However, there is the Tequila Express, a luxury four-car train that recently started hauling visitors to Tequila on day trips from Guadalajara. The success of the train excursion points up the growing interest in this mountainous region between coastal Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara, an inland city. Like other alcoholic beverages whose names designate the spot on the globe where they are produced, tequila is a beverage as well as the name of a locale. Tequila, the locale, is ground zero for the fiery drink that originated in the early 18th century, when Spaniards distilled pulque, the brew of choice of the native tribes. Outside modern-day Tequila, a long row of producers lines one side of the road.
Trucks roar by, piled high with pinas, the blue agave hearts from which tequila is made.
Six miles farther, we were in the village of Amatitan. There, outside the walls of Hacienda San Jose del Refugio, home of Herradura Tequila, sat a woman selling different sizes of colorful baskets. Inside, numerous versions of her small baskets, holding the workers' lunches, hung from walls and fences. It was Friday, and they were picking up their weekly pay, which includes a bottle of tequila. In the area around Tequila, it does not seem to matter that tequila has had the fastest-growing sales of any spirit in the United States in the last five years.