"Tequila" can legally be 51% agave

That’s not a loophole. It’s the standard, written into NOM-006-SCFI-2012, and it has been that way for decades.

Two kinds of tequila

Under the Mexican standard, tequila comes in two forms.

100% de agave means every fermentable sugar in the bottle came from blue Weber agave — Agave tequilana Weber, blue variety. Nothing else was invited.

Mixto — a word that almost never appears on a label — requires only that 51% of the fermentable sugars come from agave. The remaining 49% can come from other sources, typically cane or corn sugars.

Both are legally tequila. Both can carry a NOM. Both are certified by the CRT. Only one of them announces itself.

The tell is what’s missing

Here’s the part worth memorizing: a mixto will not say “mixto” on the label. That word is industry vocabulary, not consumer-facing labeling.

What a mixto says is simply Tequila.

So the test runs backwards from what you’d expect. You’re not looking for a warning. You’re looking for the absence of a claim. If a label doesn’t say 100% de agave — or 100% agave, or 100% puro de agave — then it isn’t. A brand making tequila entirely from agave will tell you, every time, because it’s the more expensive way to do it and there’s no reason to be quiet about it.

No claim means mixto. That’s the whole rule.

Why the difference is real

The gap isn’t only philosophical.

Agave takes six to ten years to mature before it can be harvested. Cane and corn sugars take a growing season. When roughly half your fermentable sugar can come from a source that’s cheaper and faster, the economics of the two products separate sharply — and so does what ends up in the glass.

There’s a texture difference, a sweetness difference, and a finish difference. People argue about how much of the next-day feeling is attributable to it, and we’re not going to make a health claim we can’t stand behind. But the flavor difference is not subtle, and once you’ve tasted the two side by side, you don’t need anyone to explain it to you.

What this means in the seltzer aisle

Now apply the same skepticism one level up.

A tequila seltzer is built on a base spirit. If that spirit is mixto, you’re getting a can built on something roughly half agave — and there’s nothing on the front of the can obligated to mention it.

If the base isn’t tequila at all — if it’s a flavored malt beverage engineered to taste like a margarita — there’s no agave in the equation at all, and no NOM to look up.

This is why we keep pointing people at the back label. The front of a can is a marketing surface. The back is where the facts have to live.

Where we land

Lumi Sol is a tequila seltzer built on 100% real tequila, distilled in Jalisco, carrying NOM 1658. Not a malt base. Not tequila flavoring. Not mixto.

We put that on the can in type you can read, because we’d rather answer the question before you have to ask it.

#CheckTheCan

Figures reflect NOM-006-SCFI-2012 and CRT guidance current as of 2026.