This Tequila Spent Its Final Year Listening to Music

This Tequila Spent Its Final Year Listening to Music

Música Tequila is launching a 36-month Extra Añejo in November. Two years in ex-bourbon American oak, then a final year in Hungarian oak with speakers playing to the barrels. It sounds like marketing. The science is more interesting than that, and so, awkwardly, is the tequila.

By Vim, Editor of 12×75

In brief

• Música Tequila announced its first 36-month Grand Reserva Extra Añejo on September 23, 2026, for a highly limited November release. Bottle count, price and allocation are not yet published.
• It spends 24 months in American ex-bourbon oak and 12 months in Hungarian oak. During that final year the barrels are exposed to music, part of what the brand calls Música Audio Infusion.
• The science: peer-reviewed work shows audible sound can affect yeast during fermentation, including a reported 23% higher growth rate and a 2026 beer study that cut fermentation by around 46 hours. Another controlled study found little consistent effect.
• The catch: research showing acoustic energy speeds up barrel maturation used ultrasound, not speakers. Nobody has shown that a playlist next to a barrel changes a spirit.
• The twist: Música’s existing bottles score 92 to 95 points in Wine Enthusiast’s blind tastings. Whatever the music is doing, the liquid is good.

What exactly did they play to it?

Música calls the process Audio Infusion, and it is not a one-off stunt for this bottle. Speakers sit over the open stainless-steel fermentation tanks during fermentation, and speakers are positioned around the ageing rooms and, in some cases, close to individual barrels during maturation. The brand describes itself as the world’s first music-driven tequila house, and music is the organising idea of the whole operation rather than a label story.

The brand’s own line for the release is three years, two woods and the music of Mexico. As a piece of copywriting that is annoyingly good. As a production note, the Hungarian oak is the part I would have led with: it is a genuinely uncommon finishing choice in tequila, tighter-grained than American oak and more associated with spice and subtler tannin, and it would be an interesting release even if the ageing room were silent.

Does playing music to tequila actually do anything?

Here is where most coverage will either mock it or repeat it. Neither is right, because there is real peer-reviewed work on sound and fermentation, and it does not say what a brand would want it to say.

To its credit, Música is reasonably careful about this itself, acknowledging that science has not definitively shown music changes tequila fermentation or maturation while arguing that music is central to its philosophy. That is a more honest position than most brands take about their proprietary process, and it is worth saying so.

Sound can genuinely affect fermentation

The yeast evidence is real. A peer-reviewed study on Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the workhorse yeast of alcoholic fermentation, found measurable effects from specific audible frequencies: roughly 23% higher growth rate under certain acoustic conditions, along with differences in volatile metabolites and changes in some aroma-related compounds depending on the frequency used.

A newer 2026 study in Food Research International went further with beer. Researchers reported that sound in the 800 to 2,000 Hz range at 140 dB shortened fermentation by about 46 hours. The proposed mechanism is the useful detail, and it is not romantic: the acoustic energy appears to keep more yeast suspended in the liquid, and therefore active, rather than settling out. The yeast is not enjoying the music. It is being shaken.

But the science is not settled

And then there is the study that found nothing much. A controlled experiment that transmitted sound directly through the liquid to brewing yeast reported little consistent effect on growth, sugar consumption or ethanol production. The researchers suggested that some previously reported effects may depend partly on how sound travels through the experimental setup rather than on sound changing yeast behavior directly.

That is the honest state of the field: sound can influence fermentation under some conditions, and the effect depends heavily on frequency, intensity, how the sound is transmitted and how the experiment is built. Which is a long way from proving anything about a tequila.

Speakers are not ultrasound machines

This is the distinction that matters most, and the one that would be easiest to blur.

There is genuine research showing acoustic energy can accelerate spirit maturation. One study found ultrasound treatment increased extraction of phenolic compounds from oak by roughly 34% during wine-spirit maturation. A 2024 study on ultrasound-assisted maturation of sugar-cane spirits found significant changes in color, oak-compound extraction and maturation characteristics.

Both used ultrasound: frequencies above human hearing, delivered at energy levels far beyond what a speaker produces. Citing them as evidence for music beside a barrel is like citing a pressure washer to prove that breathing on your car cleans it. The physics is related. The magnitude is not.

One more caution. Música has referenced the Mozart Effect in explaining the concept, and the Mozart Effect is one of the most over-extended findings in popular science. It does not establish that Mozart, mariachi, techno or anything else reliably changes the flavor of a spirit. Use it as a metaphor by all means. It is not evidence.

