Can Tequila Compete With 50-Year Scotch? All Signs Point to This $2,300 Bottle

When Carmen Villarreal took over Casa San Matías in 1997, she wasn’t stepping into a role she’d been preparing for. She was stepping into a void. 

Her husband, Don Jesús López Román — the master distiller who helped pioneer long‑aged tequila — had just died unexpectedly, leaving one of Mexico’s oldest family‑owned distilleries without a leader.

“It wasn’t really the plan at that time,” she says. “But it was something that was needed.”

Villarreal had studied marketing earlier...