Mushroom tequila shots: Tropa’s vision of mixing art and adaptogen
A new Australian-backed drinks brand merges art and adaptogens.
Tequila used to come with instructions: salt, lime, shot and regret. It was a spirit with spirit, its lone mission to get its drinker from sober to sorry in the shortest possible time. But that was before celebrity got involved. Now, tequila doesn’t slum it in sweaty bars; it lounges in hand-sculpted bottles, is passed around in wine glasses, and has found backing from no shortage of A-listers.
Now an Australian-backed collective is joining in tequila’s glow-up. Tropa, brought to life by friends Paul Solomon, Joost Poulus and Nick Heine in Melbourne, is produced where all tequila is made – in the highlands of Guadalajara. It is set to launch in the US in May, and Australia later in the year. But it’s no ordinary tequila. It’s the first of its kind to be crafted using adaptogenic mushrooms, and as Tropa’s LA-based general manager Chessie Keebaugh, daughter of The Big Group’s Bruce and Chyka Keebaugh, reminds us, they are not the psychedelic kind.
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“Cordyceps, lion’s mane; adaptogens as a whole is such a big topic,” begins Keebaugh who previously worked with Richard Christiansen bringing to life Flamingo Estate’s product line.
Tropa, she believes, marries the rise of premium tequila with a growing interest in the properties of these mushrooms. But more importantly, though, is what their inclusion does to the flavour. “It adds this sweetness and this roundness to the profile that we hadn’t experienced in other tequilas,” she says, adding that the fungi influence extends to the name. Tropa is a Spanish word that means “troop” in English, also a term for a group of mushrooms growing nearby one another.
For Tropa, it made sense to first launch in the US. “People are already really educated on tequila as a whole,” Keebaugh says of California, “We don’t need to sell them on the spirit itself. It’s already No.1.” She points to an established name in the premium tequila space, Clase Azul, which is now a billion-dollar business.
So why the mushrooms? “They’ve been used everywhere from your local coffee shop to Erewhon,” she explains, referring to the high-end Californian grocery chain whose blended offerings won’t leave you much change from $40. “You can get adaptogens in your smoothie,” she says, “It’s just a part of the language.” These popular ingredients in the wellness space are being used in Tropa, Keebaugh assures us, solely for flavour. “I don’t want people to assume that it is good or ‘I’m not gonna get a hangover, I could drink this in excess’ – that’s not the case, it still is tequila.”
Tequila is on the path to greater appreciation Down Under, but the level of education around the spirit makes it more of a challenge to sell at a premium price point, especially when compared with wine. Both have very similar approaches in terms of its naming conventions, flavours and ageing processes, but Keebaugh says, “When we talk to consumers out here, even just on the basic level of, what I’m doing, the brand etc … people don’t understand”. And she hasn’t even got to the mushrooms yet. “Everyone I’ve talked to does not know what an adaptogen is,” she says, “and they assume that it’s psychedelic.”
Tropa’s other selling point is far more recognised: art. Tropa bottles look as though they were plucked from the pages of Alice In Wonderland; a suite of eye-catching masterpieces designed by American artists The Haas Brothers. The mushroom-shaped bottles are rendered in white for the Tropa Reposado expressions, and gold for the Añejo – a particular focus as the brand grows.
“We are trying to be a player in design and art,” Keebaugh explains. “The Añejo range is the one that will always have artist collaborations as we look to enter new markets,” clarifying that The Haas Brothers’ role in the design of future bottles will be tailored to the market.
“Whether that be Japan or New York, we’ll try to work with local artists in that area to kind of create a new version of that bottle.” An Australian artist edition is also planned.
The bottom of a tequila bottle is not the place of good memories for some, but Keebaugh and Tropa want that to be where the brand differs from traditional tequilas.
“I think that the important thing is that it [a Tropa bottle ] feels like something you want to leave behind,” she explains. “It needs to feel like the bottle is something that you can walk into someone’s house [carrying] and it feels like it’s a ‘moment’.”
This story is from the March issue of WISH.
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