Review Detail

As I noted in my review of the CN reposado, CN was very scarce and very expensive around here until recently. Actually, this blanco I got about a year ago, when my local liquor store seemed to get in about a case. I think I paid $29 a bottle. Probably mismarked or something for that time. An interesting thing happened re me re this blanco. I had really looked forward, based on on-line discussions, for years to getting some CN, really aiming for the reposado. When I first was drinking this, though, I was a maybe little disappointed. It seemed perhaps too smooth. Not as bad that way as Patron, but toward that. It is tripled distilled. I was thinking that maybe double distilled would have worked better. Good body and excellent finish though, and all the flavors that are there--and I would say that it has all of the complex agave flavors I so love--are good, balances, and complex. It just seemed to me that, say, a Don Julio or El Tesoro de Don Phillipe blanco had just about as good a nose, flavor, and finish, with good body, but with more intensity that the CN. Maybe others that have given lukewarm reviews have had similar initial experiences to me. However, since I have managed to get and have been drinking the CN reposado, it seems to somehow bring out aspects of the CN blanco that were not as apparent to me in the past. Now the CN blanco seems deeper and more nuanced to me, to have more "going on" in it that I have previously thought. It seems to have a purer agave flavor (pepper, citrus, spices, licorice (not sure re licorice) and "sweetness" (I think the sweetness is really in the aroma, I doubt that the sugar content is any higher than any other tequila) than the other blancos I really like. Other blancos taste a little less balanced to me now, their finishes a little less polished and less lingering. A few more slight off notes and hotness (although I like some "burn" in any tequila and the CN could perhaps use a little more) in the others some how. In any event, I find myself coming back to this CN blanco more consistently than to any other tequila, even the CNR, which I truly love, too, and I own a bunch of different tequilas and have tasted lots and lots more over the years. I could go for a bit more intensity. Like I say, maybe just double distilled or maybe even a more refined, and thus even more expensive, agave selection. This may well be my favorite tequila of any kind at this point. I may be more sensitive to agave specific tastes at this point that I was a year ago, and this tequila seems to present as pure an agave flavor profile as I can imagine. That and a stunning, pure, lingering finish. I have said it before, I think the finish separates the merely wonderful from the great, and this blanco has as good a finish as I have ever experienced in a tequila.