisco. He studied distillation in Scotland and France before moving into production himself, and bought this distillery from Bacardí in 1989, inheriting its stills with it. Sergio Mendoza blends.
That order of events is unusual and it matters. Most tequila brands are a company that commissions liquid from a distillery that buys agave from a farmer. Here the farmer bought the distillery. The supply chain runs backwards, which is the same structural point as El Pandillo, where a distiller built the plant rather than a brand commissioning one.
It also puts a third Bacardí thread through this directory: the company owns NOM 1487 and NOM 1492 today, and used to own this one.
Pot and column, blended rather than chosen
Most distilleries pick a side. Copper pot stills are slower and keep more character; column stills are efficient and produce a cleaner, lighter spirit, and in tequila the column is usually shorthand for industrial scale.
La Tequileña runs both, and blends the outputs — published figures put it at roughly 80–85% copper alembic pot still and 15–20% double-column copper Coffey still. The stills came with the building in 1989.
Treating the column as an ingredient rather than a shortcut is rare, and it is the most likely technical reason these bottles taste the way they do. It is also a reminder that “column still” on its own is not a verdict, any more than “tahona” on its own is a guarantee.
Who else comes out of NOM 1146
Don Fulano is the house brand. The rest of the building is contract production, and the list is longer than most people would guess:
- Tears of Llorona — Germán González’s extra añejo, the one most often named in “best tequila ever made” arguments
- ArteNOM Selección de 1146
- Fuenteseca — Fonseca’s own long-aged releases
- AsomBroso — several expressions
- Cimarrón · Purasangre · Tres, Cuatro y Cinco · Del Dueño
ArteNOM is the detail to notice. It is the only brand on any of these pages that names its bottles after the NOM — Selección de 1146, Selección de 1579, and so on, each one a different distillery. The 1579 bottling is on that page. A brand built on the argument this whole directory makes: the building is the thing worth knowing.
NOM 1146: common questions
Who makes Don Fulano tequila?
La Tequileña, NOM 1146, in Tequila, Jalisco. It is the Fonseca family’s own distillery — Enrique Fonseca, a fourth-generation agave grower, bought it from Bacardí in 1989 — so Don Fulano is a house brand rather than a contract bottling.
Is Don Fulano additive-free?
Don Fulano Fuerte was independently inspected and found additive-free before October 2024, when the public verified list was withdrawn. So was Tears of Llorona No. 3. That is a historical record and not a check anyone can repeat today. What happened to the list.
Is NOM 1146 highland or lowland tequila?
Both, depending which half of the question you mean. The distillery is in the town of Tequila, in the lowlands. The agave is recorded as coming from Atotonilco el Alto, in the highlands. It is the clearest case in this directory that the two are separate facts.
What is Tears of Llorona?
An extra añejo made at NOM 1146, aged around five years across Scotch, sherry and cognac casks and bottled at 43%. It is expensive, scarce, and about as far from Don Fulano Fuerte as two bottles from one address can be.
Where is NOM 1146?
Tequila, Jalisco — the town the drink is named after, in the Valles region. La Rojeña, founded 1795, is in the same town.
Related
- The full NOM directory — every distillery recorded so far
- What does NOM mean on tequila? — the four digits explained
- How to read a tequila label — where the NOM sits on the bottle
- NOM 1579, El Pandillo — the other ArteNOM distillery in this directory
- NOM 1492, Hacienda Patrón — in Atotonilco el Alto, where this distillery’s agave is grown
- NOM 1487, Bacardí in Arandas — the company that used to own this plant
- Additive-free tequila — what can and cannot be verified
- Tequila proof and alcohol content — the 35% to 55% range