NOM 1589 is El Patriota Agave Spirits, S. de R.L. de C.V., in El Salto, Jalisco. If you search that number you will find almost nothing — no brand page, no distillery profile, no reference entry that puts a name to the four digits.
This page exists because one bottle on my shelf prints the entire chain: the NOM, the company that made the tequila, the town it was made in, and the separate company it was made for. That is more than any database gave me, and it came off the back of a bottle I bought because I liked the decanter.
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NOM 1589 at a glance
| NOM | 1589 |
|---|---|
| Distillery | El Patriota Agave Spirits, S. de R.L. de C.V. |
| Also known as | La Galería |
| Location | El Salto, Jalisco |
| Region | Centro — the Guadalajara metropolitan area, not the highlands or the Valles |
| Founded | 1994, per the distillery’s own trade listing |
| Business model | Contract and OEM production — in its own words |
| Brands recorded | Around twelve, most of which nobody has heard of |
| On my own shelf | One — La Cuerda añejo |
| Verified first-hand | Yes — the producer, the town and the brand owner all read off my own back label |
What my bottle actually says
The embossed back label of my La Cuerda añejo reads, in full:
Producido y envasado por:
El Patriota Agave Spirits, S. de R.L. de C.V.,
El Salto, Jalisco, México.
Para: Comercializadora Felix Huato, S.A. de C.V.
That one word — para, “for” — is the whole story. The company whose name is on the front did not make what is inside. El Patriota made it; Comercializadora Felix Huato sells it. This is normal, legal and required to be disclosed, and it is the fastest way to identify a contract-made bottle. Where to look for it on yours.
| Bottle | La Cuerda añejo |
|---|---|
| ABV | 35% — the Mexican legal minimum |
| Presentation | Hand-painted decanter, coat-of-arms motif |
| Age stated on the label? | No — category only |
| Made by | El Patriota Agave Spirits, El Salto, Jalisco |
| Made for | Comercializadora Felix Huato, S.A. de C.V. |
The distillery describes itself as an OEM producer
This is the part worth sitting with. El Patriota’s own trade listing describes the business as “master distiller, blending, bottling and formulation of OEM tequila brands”, with “bulk sales for off-premise bottling”, serving “two market segments: industrial sales and sales of origin products.”
OEM is the language of contract manufacturing — the same term used for the factory that builds a laptop somebody else puts their badge on. The distillery is not hiding this. It advertises it, because its customers are brand owners, not drinkers.
So a bottle from NOM 1589 tells you something specific: somebody commissioned it. That is not a mark against it — a great deal of good tequila is made this way, and the same is true at the distillery behind Casamigos and Clase Azul Plata. But it does mean the story on the front of the bottle was written by a marketing company, not by the people who ran the stills.
The equipment is better than the bottle suggests
Here is the twist. For a plant whose business is other people’s labels, the recorded equipment list is notably traditional:
- Stone and brick ovens for cooking the agave, rather than a diffuser alone
- A tahona alongside roller mills — the stone wheel most premium brands advertise when they have one
- Copper and stainless pot stills
- Stainless steel fermentation, and American white oak for aging
A distillery with a tahona and brick ovens is capable of making very good tequila. Whether any particular commissioned brand asked for that equipment, or asked for the cheapest thing the plant could run, is a decision made by the brand owner rather than the distiller — and it is not printed anywhere on the bottle.
My own bottle from this distillery is 35% alcohol with no stated age, in an expensive-looking decanter. Whoever commissioned it did not choose to show me very much. The full 35–55% range, and Check price for what the other end of it looks like.
Brands recorded at NOM 1589
| Brand | Note |
|---|---|
| La Cuerda | Añejo — on my shelf, and the source of everything on this page |
| Casa Mexico | Currently recorded at this distillery |
| Telsón | Currently recorded at this distillery |
| Whiteout | Currently recorded — reviewed elsewhere as a tahona blanco |
| 916 | Previously made here |
| Papacito | Previously made here |
Around twelve brands in total are recorded at El Patriota. Almost none of them are names you would recognise from a shelf, which is exactly what you would expect from a plant that sells production rather than a brand. The rest of the directory, for comparison.
Why this page exists at all
Every other page in this directory was built partly from published sources and checked against a bottle. This one runs the other way. Searching the number returns nothing useful; the bottle returned a company, a town and a client. The published record was assembled from the label outward.
That is worth stating plainly, because it also marks the limits. I can tell you what my bottle says because I read it. I cannot tell you how the agave was cooked for that particular run, what the batch size was, or whether anything was added — and neither can anyone else, because the register that used to answer that question was withdrawn in 2024.
One more fragment, offered as a curiosity rather than a fact about the liquid: a US trademark application for La Cuerda Tequila Joven was filed in 2009 by an individual named Victor Hugo Felix-Castro — the surname matching the Felix Huato company on my label — and was recorded abandoned in 2018 for failure to respond. A lapsed US trademark says nothing about whether a brand still trades in Mexico. It is simply the only other public trace of this brand I could find.
NOM 1589: quick answers
Which distillery is NOM 1589?
El Patriota Agave Spirits, S. de R.L. de C.V., in El Salto, Jalisco — also referred to as La Galería. That identification comes from the back label of my own La Cuerda añejo, which prints the NOM and the producer’s name and town together.
Where is NOM 1589?
El Salto, Jalisco, in the Centro region — the Guadalajara metropolitan area. It is neither Los Altos nor the Valles, which are the two regions people usually mean when they talk about tequila terroir.
What does “para” mean on a tequila label?
Para means “for.” A label reading “producido y envasado por X para Y” means X made and bottled it for Y, so the brand on the front is not the producer. Watch for para, elaborado para and hecho para. The rest of the label, decoded.
Is La Cuerda a good tequila?
It is a 35% añejo with no stated age, in a decanter that costs money to make. The distillery behind it has a tahona and brick ovens, so the capability is there; whether this particular commission used it is not something the label reveals. I would rather tell you that than invent a verdict.
Why is there so little information about NOM 1589?
Because contract distilleries have no reason to market themselves to drinkers. Their customers are brand owners. The number appears on bottles and in the regulator’s records, and largely nowhere else — which is the gap this directory is trying to close.
Learn More About Tequila
- 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 para and the NOM sit
- NOM 1416, Productos Finos de Agave — contract production at the other end of the fame scale
- NOM 1459, Tequila Selecto de Amatitán — one building bottling at 35% and 54%
- Collector’s edition tequila — when the bottle is the product
- Tequila proof and alcohol content — the 35% to 55% range