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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2005 
Frida Kahlo Sells Tequila
 Jerry Hirsch - Indian Express
First there was the art, now there is the tequila. The heirs of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo have launched a line of high-end spirits using the name and likeness of the style icon. "Tequila was her favorite drink, and she drank a lot of it," said Mara Romeo Pinedo Kahlo, a grand-niece who was an infant when Kahlo died in 1954.
Indeed, for much of her life, the surrealist artist was Mexico’s original party girl, wearing flamboyant clothing, enjoying her nation’s signature distilled spirit and engaging in numerous extramarital affairs, including a tryst with Russian Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Kahlo’s distinctive look—she often maintained a unibrow—artistic vision and turbulent life have prompted many efforts to trade on her name, of which her heirs recently regained control after a five-year battle with unlicensed merchandisers.
"Everybody has made money off the name of Frida Kahlo except us," said Pinedo Kahlo, who lives in Queretaro, about 120 miles northwest of Mexico City. The family picked tequila because it is uniquely "Mexican and is forceful like Frida," she said.
And expensive too. Kahlo tequila starts at $50 for a 750 ml bottle of the standard blanco, a clear tequila that hasn’t been aged. The price increases to $90 for the anejo tequila, which has been aged in American oak casks for three years before bottling. Both varieties are made from 100 percent blue agave, the purest form of tequila, treasured by connoisseurs because the fermenting juices of the agave plant haven’t been augmented with sugar.
This won’t be a mass-produced spirit, said Jorge Gutierrez, president of Dorado Pizzorni & Sons, the Miami liquor company that is importing the tequila in partnership with the Kahlo family and the Orozco family of agave growers in Mexico. The tequila is being introduced in Los Angeles, New York and Miami, though distribution may be expanded to Las Vegas.
"People will pay a lot of money for something to make a fashion statement," said Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark, a Santa Ynez, California-based consulting firm. "This is not unlike a high-end watch or bottle of perfume." Kahlo tequila comes in a retro-looking clear glass bottle, with a color portrait of the artist on the label and a wooden stopper that has her image burned in. "When you can associate it with a cult figure like Kahlo, it only adds lustre," Pirko said. For many buyers, it would be more of a show piece that would "take two years to drink up," he said. |
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