The entrepreneur has spent the past six years immersed in the industry, studying the lore, grinding over the processes, sizing up the competition, ruing the celebrity investments and making his own judgements on what constitutes cultural appropriation. He doesn’t like what tequila has become, and in elevating his new eponymous brand, a range of ultra-premium añejo tequilas so smooth, creamy and sophisticated they barely fit the category, he’s not about to pull any punches.
“In 2019, it wasn’t such a saturated marketplace,” says Acosta, of his decision to start making tequila. “I was determined to pay homage to my Mexican heritage and given my experience in the food and drinks industry, tequila seemed to make a lot of sense.”
At the time, Acosta was riding the wave of Manhattan Milk, a farm-to-table delivery service he founded in 2006. Thanks in part to his chiseled good looks (a New York Post article at the time invited readers to “Meet the hot milkman driving NYC ladies to drink milk”) operations soon expanded into San Francisco, London and Los Angeles. “We kind of just blew up overnight,” he recalls. “We played off of our muscles. We leant into the nostalgia of delivering glass bottles of milk to people’s doorsteps and folks got a kick out of it.”
When it comes to unpicking that success, Acosta believes it’s largely about human connection. He considers connecting with the client to be a dying art, but one which he hopes will be a central tenet of his latest enterprise. “With Acosta Tequila, I wanted to pay tribute to my late grandparents who only spoke Spanish and had this incredible way of communicating,” says Acosta. “I remember as a child my grandparents telling me about the hardships they faced when they first came to the US. So for me, making tequila wasn’t necessarily about alcohol, it wasn’t about partying, it was about celebrating my roots.”
“If you look at the tequila companies within the US, there’s very little Hispanic representation, let alone Mexican representation,” he adds. “How many of these celebrity-endorsed tequila brands have even the remotest connection to Mexico? For us, it’s not about marketing, it’s about letting a passion speak for itself.”
For Acosta, that passion translates through purity and flavor. “It took me years to figure out what I wanted, samples and samples and samples,” he says. “We’re using 100 percent blue Weber agave grown in the red volcanic soils of Jalisco, Mexico, harvested at the peak of their ripeness [after approximately 8- 10 years]. If you knew what goes into most tequilas, you’d be astounded.”
Rather, the rich flavor comes from cooking the agave piñas slowly in stone ovens, using natural yeast for fermentation and aging the spirit in cognac barrels for 18 months. “I fly to Europe to find our barrels and send them back to Mexico myself,” says Acosta. “I’m looking at how they age the barrels, the level of darkness required, the mushrooms growing on the barrels, and it’s incredible. It’s a very arduous and costly process. In a competitive industry we need to be transparent for success.”
So far it seems the juice is worth the squeeze. Designed to be sipped not mixed, Acosta Tequila is breaking new ground, finding a footing in as many restaurants as bars. SW Steakhouse at The Wynn Las Vegas, Lido Restaurant Miami at Four Seasons Surfside and Bagatelle at Gosman’s Montauk are among a growing number of luxury eateries pairing Acosta’s limited-edition Reposado, Joven and Añejo tequilas with signature dishes.
In London, meanwhile, Acosta is targeting high-end clubs and bars in Mayfair, advising bartenders to serve his tequila neat or over ice. In fact, it would be prudent not to even mention the word ‘margarita’ around Acosta.
“With something as pure as Acosta Tequila, you don’t need to put bumper stickers all over it,” he says, passionately. “If you’re wearing a beautiful watch, you wouldn’t dress it up with a load of bracelets. If you’re driving a Ferrari, you don’t need to customize it. A beautiful, clean product like ours should be treated more like whisky or a bourbon or a cognac and, to be honest, it’s those drinks that I see as our competition.”
Sketched on the back of a napkin by Acosta himself in a moment of inspired improvisation, the bottle’s iconic pyramid-inspired silhouette has become a hallmark of sophistication, propelling the brand to new heights and carving out its distinctive niche in the tequila landscape. The arduous journey to patent the design and cap spanned years of determination, while the jaguar emblem, a nod to an enduring icon of the region’s ancient heritage, infuses every pour with cultural depth and narrative allure.
“We like to think of the bottle as something of a fashion accessory,” grins Acosta, who recently hosted a high-profile NYFW 2025 VIP event in collaboration with the W Hotel New York. “We wanted the bottle, in fact the entire product, to be an extension of who we are, our lifestyles and our impeccable taste. And I think we’ve achieved that. Wherever I go, people are always stopping to ask me, ‘What is that?’”
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