OCHO: VINTAGE TEQUILA FOR CONNOISSEURS MADE BY AFICIONADOS
ULTRA PREMIUM SINGLE ESTATE TEQUILA OCHO SOON TO ENTER THE US MARKETPLACE
Altamar Brands, LLC announced today its partnership with Tequila Ocho, the first ultra premium single estate tequila to be introduced into the United States Market in vintages. Ocho is the third luxury spirit to join Altamar Brands’ exclusive portfolio, and they will act is its sole 
importer for the United States with responsibility to build its marketing and sales platform. Ocho is the product of collaboration between third generation Tequilero Felipe Camarena and Thomas Estes, Ambassador of Tequila to Europe. What differentiates Ocho from other tequilas and makes it unique in its category is its rarity. Because of the time it takes an agave to mature, each estate’s fields cannot be replenished for almost ten years after each harvest, thus, making each vintage of Ocho an extremely limited and collectable tequila. 
Ocho’s agaves will be sourced from “single estates†meaning a single piece of land with its own microclimate. Access to multiple estates, at highly varying altitudes will allow Ocho to showcase different nose and flavour characteristics through each vintage.
The brand represents the unveiling of “terroir†as a genuine product concept in tequila and confirms that it exists as much in agave as it does in grapes. This concept is well understood in wine, but has not been seriously explored in spirits. Whereas most spirits focus their distillation on delivering a consistent character profile for their product, Ocho will be unique in it s delivery of complexity of character through it access to multiple estates at different altitudes in different climates.
While Ocho’s product concept is highly innovative; the process by which the tequila is made remains highly traditional. All agaves are slowed cooked in stone ovens and open-air fermentation in wood casks is an essential process. The artisnal approach is intensely handcrafted at every step of production including the packaging where each bottle is numbered by hand and stamped with the estate name of each vintage. The brand takes its name from the Spanish word for “eight†because through its double distillation process, there were eight possible recipes and the eighth formula was ultimately selected.
“Agaves are rich and complex. They impart vastly different flavors when harvested from different micro climates at different altitudes. No one has ever demonstrated this before in Tequila,†says W.L. Lyons Brown, Altamar Brands’ CEO. Ocho will demonstrate there is “terroir†in agaves. Annual vintages from single estates at different altitudes from the highlands of Arandas will celebrate the complexity of the noble agave through a tequila that, by its nature, will be both rare and collectible. We have no doubt it is the most sophisticated expression of tequila on the market and that it will become more so as its vintages emerge year after year.”
Ocho is currently available in London, and in very limited supply in its Mexican birthplace of Arandas, Jalisco. The brand will kick off its American debut in early August 2008 with private tasting events in Orange County, Los Angeles, and San Francisco as well as a red carpet official launch on August 8 (8/8/0 
in Los Angeles.
Ocho is available in Plata, Reposado, and Anejo and will be sold at $60, $70, and $80 respectively per 750mL bottle.
