There are a lot of tequila brands. There are very few tequila producers. Felipe Camarena is unambiguously the latter — and G4 is the clearest expression of what it looks like when a family with generations of distilling knowledge decides to make something worth drinking.
Felipe Camarena is the fourth generation of his family to make tequila at El Pandillo distillery in Jesús María, deep in the Los Altos highlands of Jalisco. His grandfather made tequila. His father made tequila. His uncle Carlos runs another well-regarded distillery nearby. Tequila isn't a business venture for this family — it's the thing they actually know how to do. That context matters when you taste G4. It explains why nothing about it feels like a marketing exercise.
Los Altos sits at high elevation — around 7,000 feet — with red, iron-rich soil and a cooler climate than the lowland valleys around Tequila. Agave grown here tends to develop more slowly and accumulate more sugars, which translates to a rounder, fruitier character in the glass. Think baked pineapple, citrus zest, floral lift. It's a distinct regional profile, and Felipe leans into it rather than engineering it away.
The name G4 stands for "fourth generation," which tells you where Felipe's head is at. This isn't about building a brand to sell. It's about making the tequila correctly and letting it speak.
Felipe uses only rainwater collected on-site to cook and process the agave — no municipal water, no shortcuts. He uses both masonry ovens and an autoclave depending on the expression, and he runs both roller mill and tahona (a traditional stone wheel) to extract juice. He distills in copper pot stills. Every one of these decisions is deliberate, and none of them are cheap.
The result is tequila with genuine terroir — you can taste where it came from and who made it. That's rarer than it should be in a category that has spent decades chasing volume and celebrity endorsements.
The Blanco ($40) is unaged and unfiltered, bottled straight off the still at 40% ABV. It's a direct line to the agave — bright, herbaceous, with cooked agave sweetness, white pepper, and that lifted citrus quality that defines Los Altos fruit. Drink it neat. Use it in a margarita where you actually want to taste the tequila. Either way, $40 is a serious value for what's in the bottle.
The Reposado ($60) rests in American oak barrels for around seven months. The wood adds vanilla, soft caramel, and a little spice without steamrolling the agave character that makes this distillery worth your attention in the first place. It's the kind of reposado that reminds you the category can be subtle — that oak is supposed to complement, not mask. Sip it slowly.
At Off Premise, we're not interested in tequilas that are famous because someone famous owns them. We're interested in tequilas that are good because the person making them knows exactly what they're doing. Felipe Camarena knows exactly what he's doing. G4 is the kind of bottle we're proud to put on the shelf — honest, transparent, built on real craft rather than real marketing budgets.
Both the G4 Blanco ($40) and G4 Reposado ($60) are on the shelf now at 1128 W Armitage Ave in Lincoln Park.
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