What's your all-time favorite mention of Jose Cuervo in a song?

So there are these border ballots that were written during the Prohibition era in the 1920s

that were written all along the Rio Grande Valley.

And many of them are songs that the smugglers would sing to sort of entertain

themselves as they were smuggling huge loads of tequila on the backs of donkeys across the brush

country of Texas. There are a number of those songs that mention Jose Cuervo by name.

So it sort of makes you think of Jose Cuervo as sort of like a folk hero?

Absolutely.

You know, I love this vision of these guys out there in the moonlight with a mule train

loaded with tequila singing songs about Jose Cuervo as they make their way towards San Antonio

to sell to the speakies there.

Jose Cuervo, you are a friend of mine. know, to sell to the, to the speakies there. This is the sporkful.

It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.

I'm Dan Pashman.

Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.

Jose Cuervo is the best-selling tequila brand in the world. It's been at the top for most of the last hundred-plus years.

And yet, little is known about Jose Cuervo, the person. Yes, he was a real guy. In the early 1900s, he revolutionized the tequila industry in Mexico, all while navigating bloody business feuds and a nation at war against itself.

The reason people don't know a whole lot about Jose Cuervo, many key documents about his life are very hard to find.

During the Mexican Revolution, public records, private records were frequently raided and destroyed in order to

get rid of any documentation of bribes that have been demanded and paid by revolutionaries.

And so all of the families had a practice of keeping these records in secure places and not sharing them with anyone.

This is Ted Genoves, a journalist, author, and professor at the University of Tulsa. Ted

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