ARENAL, JALISCO - It was dawn and the magical agave fields were alive with something besides the usual mists and insect life.

Making their way through rutted, reddish brown earth and the crackling stalks of recently harvested “blue gold,” as agave is sometimes called, were two cameramen, a director, three or four star-quality food experts, two tequila entrepreneurs and an assortment of landowners, distillery managers, field workers and hangers-on.

A film crew tapes a segment at 4 Copas distillery as Chef Phil Anderson and his wife Bonnie Jones talk with 4 Copas representative Enrico Caruso.

Hector Galinda, a former physics professor and the principal founder of 4 Copas, exuded benevolence as he regarded the swarm of cameras, vehicles, make-up, Blackberrys and general excitement.

“Ten years ago, I had a dream: to make the best tequila in the world,” he said.

He has apparently succeeded, judging from the comments of the chef of “The Chef’s Wife” and one of the day’s stars, Phil Anderson: “You think of tequila as something to throw back, but this one has such a rich taste, with a lot of lemony and herbaceous undertones. It’s made to drink alone, to sip, to savor.”

“A lot of tequila is ...” Galinda began merrily, searching for the right words and finally finding them, a little apologetically, “... well, hazardous to your health. You don’t want to taste it, so you hide the taste with lemon and salt or a margarita.”

The reason for this sad state of affairs, according to Brad Donovan, Galinda’s son-in-law, is that “about 50 years ago, the men with the briefcases arrived, and they brought chemicals. When Don Hector started ten years ago, the farmers were crying that their fields were burned and their sons were gone.”

4 Copas’ fields and production processes are certified organic by the USDA and a European organization, said Don Hector. 4 Copas’ distillation is different too, eschewing flavor additives that are used in most tequilas. Their laboratories and 10-year history ensure a consistent product, which is now ready to hit the market and, hopefully, gain sales.

As if to underscore the dangers of non-organic farming, about every five minutes, a tanker truck belonging to a competing tequila producer passes us and lumbers off along a dusty track to a distant field to dump its load of vinaza, a toxic waste produced in the non-organic distillation process.

“Over there where they dump, it looks like the surface of the moon,” Donovan said soberly.

“But here at 4 Copas,” Galinda said later at the distillery, “we convert our vinaza into a useful, non-toxic fertilizer.” 

In her portion of the taping, Fowler said that if all producers used organic methods, the price of tequila would actually come down.

But right now, 4 Copas is the only certified organic tequila, according to Donovan. It has achieved distribution in parts of Mexico (at La Europea and Vinos America in Guadalajara, for example), Canada and the United States, where it is the featured tequila at Anisette, a French restaurant in Santa Monica that uses all sustainable products.

With high cuisine in mind, the chef, his wife and the rest of the entourage set off from the distillery to a kitchen in town, where the final taping would take place: Chef Phil Anderson preparing ceviche, a popular local dish using raw fish, that will have 4 Copas tequila as one of the critical ingredients. For more information: www.4copas.com .