The tequila itself is not a gimmick

Now the part that complicates the easy joke. Strip the speakers out and Música is a serious small producer, and the production notes read like a brand that would be worth attention without any of the music.

Open fermentation with ambient yeast is the detail I would pick out. It is harder to control and less predictable than pitching a commercial strain, and it is the sort of choice made by people who care how the thing tastes rather than how consistently it can be scaled. If you want to know why any of that matters, how tequila is made walks through each stage.

The 36 months also has a regulatory meaning worth stating plainly: under Mexican rules, Extra Añejo requires a minimum of three years in oak or holm-oak vessels of no more than 600 liters. So Música’s 36 months places it exactly at the category threshold rather than beyond it. If you want the full picture of what the class names mean, blanco, reposado and añejo covers it.

The scores make the joke harder to tell

Here is the inconvenient fact for anyone planning to write this off. Wine Enthusiast, whose Buying Guide spirits tastings are conducted blind, has scored Música’s existing range well.

Blind tastings do not know about speakers. A panel scoring 95 points has no idea whether the liquid spent a year listening to Vicente Fernández or to the hum of a warehouse fan, which is exactly what makes those numbers useful. They do not prove the music does anything. They do prove that whatever else is going on at NOM 1598, somebody there can make tequila.

Who is behind it

Música was founded by Chris and Geri Andrews and launched commercially in 2024 after several years of development, working with master tequilero Hugo Yerenas Domínguez and his family at NOM 1598 in Amatitán. Chris Andrews’ background spans engineering, music and music production; Geri’s covers finance, marketing and product development.

That matters for judging whether the concept is sincere. The music idea predates this release and runs through the whole brand, and the company sponsors musicians and supports the Save The Music Foundation. This is not a marketing department that discovered a hook last spring. It is a couple who like music building a tequila around it, which is a considerably more sympathetic proposition than most brand stories I read, and a long way from the celebrity model the category spent a decade on.

It is also still a small operation. Música’s own retail information points to meaningful physical distribution in Florida and Michigan, plus online sales into other markets where permitted. If you are outside those states, the Grand Reserva will likely mean the brand’s website or nothing, and “highly limited” usually means exactly what it says.

So should you buy it?

I have not tasted it, and nobody has, because it launches in November. So treat this as a reasoned guess rather than a review.

What I would say is that the reasons to be interested are not the reasons in the press release. A 36-month Extra Añejo finished for a year in Hungarian oak, from a producer whose current range blind-scores in the low to mid nineties, made with ambient-yeast open fermentation, is a genuinely interesting bottle. The music is the marketing. The wood, the yeast and the track record are the product. If the price lands sensibly, and the brand has not published one yet, it is worth a look for anyone who has worked through the obvious names in the best tequila guide and wants something with an actual point of view.

And if it lands at a silly number because it is limited and has a story, that is a different conversation, and the one I keep having about bottles priced for the shelf rather than the glass. I will update this when the price appears, and again if I get a bottle in a glass.

The last word

Whether Música’s tequila tastes different because it spent a year listening to music is, at the moment, impossible to prove. The fermentation science is real but tested at intensities no ageing room reproduces. The maturation science is real but used ultrasound. The brand itself admits the case is not settled. And the blind scores, which are the only evidence that touches the actual liquid, cannot tell you which part of the process earned them.

What I can say is that a small family brand doing something odd and sincere, and being honest about the limits of its own claim, is a considerably better story than another gold bottle with a famous name on it. The category could do with more of it.

Sources

• BevNET: Música Tequila 36-Month Grand Reserva announcement, September 23, 2026
• Música Tequila: about the brand
• Música Tequila: production process and Audio Infusion
• Música Tequila: on the Mozart Effect and tequila production
• Música Tequila: retail availability
• Consejo Regulador del Tequila: ageing classifications
• Audible sound and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (peer-reviewed study)
• Food Research International, 2026: audible sound and beer fermentation
• Controlled sound-transmission fermentation study reporting little effect
• Ultrasound and wine-spirit maturation
• 2024 study: ultrasound-assisted maturation of sugar-cane spirits
• Wine Enthusiast: Música Tequila reviews and scores

Production details, the additive-free claim and process descriptions are Música Tequila’s own statements, reported as such. Scores are Wine Enthusiast’s, from blind tastings, and are quoted rather than endorsed. The scientific studies cited concern fermentation and maturation under laboratory conditions and do not demonstrate any effect from music played beside tequila barrels. Price, bottle count and allocation had not been published at the time of writing. Correct as of September 24, 2026. Please drink responsibly.