McConaughey Loses Pants For Tequila | Smart Move For A Bar Year In Tequila

There is a particular kind of celebrity spirits launch that I have written about so often I could do it in my sleep: the moody black-and-white film, the agave field at golden hour, the star gazing into the middle distance as though tequila were a bereavement. Matthew McConaughey looked at all of that, thought about it carefully, and took his pants off.

This week he did it again. The new image for Pantalones, the organic tequila he founded with his wife Camila Alves, has the two of them standing beside a truck at a tailgate, drinks in hand, in full Western get-up: fringed jacket, tan leather, cowboy hats, cowboy boots. From the waist down, a careful blur. McConaughey posted it with the caption “Tailgates and tanlines,” and the internet did what the internet does. One fan observed that the pixelation “looks like a loading screen for GTA 6,” which is both cruel and, having looked at it, fair.

It would be easy to file this under celebrities doing silly things for attention and move on. I am not going to, for three reasons. The pants are a decision, and the decision has a written rationale. The tequila is better than the joke suggests: when I blind-tasted every celebrity tequila this year, Pantalones landed in the top dozen of 29 bottles on flavor alone. And the timing is not an accident, because tequila is having its worst year in a decade and most of the category is responding with more seriousness, not less. If you just want to know what to buy, my best tequila guide is the answer and Pantalones is not at the top of it. But it earns its place in this story, and the brand has just given me a ninth excuse to tell it.

The manifesto

When the couple announced in 2024 that they would be pants-free in every ad from then on, they issued a statement explaining why, and it is worth quoting because it is a genuine position rather than a gag. “We’re precious about our tequila, not our pants,” it began. “With the explosion in popularity of tequila, there’s a level of snootiness that’s crept into the category. People now talk about tequila the way they talk about wine. While we’re all for being passionate about tequila, we wanted to remind people that, above all, it’s meant to be fun. That’s where the name Pantalones came from and that’s why you won’t see us wearing any.”

That is a real critique, and I happen to think it is correct. Tequila spent a decade being premiumised into a prestige product, with a new celebrity bottle every few months, tasting notes borrowed from Burgundy, and prices to match. The result was a category that started to take itself extremely seriously just as, by the industry’s own numbers, ordinary drinkers were walking away from it. The pants are a rebuttal to all of that. You cannot hold a $200 sipping tequila with a straight face when the founder is standing behind it in a sweater vest and no pants.

Why it keeps working

Most celebrity tequila marketing is interchangeable, which is exactly why it stopped working: when every bottle has a famous face and an agave field, none of them has an edge. Pantalones has one. It is a single, repeatable, instantly recognisable joke that costs almost nothing to produce, generates a news cycle every time it runs, and never needs explaining, because the brand is literally named after it. That is a marketing department’s dream: a gag that is also the logo, the tagline and the positioning, and that gets funnier with repetition rather than staler. Nine ads in and people are still writing about it, this one included.

It also fits the couple, which matters more than it sounds. McConaughey’s entire public persona is a man who is comfortable in his own skin, occasionally to the point of bongos. Alves is game for all of it. The ads are not embarrassing because nobody in them is embarrassed, and that is the whole trick: self-deprecation only sells when the people doing it clearly do not need the money. A struggling brand cannot pull this off. A couple with three teenage children and a ranch outside Austin can.

The bit nobody says: tequila needs the joke

Here is the context that makes this smarter than it looks. Tequila is having its first hard year in a decade, and the category’s reflex has been to go the other way, towards ceramic decanters and bottles you buy for the vase. Brown-Forman reported its tequila sales down 12% last quarter while its cans grew 20%. The premium end, the end all those moody agave-field ads were built for, is exactly where the slowdown bites, because when money gets tight the $60 reposado is the first thing to go. The category’s celebrity gold rush has visibly run out of celebrities, and the ones that remain are fighting for a shrinking pool of drinkers who, as I keep pointing out, want fun and ease rather than a lecture on additive-free production.

So a tequila brand whose entire identity is “this is supposed to be fun” is not being frivolous. It is reading the room. The tailgate is the tell: football season, a truck, a drink in a plastic cup, the least precious tequila occasion in America. Pantalones is not trying to be on the back bar of a cocktail den. It is trying to be in the cooler in the car park, and the pants say so more clearly than any tasting note could.

Is the tequila any good?

Fair question, and one the marketing rather invites you to forget. The answer, from my own glass, is: better than a novelty brand has any right to be. In my 29-bottle blind test of celebrity tequilas it finished in the top dozen on flavor alone, with limestone, bright citrus and tropical fruit over a smooth blanco; powerful, a touch vanilla-sweet, but with real cooked agave underneath, which is more than most of that list can claim. It is a certified organic, 100% blue agave tequila from Jalisco, double-distilled in pot stills with the brand’s own organic yeast, and the reposado and añejo spend nine and fifteen months in American oak whiskey barrels. The blanco runs about $45 in the US; North Carolina’s state system lists it at $44.95 and Total Wine sits in the same range.

So it is a good tequila, not a great one, and it knows it: built for Margaritas rather than contemplation, which is exactly what the pants are telling you. For the bottles I rate above it, the best tequila guide has twenty of them, with Fortaleza Blanco at the top and Teremana as the celebrity bottle I keep rebuying; the best tequilas for Margaritas covers the job Pantalones is actually for; and if the plan is a tailgate, the best tequila for shots is the relevant reading. The tequila Espresso Martini they launched last November has more legs than it sounds, as anyone who has read my canned Espresso Martini rankings will know.

The last word

I have spent a lot of this year writing about drinks companies taking themselves too seriously: manufactured scarcity, luxury positioning, the Rolex problem, the endless premiumisation of things that used to be fun. So I am oddly grateful for two people who looked at the most self-important category in spirits, decided the answer was to remove their pants, and have now done it nine times without flinching.

It is not sophisticated. That is the point. Tequila got sophisticated and started losing customers. Pantalones took the opposite bet, and every time McConaughey posts another blurred rectangle where his jeans should be, a few million people are reminded that tequila is allowed to be a laugh. In a bad year for the category, that might be the most valuable thing a brand can say. Whether it is the tequila you should buy is a different question, and the best tequila guide answers it.

Sources: Pantalones Organic Tequila (pantalonestequila.com) for production details and campaign images; Total Wine and the North Carolina ABC Commission for US pricing; campaign coverage and statements as shared by the founders and reported by the Daily Beast, Fox Business, People and others; the brand’s 2024 press statement; Brown-Forman Q1 fiscal 2027 results. Campaign details correct as of 12 September 2026. Please drink responsibly, and wear what you like.