Confused about JC RDLF bottle dates

[4'33"]

I am fairly new to the world of tequila and, while lurking here for the last couple of months, have found this overall site to be a valuable source of information. I finally joined because I have a question --- hopefully not a stupid one --- that I haven’t seen answered anywhere on this site or elsewhere. I do apologize if this has in fact been asked and answered in the past and I’ve simply missed it.

I have seen numerous examples on eBay, as well as at the excellent site La Casa de Tequilas, of Cuervo Reserva de la Familia bottles that are dated in a particular year, yet are paired with boxes from the following year’s collection (or, on rarer occasions, with the previous year’s collection). Is this normal, or is it indicative of a mismatch or something “funny” going on with the sellers? I would have thought that the year on the bottle and the corresponding collection box edition would always need to be the same. But I see this pairing so often that it makes me wonder. Maybe reading the helpful eBay Tequila Scams sticky has caused me to over-think things, but I guess I just want to be sure that I know exactly what it is that I’d be getting, especially considering the high price tags involved. I feel like the date does matter because based upon reviews that I’ve read, there are differences in taste (however subtle) across different years.

The numbering of the bottles only adds to the confusion. As one of many examples, I have seen a 2009 Collection 2.5L bottle dated October 2009 with a very low (3 digit) number. But the LCdT site shows a bottle supposedly also from the 2009 Collection that is dated February 2009 with a much higher (four digit) number. This makes no sense to me. How can the bottle with the earlier date have the higher number? I’ve seen plenty of other instances where the bottles are numbered chronologically, so it’s not as though Cuervo numbers in backwards order. In the example I provided, I’d be concerned that the low-numbered, late-dated bottle is actually supposed to be for the 2010 Collection.

Of course if Cuervo would use a unique label design every year, or at least indicate somewhere on the generic labels that THIS bottle belongs to THIS collection year, there would be no uncertainty. But if they haven’t done that by now, chances are it’s never going to happen.

I freely acknowledge that I might be making an issue out of nothing here. Still, if anyone is able to shed some light on Cuervo’s practices for this product line, I’d really appreciate it.

Robert

[ryan79]

Here is a write up I did a while back; located here: JCRF bottle decoding - Original V. Re-Issues - The Blue Agave Forum


This info may be helpful to you -- RJH

Posted 02 October 2008 - 11:00 PM

I hate to take a strong stance on this crazy subject since it seems there is new information on a regular basis, though much less frenzied now than before; but I believe I have an answer to much of this problem that Cuervo has presented us with.

Well - I think most people have their minds made up based on Cuervo's flip-flopping and *45*'s credibility on the taste test. Throw in there that not one person has ever stated anything implying the remakes do taste like the originals; it doesn't appear good for Cuervo. But - these are subjective measures and not based on any real factual data. So we have our well founded assumptions.

I started the thread about the bottle numbering system hoping that would lead to some sort of pattern. Well I was on the right track.

Today I started to make a "how-to guide" on telling originals from re-issues. I have 3 re-issue 750ml bottles - 2003, 2004, and 2005. I placed them in front of me at my table along with 3 corresponding original bottles (3 exports - English version and 3 Mexican - Spanish). So 9 bottles total.

I was going over the 2004's centimeter by centimeter taking notes of every possible difference. I spend quite a while on just the front. I spent a little time on the back label - but kept getting side tracked by an etching / writing on the bottle above the label. I'd look at what was written- and quickly gave up. But I kept going back. And here is where I think the truth has been given to us.

The first thing that was easy to figure out was the new bottle had an '08' engraved in the numbering on the back, where as the 2 original 04's had '04' printed in dye or something. I checked the other years - they matched up as well in this regard.
So with that in mind I had to start looking into what that other info meant. Picking a year out was pretty easy - other stuff was a bit more involved. The set-up reads like this: There are 2 lines - top line, from left to right, has a 3 digit number / space / two digits. The bottom starts with a 3 digit number / space / time (24 hour). It looks pretty much like this (there is variation year to year)

XXX XX (Year)
XXX XX:XX (Time bottled)

Looking at my 2004's - there were the two originals that had 04 in the top right and one that said 08. 2 bottles that said 03, 1 said 08. Etc..

