818 Tequila Review: Kendall Jenner’s Bottle, Honestly Assessed

There are two lazy ways to review 818, and I refuse to write either. One is to sneer because a Kardashian-adjacent supermodel put her name on the label, roll your eyes, and file it under “celebriquila.” The other is to gush, because the marketing tells you to and the bottle looks lovely on a shelf. Both are cop-outs. So here is the honest version: what is genuinely good about 818, what the tequila crowd holds against it, a question mark hanging over where it is actually made, and the very current legal drama swirling around it as I write this in 2026. Then you can decide whether it earns a place on your shelf or just in your feed.

You cannot review this bottle honestly in 2026 without the lawsuit, so let us deal with it head on. In September 2025, plaintiffs filed a class action in Florida against 818’s parent company, alleging that independent lab testing showed certain products contained less agave than the “100% Blue Weber” label promises, per The Spirits Business. 818 is one of a wave of brands named in similar suits, alongside Casamigos, Don Julio, Cincoro and Costco’s Kirkland.

Here is where 818 stands apart, and why I am not lumping it in with the rest. In January 2026 the brand did not just deny the claim, it came out swinging. In a statement it called the suit “without merit”, stressed it is CRT-certified as 100% Agave Azul, and filed a motion to dismiss on genuinely pointed grounds: that the plaintiffs never identified which specific bottles were tested, leaning instead on vague results from unnamed bottles bought at unknown shops. That is a sharper defence than most. For contrast, the Diageo cases against Casamigos and Don Julio got specific, with a California RICO filing alleging exact agave-versus-other percentages, which Diageo dismissed as an attempt to turn rumour into fraud.

Nothing is proven. 818 denies it, the case is unresolved, and its position, that private lawsuits should not override the official Mexican regulator, is a real legal argument rather than a dodge. I unpack the whole adulteration saga, the science and the other brands in the additive scandal investigation. For this review, file it as contested, unproven, and worth knowing before you spend $50.

Whatever you think of the branding, the stated production spec is not a shortcut mixto, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. By the brand’s account, 818 is made in Jalisco from agave grown at least seven years, cooked in stone ovens for thirty-plus hours, crushed with an 800-kilo stone tahona, fermented naturally with agave fibres and twice distilled in copper pot stills. It is also a certified B Corporation with a real sustainability programme, composting bagasse, recycled-glass bottles, and a “Bricks” scheme turning agave waste into building materials for Mexican community projects. On that spec, this is careful, traditional production. Which makes the next bit awkward.

Every bottle of tequila carries a NOM, a code identifying the distillery that actually made it, and 818’s is not as tidy as the marketing implies. The brand today points to NOM 1607 in the Amatitan area. But dig into the enthusiast databases and the story wobbles. Reviewers report that 818 shifted production to NOM 1137 after its commercial launch, a large contract distillery (La Cofradia) that bottles dozens of other brands, and tasters have logged the NOM changing between bottlings. Retailer write-ups compound the mess, with at least one naming La Cofradia outright.

Why does a four-digit code matter? Because “artisanal family distillery” and “large contract facility that makes sixty brands” are very different stories, and the label sells you the first. I am not accusing 818 of anything here, sourcing can legitimately change, but a brand whose whole pitch is provenance ought to be clear about it, and it is not. This is also the single best reason to check the NOM printed on your own bottle before you buy the romance. It is a small number near the barcode, and it tells you more than the front label ever will.

For context, the Blanco is Fortaleza and G4 money, which is exactly the value problem we come to below. 818 does have a genuinely decorated trophy shelf, reportedly 43 blind-tasting awards across 13 competitions, including that Reposado Double Gold. It wins medals. Whether it wins your palate is the harder question, and it splits a room like few tequilas do.

Notice the word that appears in every single expression above: sweet. That is not an accident, it is 818’s design. The brand’s own slogan is “skip the burn, taste the smooth,” and that is precisely the quality tequila purists distrust, because a proper blanco is meant to have pepper and life, and artificial-tasting smoothness is the thing they have learned to be suspicious of. The crowd verdict on aggregators is genuinely split down the middle: one camp calls it the smoothest thing they drink, the other compares it to birthday-cake candles or plastic, and several report real batch-to-batch inconsistency, one bottle lovely, the next barely drinkable.

Here is the careful part. That sweet, vanilla, cake-batter signature is exactly the profile I taught you to question in the additives piece. To be crystal clear: 818 states it is additive-free, and that flavour can absolutely come from oak-resting and cut choices rather than anything added. I am not asserting otherwise, and nothing in the lawsuit is proven. But a brand selling engineered smoothness, in a category where engineered smoothness is exactly what is under legal scrutiny, is always going to draw this question. That tension, more than any single tasting note, is the story of 818.

Two things the tidy retailer write-ups leave out. First, 818 was sued once before, in 2022, by a small Austin brand called Tequila 512 (also an area code) over an allegedly lookalike yellow-and-black label. That one settled, both sides keeping their names and tweaking labels. Second, the 2021 launch campaign drew criticism from some in the Latine community who felt the imagery of Jenner riding through agave fields was tone-deaf. Neither is a reason to avoid the bottle, but a review that pretends the brand arrived without friction is not being straight with you. And for all the noise, it works commercially, reportedly posting 40% year-on-year volume growth.

Weighing 818 against the other famous faces? I gave The Rock’s bottle the same straight treatment in my Teremana review, and covered the Diageo camp in my Don Julio review, including a dedicated look at the flagship Don Julio 1942. And if 818 does become your pick, it earns its keep in a margarita far more than neat, so see my best tequila for margaritas guide.