NOM 1579 is Destilería El Pandillo, in Jesús María in the Jalisco highlands, run by Felipe Camarena — a fourth-generation distiller who is also a trained civil engineer, which turns out to matter more than it sounds.
Five brands come out of it: G4, Terralta, Volans, Pasote and ArteNOM Selección de 1579. Almost nobody buys them for the label. They buy them for the building — which makes this the clearest case in the whole directory for why the four digits are worth reading.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through one, this site earns a commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change which bottles are recommended or what is said about them. Full disclosure.
NOM 1579 at a glance
| NOM | 1579 |
|---|---|
| Distillery | Destilería El Pandillo |
| Location | Jesús María, Jalisco, next to Arandas |
| Region | Los Altos (the highlands) |
| Distiller | Felipe Camarena — fourth generation, and a civil engineer |
| Built | Started 2007, finished 2011, on family land |
| Water | Spring water and rainwater, from a 200,000-litre tank under the site |
| Brands recorded | Five — G4 · Terralta · Volans · Pasote · ArteNOM Selección de 1579 |
| Strength range | 40% up to 54% — the G4 108 |
Four generations, and a distillery lost to the Revolution
The G4 in the name means generation four. The generations behind it are the reason this distillery exists:
| Generation | Who | What they built |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Don Pedro Camarena | Brought blue Weber agave to the highlands in the 1800s and built the family’s first distillery there. The Revolution destroyed it in 1910. |
| 2nd | Felipe Camarena Sr. | Opened La Alteña in 1937 — NOM 1139, the home of Tapatío and El Tesoro |
| 3rd & 4th | Felipe Camarena | Worked at La Alteña, left in 2007, and built El Pandillo from scratch |
| 4th | Luis and Allan Camarena | Make G4 alongside their father today |
So NOM 1139 and NOM 1579 are the same family, seventy-four years apart. Two separate four-digit numbers, two separate buildings, one continuous line of people. No brand-level lookup will ever tell you that; the NOMs are what make it visible.
The family also kept the yeast. El Pandillo ferments with an ancestral strain preserved from Don Felipe — which is about as literal as inherited house character gets.
A civil engineer built the machines himself
This is the part that makes El Pandillo unusual. Camarena did not buy standard equipment and run it well. He designed and built his own, mostly out of salvage, and gave the machines names:
- “Frankenstein” — a mechanical tahona assembled from junkyard parts, reported at around 19,000 pounds and built from recycled railroad and steamroller components. It crushes cooked agave along rail tracks, doing the work of a traditional stone wheel without shredding the fibres, on less energy and with easier cleaning.
- “Igor” — a custom shredder with his own steel blade design that processes cooked agave on 15 horsepower. Cheaper to run, simpler to maintain.
- Modified stone ovens — steam jets added at the top and the bottom, so the whole oven cooks evenly. Shorter cooks, and no batch with scorched agave at one end and raw agave at the other.
- A mosto warming tank — waste heat from the copper stills is used to pre-warm the fermented juice before it is distilled. Faster runs and better yields through the cold months, out of heat that would otherwise be thrown away.
None of that is marketing language bolted onto a standard plant. It is an engineer solving production problems, and it is why people who follow tequila closely follow this NOM rather than any one of its labels.
The rainwater tank
Los Altos is high, dry country, and water is the constraint on everything. El Pandillo channels rain off its own roofs into a 200,000-litre underground tank and blends it with spring water — the G4 blanco is made with roughly equal parts of each.
Two things follow. The obvious one: the distillery takes less from local groundwater than it otherwise would. The less obvious one: rainwater is soft, with almost none of the dissolved minerals of well water, and water chemistry affects fermentation and dilution. It is a production decision as much as an environmental one.
