Lawsuits allege some tequilas contain prohibited non-agave alcohol, while a criminal complaint in Mexico claims some wouldn’t meet even mixto standards — raising questions about enforcement
A hand holding a glass being filled with liquid from a bottle
Credit: Marcos Elihu Castillo Ramirez / Getty Images
Tequila labeled “100% Blue Weber agave” can legally contain up to 1% additives like caramel color, glycerin, and sugar-based syrup, which are not required to be disclosed on labels.
A wave of lawsuits alleges some major brands may be using non-agave alcohol, though companies and regulators strongly deny the claims and emphasize strict oversight.
Without mandatory ingredient labeling, consumers must rely on sensory cues or brand transparency to assess authenticity, fueling calls for stricter regulations.
Here’s a seemingly simple question: What’s in a bottle of tequila labeled “100% Blue Weber agave”? If you guessed 100% Blue Weber agave, you might be way off.
According to the Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT), the Mexican civil entity in charge of overseeing the industry worth $14 billion dollars a year, producers are allowed to add a number of flavor softeners, known in Spanish as “abocantes,” to their spirits. Approved abocantes include caramel color, natural oak extract, glycerin, and sugar-based syrup. So long as these additives don’t exceed 1% of the total weight of the final product prior to bottling, a brand is still free to label the expression in question “100% Blue Weber agave.”
For tequila aficionados, this reality has been widely known for the better part of a decade. But to casual consumers, it’s a relatively recent revelation. The emergence of headline-grabbing legal drama has helped accelerate that learning curve. Last May, a class action lawsuit filed against Diageo North America in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida alleged that the company — one of the world’s largest liquor conglomerates — peddles products that contain non-agave alcohol. The brands in question include Don Julio and Casamigos — the second- and fifth-most-sold tequilas worldwide, respectively. Within months, similar suits had been brought against Lunazul, Cincoro, and 818, the popular celebrity brand backed by Kendall Jenner.
What the lawsuits are actually alleging
It’s a shocking claim, to be sure. Even more shocking is that these legal actions have nothing to do with the aforementioned additives, permissible by the tequila industry. The lawsuits are alleging instead that the defendants are using supplies of industrial cane spirit — expressly forbidden by the category — and hence falsely marketing their spirits as 100% agave tequila.
Diageo, through spokesperson Sophie Kelly, senior vice president of global tequila and mezcal categories, dismisses the allegations as a “smear campaign, intended to mislead consumers. The lawsuit claims are without factual or legal merit. The complaint fails to offer any evidence to support the baseless claim that our bottled Casamigos and Don Julio tequilas are not 100% agave. Just because someone files a complaint does not make their allegations true.”
Under the watchful eye of CRT, Kelly suggests, tequila is one of the most rigorously regulated categories on the planet. Every agave entering a distillery must come with a specific “passport,” or guía, which links the plant to a specific farm where it was grown. Don Julio and Casamigos allegedly strengthen this supply chain oversight by employing their own set of in-house eyeballs.
“There are CRT inspectors that oversee this entire process, as well as our own dedicated Diageo harvesting supervision teams that oversee both the harvest and the transport of agave from our own fields and from third-party growers to our distillery,” Kelly says. “Their role is to ensure full traceability and allow for oversight of the process, guaranteeing the authenticity of every bottle.”
A spokesperson for CRT tells Food & Wine that “Inspection of all authorized producers is continuous; that is, the CRT has access to facilities 24 hours a day, every day of the current year, and at all points of the production process. All testing required under the applicable regulations is conducted, including on-site inspections, document review, sampling, and analyses performed by accredited and approved laboratories.”
Plaintiffs in the class-action suit sent tequila samples to their own laboratories, which they claim revealed substantial levels of non-agave-based distillate. So the crux of the legal proceedings will probably boil down to the verifiability of the science behind the independent testing. Rennert Vogel Mandler & Rodriguez, the Miami-based law firm behind most of these cases, has yet to comment on the ongoing proceedings.
Galvanizing their resolve, prominent players south of the border are now calling foul play as well, saying they have credible science to back up their claims. In October 2025, Remberto Galván Cabrera, a legal representative for the Indigenous Agave Farmers of Mexico, filed a criminal complaint in Mexico against three large national liquor store chains and the CRT itself. According to his filing, the “100% agave tequila” that he tested wouldn’t even qualify as a mixto, a blended style of tequila that requires at least 51% of its contents to come from blue agave — the allegedly falsified tequila, he said, contained majority cane spirit.
