Don Julio 70 was the first cristalino — an eighteen-month añejo charcoal-filtered back to clear, created in 2012 for the seventieth anniversary of La Primavera, and it started an entire category. In 1942 a young Julio González took a loan to open La Primavera in Atotonilco el Alto, in the Los Altos highlands, and built Mexico’s original luxury tequila; Diageo owns it today, still made at NOM 1449. 70 Añejo Claro is 100% mature highland blue Weber agave, slow-cooked in brick ovens, double-distilled, aged eighteen months in ex-bourbon American white oak, then filtered through charcoal to remove the color while keeping the barrel’s vanilla and caramel, bottled at 40% ABV. The idea was to give the smoothness of an añejo with the crisp, clean look of a blanco, and the result launched the cristalino wave that followed. Expect a nose of cooked agave, vanilla, honey, and a faint toasted oak, opening into a silky, gently sweet palate of agave, caramel, and light spice with a clean, smooth, moderately long finish and no color to warn you it’s aged. Honest note: cristalino is a divisive category — purists find the filtration strips character along with color, and 12×75 ranks it below the core añejos — but as the original of its kind and a chilled sipper for the crowd that wants smooth, it’s the reference. Chilled, neat, or in a Cristalino Margarita. Seventy years, clear.
Buy Don Julio 70 Anejo Claro Cristalino Tequila online with fast shipping right to your door.