Bottles made at NOM 1579
| Brand | Expression | Type | ABV | 100% agave? | Additive-free |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| G4 | Blanco | blanco | 40% | yes | brand states it |
| G4 | 108 | blanco | 54% | yes | brand states it |
| Terralta | Blanco / Reposado / Añejo | range | 40% | yes | brand states it |
| Volans | Blanco / Reposado / Extra Añejo | range | 40% and still strength | yes | brand states it |
| Pasote | Blanco / Reposado / Añejo | range | 40% | yes | brand states it |
| ArteNOM | Selección de 1579 | blanco | 40% | yes | brand states it |
“Brand states it” is not the same as verified. The public additive-free register was withdrawn in October 2024, so nobody can point to a current independent inspection. These producers state it in writing and stake their reputation on it, which is the strongest claim still available — and weaker than an inspection. What happened to the list.
The distillery is the product
Most brands buy production. El Pandillo is the opposite case: five brands exist because one distiller built a plant to his own specification, and buyers follow the NOM rather than the label.
If you have bought G4, Terralta, Volans, Pasote or the ArteNOM 1579 and liked it, the thing you liked is the distillery, not the brand. Five labels, one set of decisions. That is the whole case for reading the four digits: it is the only field on the bottle that tells you this.
It is also the exact opposite of what happens a few miles away. NOM 1416 is in the same small town and makes nine brands — Casamigos, Avión, Clase Azul Plata among them — for customers who mostly do not know the distillery exists. Same town, same water table, opposite business.
The other end of the alcohol range
G4 108 is bottled at 54% alcohol, within touching distance of the 55% legal ceiling for tequila. On my own shelf sit four premium-priced bottles at 35%, the legal floor — hand-painted ceramic, smoked glass, heavy decanters. The cheapest-looking bottle in this comparison carries half again as much spirit per measure as the most expensive-looking one. Check price.
Strength is not quality on its own. But a distillery that bottles at 54% is choosing to show you more of what it made, and a brand that bottles at 35% in an elaborate decanter has made a different choice about what you are paying for. The full range, and what sits where, and the one distillery that does both at once.
NOM 1579: common questions
Which tequila brands are made at NOM 1579?
G4, Terralta, Volans, Pasote and ArteNOM Selección de 1579, all under Felipe Camarena at Destilería El Pandillo. They are separate brands with separate owners and prices, made in one building by one team.
What does the 4 in G4 mean?
The fourth generation of Camarenas to make tequila. The line runs from Don Pedro in the 1800s, through La Alteña, to Felipe and his sons Luis and Allan at El Pandillo today.
Is everything from NOM 1579 100% agave?
Yes. Every expression recorded from this distillery is 100% blue agave. There is no mixto in the range, which is not true of every distillery in this directory — NOM 1122 makes both.
Where is NOM 1579?
Jesús María, Jalisco, in the Los Altos highlands, next to Arandas. The highlands sit around 2,000 metres, and the red iron-rich soil there is usually credited for the sweeter, fruitier character of highland agave.
That shorthand is about the agave, though, and a NOM tells you where the still is rather than where the plant was cut. In Los Altos the two usually line up. They do not always: NOM 1146 distils in the lowland town of Tequila from agave recorded as highland-grown. Worth holding loosely whenever a bottle is sold on its region.
Are G4 and Terralta the same tequila?
No, but they share a distillery, a distiller and a water source. They are different brands with different mash bills, aging regimes and owners. Liking one is a good reason to try the other, which is not something you can say about two brands that merely share a shelf.
What is the Frankenstein at El Pandillo?
Felipe Camarena’s home-built mechanical tahona, assembled from salvaged railroad and steamroller parts and weighing around 19,000 pounds. It crushes cooked agave the way a stone wheel does, on less power and with easier cleaning. He built the shredder, “Igor”, too.
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 1139, La Alteña — the same family, two generations earlier
- NOM 1416, Productos Finos de Agave — the other distillery in Jesús María, and the opposite business model
- NOM 1459, Tequila Selecto de Amatitán — one building bottling at both 35% and 54%
- Additive-free tequila — what can and cannot be verified
- Tequila proof and alcohol content — the 35% to 55% range