Anahi Rivera ended up in San Antonio almost by accident.
Born in Nuevo Laredo, she graduated from Tecnológico de Monterrey, or Monterrey Tech, and saw an international opportunity working as an ambassador for a liquor distributor in the United States.
“I got hired for Dallas, and then a friend was hired for San Antonio. She was dating someone in Dallas, and while we were in the line, she said, ‘Hey, would you like me to trade for San Antonio because my boyfriend is in Dallas?’” Rivera said.
“I said, ‘Sure, I don’t have any problems, and it’s closer to home.’ That’s how I started here.”
That chance switch led to a life in San Antonio. In her two decades in the city, she’s started a family and grown her experience as a distributor in San Antonio, South Texas and across the country.
In 2024 her path took another turn. Rivera decided to work with a group of close friends to start something new — Humano Tequila.
The new tequila brand can be found on shelves throughout San Antonio, including Alamo City Liquor, where the San Antonio Report discussed the tequila brand Rivera co-founded and a changing liquor industry.
The following interview had been edited for clarity and length.
Why and how did you decide to start Humano Tequila?
I never wanted to have my own brand. I know how suppliers struggle. I’ve seen brands go out of business. There’s so much budgeting that you need to do to make this happen, to make a brand, to make sure that you have something different. With tequila, it was really hard to make sure that we had something different.
I love the industry, but I always wanted to be in the import part of it, not the brand part of it. One of my partners sold their company, which was the biggest importer in the states, and his partner, they’re very good friends, grew up with the largest distributor in the states.
My partner and I worked together very well, and his partner owns the land and the distillery. The whole world aligned, and it was just a no-brainer to put it together.
That was just part one. The second part was: how do you make yourself different from the others and how do you start making sure that you share that story? That’s the point that we are at.
We’ve already produced it. It’s already in the stores. We’ve already had 300 Publix stores in Florida, already got into Safeway in Phoenix, already got into Costco in California.
We wanted to make sure that even before having the name Humano, we always say we want something that represents humans. In the midst of all the celebrity brands, we wanted something authentic that represents the culture, as well.
I know there are some challenges in the liquor industry. Can you talk about what the industry is like these days?
When I started, it was a glorious job forever and ever and ever.
Right now, it’s different. The pandemic changed distribution. We are in a three-tier system. We can produce, we can be the liquor store or we can be the distributor.
Now, brands like Bacardi, the big, big brands, they’re taking more power. [Retailers will say,] ‘I’m not going with you, but I’m going with him, and now I’m gonna be exclusive to him.’
Plus the pandemic changed things. The new generation changed. Now, if you go to a corner store, you might get a joint or vapes.
Whiskey or rum or vodka, they’re really down.
When I came here, tequila was in the bottom, no one knew about it. Tequila was pretty new, so it was really hard to educate people about what it is. We have to give credit to the big [brands], who educated people about what’s 100% agave and what’s not.
People were used to what they saw in pictures or movies. It was just a shot and that’s it. Now, people are sort of enjoying what it is to be 100% agave from a certain region.
How do you succeed in that changing environment? What is Humano Tequila doing differently?
First of all, we really take care of the product.
The agave could be from different regions. We just get agave from one region.
Then we take it to the distillery, and then we do something different, which is the power wash, that no one else does, as far as we know.
There’s different ways of cooking the agave. The big [brands], they chop everything and cook everything. We don’t do that. We cut it in half, and then we put it in brick and stainless steel ovens. We have efficiency and tradition.
The way that we approach the market, sometimes you just have a sales strategy, but you don’t have a pull strategy. That’s what’s missing from companies, they want to put it on the shelf, but then you have to find out how to get it off of the shelf.
You have to have an on-premise [presence], you have to have restaurants, you have to have experiences, you have to go and see the consumer.
We go to events. I do tastings all the time. Being close with the customer is really important for us.
We make sure that what we say, we do. There are so many bluffers in the industry that really don’t do what they say.
Where does tequila come from? What makes it unique?
It has to come from Mexico. It can’t come from anywhere else, just like cognac and France. There’s different ways of making it, but it has to be from 100% agave.
It has to come from the distiller from that region. There’s different regions. There’s 275 types of agave. Blue agave is one of them. You have to start from that agave.
That’s why there’s two kinds of tequila, 100% or 51%. Fifty-one percent means that, yes, you can be called tequila, but you can’t call it a 100% agave bottle. That has to be blue agave, which is the main agave.
You can use mezcal. There, it could be any kind of agave. You name it, there’s 275. But blue agave is one. That’s the most important.
From there, it is the way that you cook. It has to be cooked, and then it has to be fermented, and then it has to be distilled twice. Those are the requirements that you have to fulfill to be legally called tequila. You have to have a NOM [Norma Oficial Mexicana], ours is 1585, and you have to be registered. It’s not like I just go to my house and produce tequila.
What’s it like working in an industry that’s traditionally male-dominated?
It’s not just this industry, but in every industry. You have to earn the respect of everybody, and I have. Since the beginning, it has not affected me. I haven’t felt that because of being women, because of being Hispanic, that it’s been difficult.
People respect the work that I’ve done.
I’ve been one of the few that now owns a brand and started from the bottom up.
I have a daughter, she is 12 … I just want to make sure that she always makes herself be respected. If you are who you are, they’ll just see you and give you a chance. Everyone has given me one chance, so far, no one has complained.
Is there anything else you want to add?
I was just seeing my agaveros, my farmers, and I said, ‘Hey, is there anything you want me to go and tell everyone?’
They said, ‘Please don’t shoot it. Enjoy it, because it takes eight years for the plant to grow. It takes 72 hours to cook, and then it takes four months to age.’
Don’t just lose that. Enjoy it, smell it. And there’s so many ways where you can, you know, just smell it from one side, the other side. You smell it in the middle. You pick it up. How good is the process?
The thing about processing tequila is, it’s really an art.