It is not yet public knowledge which brands were tested, but Galván Cabrera did disclose the testing process used: SNIF-NMR Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, which detects the botanical origin of alcohol. The analysis was administered by Eurofins Laboratory, an internationally accredited scientific body in France.
How likely is large-scale fraud?
When it comes to Diageo, however, it doesn’t seem to pass a more informal smell test that a multibillion-dollar company would be willing to risk the success of some of its most profitable brands in order to illegally pinch pennies on supply costs. Even if the company wanted to engage in the sordid practice, a multitude of regulators would have had to be complicit along the way.
“We do not use alcohol derived from sources other than blue Weber agave in the making of any of our 100% agave tequilas and the accusations that we do are completely baseless and ridiculous,” says Kelly. “We are proud of the quality of our brands and prioritize the craft and simple processes to create great-tasting liquids.”
The more likely culprits in any cane spirit switcheroo might be any company buying and trading in bulk agave spirit — producers without their own brands. They would have much less to lose if they took on product that’s associated with counterfeit agave passports, for example. But such unscrupulous actors could also conceivably be selling to established brands, passing off cane spirit to unknowing “victims."
How to tell what’s in your tequila
As for the ongoing lawsuits here in the U.S., if they aren’t summarily dismissed by judges, it could be over a year before we learn more about their veracity. In the meantime, the easiest way to determine whether or not your favorite 100% agave spirit is genuine is by trusting your own senses. Agave spirit has a pronounced earthiness to its nose and taste that’s tough to tune out, even when it’s been distilled to a very high proof. If you’re sampling something that has a strong ethanol nose and a more neutral palate, these could be indicators that something other than agave spirit exists in its composition.
When attempting to suss out abocantes, meanwhile, it’s all about feel. Some of the permitted additives include ingredients that you can regularly find listed in diet sodas or popular sugar-free desserts. If you pour tequila with that sort of stuff onto your hands and rub it around until it evaporates, there’ll likely be some telltale residual stickiness. But unlike with Diet Coke, you can’t know for certain if say, aspartame or Acesulfame potassium (a common artificial super-sweetener) is to blame. The FDA requires food products to list these ingredients, while alcohol is held to no such standards. At least one major tequila maker would love to see that change.
The push for more transparency
“We’re not here to say additives are good or bad — plenty of brands that use additives are successful,” says Roberto Ramirez Laverde, global senior vice president for Patrón. The top-selling brand has routinely been at odds with the CRT over its desire to underscore its additive-free status in marketing campaigns. “We just think people deserve to know what’s in the bottle so they can make more confident and informed choices. Our data showed that 61% of consumers globally would choose additive-free spirits over the alternative.”
In fact, some agave aficionados we spoke with would rather avoid the category altogether than risk consuming tequila that’s not 100% agave. “When I’m at a restaurant or bar that doesn’t offer additive-free options, I’ll typically choose vodka or wine instead,” says Brian Klayman, an avid tequila enthusiast based in Bloomfield, Michigan. “But if tequila is the only option, I’ll opt for a blanco, as I find the added sweetness in many additive reposados and añejos undrinkable.”
If it’s important for you to know, once and for all, whether or not your favorite tequila shares ingredients with sugar-free Jell-O, your best bet is to write your local congressperson and demand that alcohol be held to the same labeling requirements as packaged goods on shelf at your local grocery store. But when it comes to the potential for non-agave spirits to sneak into your bottle, safeguards rest solely on the shoulders of the CRT. For nearly 32 years the organization has advanced the stated mission of “guarantee[ing] the authenticity of tequila to the consumer.” Given that tequila has never been more valuable than it is today, this responsibility has never carried more consequence.
Diageo, for its part, places its full faith in the current oversight process to guarantee purity and is fully poised to fend off what it argues are nothing more than frivolous cash grabs. To the folks behind Don Julio and Casamigos, it is unfounded allegations — not the liquid in their bottles — that compromise confidence. “Over time, misinformation damages consumer trust and diminishes the credibility of producers who uphold true tequila-making standards,” says Kelly. “The lawsuits are not a signal of existing consumer mistrust, but a concerted effort to manufacture it.”