I was now looking for any correlation between anything on the bottles and any number sequence on the left top and bottom. Long story short -- the dates on the front of the bottle correspond with the bottom left XXX. After thinking some I made a chart in Excel with 2 columns. First column started with 1-Jan-04 and continued down to 31-Dec-04. The second column was simply listed what number that day is into the year - so 1-366 (Leap Year).
I then looked at the XXX on the lower left side - took that number and looked at what date was next to it in Excel. Bam! That number accurately predicted the date on the front label every time... except for the re-issues. Their dates differed, obviously not all were bottled on 7-V-XX. But now I knew when the re-issues were actually bottled by the XXX.

XXX 04
358 15:33

Now means: Bottled on the 358th day of 2004 at 3:33 PM. The front label will read: 25/XII/04. This is true with every bottle I plugged in that I tried - only for the originals. 2001 and up only!

The remaining set of unknown meaning numbers was, and is, a bit trickier. So I went looking for other information Cuervo has listed on the bottle as being "relevant". The only thing I was coming up with was that some bottles in 1997 had a Lot number ( L-57 ) or something like that; and all bottles I have from 1999 and 2000 include an "L-xx" under the date on the front label. I started think Cuervo was listing the lot number on the label for quality control. (1995 and 1996 don't have the inscription on the bottles; but the re-issues do, more on that in a bit).

Off topic to this subject, but a worthwhile observation none-the-less - I think Cuervo started to have quality control issues with JCRF in 1997, started tracking it by the L-xx designation, found a problem - discontinued production for the beginning of 1998 through most of 1999. As a result Cuervo started to list the L-xx on the bottles for 1999 and 2000 for quality control issues.

In 2001 they started to put the inscription on the back of the bottle. Seeing the route Cuervo was taking as being "relevant" information to list - it only made sense to me that they would want to continue to track the bottles back to their source for quality reasons if need be. So my assumption was that the last unknown XXX in the top left row is the barrel or lot number; and if this was the case - that number would correlate with both the date and bottle number in each given year. After spending a good few hours collecting this information - it appeared this was true. So now that XXX represents the origin of the juice in the bottle.

So now we can say:
188 04
358 15:33
means that on December 25th, 2004 @ 3:33 PM this bottle was filled with contents from "location" 188 (barrel or lot?) - it seems barrel though).


So that has the old bottles pretty well figured out. The new bottles aren't too different at all, but the "barrel" numbers are much lower and obviously the date bottled does not match the date on the front label (except for 2.5's - the day i.e., 358, would be written 25-XII but the year would be changed to whatever they want you to think it is).

Now I need to find evidence that what is being put in the different year re-issues is either coming from different barrels (there is variation in the re-issues) - or that the same barrel, or source, is being used for various years (no variation in the re-issues).

Once I had all the information in front of me and knew what I was looking for - this didn't take long at all.

Using the information that Cuervo kindly gave us, I was able to figure out that my 3 750ml bottles have quite a bit in common. I'll let you figure it out - here is the information:

005 08 <--- 2003 Label on the front ...... Bottle # 09578
093 15:54

005 08 <--- 2004 Label on the front ...... Bottle # 09678
093 16:14

005 08 <--- 2005 Label on the front ...... Bottle # 09766
093 16:55

Looks like cross-pollination to me... even the bottle number system. Unless Cuervo pushed out 200 bottles in 1 hour, with different sources and just so happened to have a sequential numbering system for the different years.

So -- there is my attempt at "factually" trying to prove one way or another exactly what is going on with the juice in the reissues. I have only a limited number of samples to use for the re-issues; but this formula worked like clock-work for the originals. Also, the 4 2.5L buttes I have follow this same pattern.

Those of you that try this.. give me some feedback.

[4'33"]

Ryan,

Allow me to join the chorus of praise that you received at the Blue Agave Forum for all of the time and effort that you put into this. Somehow I never did manage to come across that thread so I appreciate you providing the link as well. I never suspected that there was so much complexity with these bottles....what with wax drippings, bottle etchings, NOM changes, faked labels, etc., my head didn't know whether to spin or explode as I made my way through all 3 pages. Clearly, Cuervo's decision to do the reissues, and to not obviously distinguish them as such beyond the switch from hinges to sliding panel on the older boxes, really makes it difficult for the average person to differentiate between the two. Honestly, to me there's no defensible rationale for it. I wish I'd gotten into this a few years ago so I could possibly have acquired the prior years' editions beforehand, though I'd still be susceptible to faked labels I guess.

Anyway, thanks again for providing such a wealth of information that (I think) cannot be found elsewhere.