History
 
A distillery oven loaded with agave "piñas" or "pineapples", the first step in the production of tequila.Tequila was first produced in the 16th century near the location of the city of Tequila which was not officially established until 1656. The Aztec people had previously made a fermented beverage from the agave plant which they called octli (later, and more popularly called pulque), long before the Spanish arrived in 1521. When the Spanish conquistadors ran out of their own brandy, they began to distill this agave drink to produce North America's first indigenous distilled spirit.

Some 80 years later, around 1600, Don Pedro Sánchez de Tagle, the Marquis of Altamira, began mass-producing tequila at the first factory in the territory of modern-day Jalisco. By 1608, the colonial governor of Nueva Galicia had begun to tax his products.

The tequila that is popular today was first mass-produced in the early 1800s in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Recent history
 
Blue agave fields and ancient distilleries near Tequila are recognized as part of the World Heritage List.In the late 1990s and early 2000s, increasing world-wide popularity of tequila drove corporate interest in the drink. Notable developments as a result included:

The purchase of Herradura by Brown-Forman for $776 million in September 2006.
Casa Noble was selected, after a lengthy split-decision between Casa Noble and Fortune Brands' El Tesoro de Don Felipe, as the Outstanding Tequila of the Decade (1996-2006) in July of 2006.
A new NOM (Norma Official Mexicana) for tequila (NOM-006-SCFI-2005) was issued in 2006, and among other changes, introduced a category of tequila called "tequila extra añejo" which must be aged a minimum of 3 years.[4]
The purchase of the Sauza and El Tesoro brands by massive holding company Fortune Brands.
Although some tequilas have remained as family owned brands, most well known tequila brands are owned by large multinational corporations. However, there are over 100 distilleries making over six hundred brands of tequila in Mexico and over 2,000 brand names have been registered.

A one-liter bottle of limited-edition premium tequila was sold for $225,000 in July of 2006 in Tequila, Jalisco, by the company Tequila Ley .925. The bottle which contains the tequila is a two-kilo display of platinum and gold. The manufacturer has received the Certificate from Guinness World Records for the most expensive bottle of liquor ever sold.