McCauley Williams was on a fishing trip in Canada with his uncle in 2012 when they met a man from Brazil who tracked jaguars.

The tracker and Rick Williams — the uncle — had plenty to talk about as the elder Williams is co-founder of the Northern Jaguar Project, a reserve that covers roughly 60,000 acres in the Sierra Madre mountain range in Mexico.

“That was the seed of an idea,” McCauley Williams said. “I thought then how cool it would be to have a spirits brand that somehow promoted the conservation of jaguars.”

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But while a corporate law career at a prestigious firm awaited him, the seed of being a spirits entrepreneur was also growing. In 2013, Williams co-founded Blue Note Bourbon and remained there until 2022.

Then he came back to his original idea, which was already in the works, to create a pure line of tequila that would be made in a manner that respected the land and the people, and benefited the jaguar reserve financially.

“And by this point, I’m a real distiller entrepreneur,” he said.

So the adventure began. Williams, with the help of his uncle, began his search for a tequila maker for his new line, Alma del Jaguar.

‘Not our mascot’

The jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas and the third largest cat in the world, just behind lions and tigers. Many years ago, it roamed North America as far north as Colorado, but now mostly lives in South America, with a decent population in Central America and a much smaller one in North America. There’s even an occasional sighting in Arizona.

They’re solitary, except for the year or two cubs spend with their mother, and they are fearsome hunters with enormously strong jaws that allow them to pierce the tough armor of a caiman. The jaguar has few natural predators: Large anacondas are one and a very large caiman can get the better of them. Strong swimmers, jaguars sometimes hunt in water and can become a meal for bull sharks in the Amazon.

Both Williamses, at different points, were drawn to the big cats; now they’re both doing their part for their conservation.

“The jaguar is our cause, not our mascot,” McCauley Williams said.

‘Tastes the way the air smells’

Now back to the tequila, which is where the money will be made.

“Tequila is the fastest-growing spirit in the U.S. so there is a great business opportunity, but more importantly, I knew we could become a company like Toms or Patagonia, be a profitable company and also do good,” McCauley Williams said.

So he founded Morningside Brands, named after his childhood street in Memphis, and he went to Mexico to meet with tequila distillers.

Uncle Rick, with knowledge of the language and the country, joined the hunt.

“That trip was amazing,” Rick Williams said. “I’ll go with him every time he invites me. You wouldn’t believe all the access we had, everything we got to see.”

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And Rick turned out to be a big help in the most important way: A tennis friend of his knew of master distiller Sergio Vivanco and arranged a meeting.

“He’s fifth generation and had everything I wanted and more,” McCauley Williams said. “It’s farm to bottle.”

Vivanco’s agave is organic, grown in rich volcanic soil at about 6,800 feet in Arandas in Mexico’s Jalisco state. No chemicals are used in harvesting the agave; they don’t even use irrigation but rely on rainwater.

Tequila is made from the pina of the agave plant, the heart of which looks something like a pineapple, something like a pinecone. They weigh roughly 75 to 200 pounds, and are harvested from the plant by skilled workers called jimadors with machetes called coas.

It’s all harvested by hand.

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“Every single part of the process is the same it’s been for 100 years,” Williams said. “The way they produce this tequila is like a fine French winemaker. It is true artistry.”

He talks about the terroir, a term typically heard by winemakers but just as applicable here, he said.

“Jaguar tastes the way the air smells back on the Vivanca farm,” McAuley said. “It’s because of the process.”

Mother Nature and Mozart

After harvest, the pina are baked in large brick ovens for 54 hours, which concentrates the sugars and makes the massive bulb tender enough to be shredded. It goes through a stone mill to extract the juices — only once for this tequila — which are then fermented.

Williams’ tequila is a blend of two fermentations.

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“We make two different distillates and we use Mother Nature, only natural yeast, for one, so you really get a sense of terroir,” Williams said.

Think of it like a bread maker letting his starter catch wild yeast from the air, though the Vivancos go an extra step and play classical music for the open-air tanks to encourage the wild yeast to “dance.”

Another batch is fermented with champagne yeast. After fermentation and distillation, the two are combined: It’s Mother Nature 80% and champagne yeast, 20%.

The water comes from a well 800 feet deep in the Vivanco land.

“Each of these goes through about 25 steps, so you’re talking 50 steps all together,” Williams said.

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Everything is bottled — in recycled bottles — by hand, and labels made from recycled agave leaves are applied by hand. The bottles are packaged in boxes made of recycled materials. And nowhere along the line is anything added to the tequila.

“Almost every brand of tequila you see on the shelves has chemical additives,” Williams said. “It’s 95% or more. There are somewhere between 2,000 to 3,000 brands of tequila, and only 73 of those don’t have chemicals added and only 36 are available in the United States.”

Alma del Jaguar blanco and reposado are available in Memphis liquor stores now, and anejo is coming next year. Before then, Williams’ tequila will be in 18 states, which will happen within six months, and his plan is to have it everywhere.

And when people drink it, he wants them to talk about important issues, such as his own cause, the jaguars.

“Everyone knows that when people drink, they talk. We want people to talk about things like sustainability, conservation, climate change, about things that matter.”