The battle between tequila’s regulatory body and third-party organizations dedicated to transparency in agave spirits continues to escalate.
On Tuesday, the Consejo Regulador del Tequila (CRT) filed a lawsuit against the Additive Free Alliance (AFA) and S2F Online, Inc. (S2F) in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Jacksonville. The CRT asserts that it is the only governing body with the authority to certify tequila, and is suing the organizations for doing so, specifically via their work relating to the term “additive-free.”
As argued in the lawsuit, the CRT claims to be the “sole certifier of Tequila and the agency responsible for substantiating fact-based claims on Tequila labels. Without CRT’s permission, Defendants have been representing themselves as certifiers of Tequila, and more specifically, by falsely certifying Tequilas as ‘additive free.’”
The document goes on to state that the AFA — a non-profit organization based in Kentucky — and the S2F — the Florida-based, for-profit web developer behind Tequila Matchmaker and TasteTequila.com — are misleading the public, causing confusion in the tequila marketplace, and harming the industry’s reputation. Well-known tequila transparency advocates Grover and Scarlet Sanschagrin are involved with both organizations.
The lawsuit seeks to prohibit the defendants from certifying tequilas, as well as prevent their infringement of CRT trademarks, and put a stop to “false and misleading advertising claims about Tequilas being ‘additive free.’”
The accusations are the latest development in a years-long conflict between the CRT and the independent tequila transparency advocacy groups. In 2023, Tequila Matchmaker rebranded its Additive-Free Program as the Additive Free Alliance and introduced a physical stamp for brands to use on their approved additive-free bottles. The CRT quickly fired back, arguing that it was the only organization with “the necessary infrastructure to evaluate the conformity of the quality of Tequila.” The organization also ordered the removal of all stickers from tequila bottles and mandated that Tequila Matchmaker halt its additive-free testings.
In March 2024, a CRT representative alerted the Jalisco Attorney’s General Office that the home of Tequila Matchmaker founders was being used to adulterate spirits, resulting in an all-out raid of the private residence. That same month, the CRT pledged to establish its own “additive-free” certification program, but didn’t take action until October.
Six months after the raid, Tequila Matchmaker relaunched the Additive-Free Alliance as an independent non-profit dedicated to increasing transparency in agave spirits, including tequila, mezcal, and raicilla, as well as agave-adjacent products.
But that wasn’t the end. Come October, the CRT threatened several tequila brands over their use of “additive-free” verbiage, prompting Tequila Matchmaker to remove such designations from its database as well as the brands listed as “additive-free” on the Additive Free Alliance website. Around the same time, several small tequila brand owners started speculating that the CRT’s actions were aimed at protecting large tequila brands from new, smaller players cutting in on their market share, not to protect the category overall.
Just a few weeks later, the CRT declared Patrón to be the first official additive-free brand, then later abandoned the new certification program following backlash from other producers. By January 2025, the CRT declared that no brands are entitled to use “additive-free” labeling or other related terms on their packaging.
Tequila Matchmaker has previously argued that roughly 70 percent of tequilas contain some degree of additives, but since the CRT does not require brands to disclose those additives, these connected third-party organizations have made it their mission to highlight producers that don’t use any additives whatsoever. (The CRT permits tequila producers to use the labeling of “100% agave” as long as they limit additives to one percent or less of their products’ makeup.)
In Tuesday’s lawsuit, the CRT claims that “all relevant Mexican government authorities believe the term ‘Additive Free’ is a misleading health-related statement.” The document also states that “‘Additive Free’ should be supported by ‘scientific, objective, and reliable’ evidence that substantiates the qualities or properties of the product.”
Both the AFA and S2F have yet to publicly comment on the lawsuit.
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