A few years back, Tesla decided that as well as making electric cars, it should also make tequila. It was part of a wave through the liquor industry that saw The Rock, George Clooney, Kylie Jenner, Rita Ora, and a boatload of other famous faces start shipping their own brands of tequila. Now, for anyone who was daft enough to buy a spirit made by a car company, the automaker has a set of glasses that match the design of its tequila. And I hate them.
When it first launched, the Tesla Tequila was a 100-per cent agave spirit that had been aged in oak barrels for at least a year. These are all good things to hear about a tequila; agave is the plant that’s used to make it, and having this as the sole ingredient means there are no cheaper grain or cane spirits mixed in to boost the alcohol content. (Side note, spirits made with these additional ingredients are called mixto tequilas.)
But I digress. The shocking thing about the Tesla Tequila wasn’t that it might actually be a half-decent drink — it was the price. Where a good, ethically made añejo tequila will probably set you back around $US60, Tesla was charging $US250, and its latest release topped $US1,000.
That’s a lot for a spirit. So that means you’re likely to want to savour the taste of your Tesla Tequila, rather than shoot it like you might have done in your college days. And that’s why, as Teslarati reports, the EV maker has now come up with a set of “sipping glasses” from which to enjoy your over-priced Tesla-branded tequila. Just one problem: they’re awful.
The glasses are designed to look like the lightning-bolt bottle Tesla sold its spirit in. So, they’re triangles with a rounded base. And first off, that means they won’t stand up by themselves.
So, for your $US75 set of two glasses, you also get a dumb engraved stand that stops your drink from toppling over.
By itself, this would make these far too annoying for me. But then, as the spirits tasting pro in me comes clamoring to the surface once again, I have to point out that it’s just a bad shape for a sipping glass.
When you taste something like an aged tequila, a huge part of the flavour you uncover comes from the scent and aroma wafting off the top of the drink. It’s for this very reason that whisky tasters use tulip-shaped vessels and why wine glasses balloon out around the liquid. It gives the drink space to breathe and release all those lovely aromas.
Tequila is a wonderful, complex spirit that can have smoky scents similar to a good scotch, sweetness that you might find in rum, and vanilla or fruit flavours that come with good bourbon. If you drink your tequila from these, you’ll lose all that. Plus, you’ll never be able to put your drink down, unless you stay within arm’s reach of the metal stand, which means you’re more likely to just gulp down the whole glass in one shot. Which, again, defeats the point of having sourced fine ingredients and aged them properly to begin with.
These Tesla tequila glasses make about as much sense as chopping the top and bottom off your steering wheel because it looks sci-fi. Oh wait.
Instead of these novelty Tesla drink-cones, get a nice wide-brimmed glass – you’ll have a much better time, I promise.