Black Sheep Tequila announced that its Añejo expression received a second Platinum medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, alongside what the company describes as a ninth consecutive Double Gold. The claim, distributed through EIN Presswire and later carried by aggregators including The National Law Review's newsfeed, credits the 2025 edition of SFWSC, part of The Tasting Alliance's competition circuit.
The announcement itself carries an April 2026 dateline, referencing results from a competition held roughly a year earlier. Black Sheep, co-founded around 2000 by Jason Charles alongside partners including Mark Bailey and a Mexican agave grower identified as Rodolfo Tabarez, operates out of Nashville with production sited on a highland estate in Jalisco, according to a feature in Emerald Coast Magazine and the company's own materials.
What the medal count actually verifies
SFWSC, founded in 2000, runs blind judging across categories and hands out a tiered medal structure that includes Gold, Double Gold, Platinum and Best in Class designations. Brands self-report results in press releases, and Black Sheep's own materials say the company has amassed 35 medals and honors since 2022, spanning its Blanco, Reposado, Añejo and Extra Añejo line. That figure comes from the company, not from an independent tally we were able to confirm against a published SFWSC results archive.
The pattern is common in tequila trade marketing. Other brands, including Cierto Tequila, run near identical wire releases after competitions, counting cumulative medals into the thousands and branding themselves the most awarded tequila in history. The format rewards volume of entries and competitions as much as it does any single bottle's quality, and readers should treat cumulative medal counts as a marketing metric distinct from a blind score from a single, disclosed panel.
Ownership and production, what's confirmed
Black Sheep describes itself as a single estate operation, with agave grown on a highland farm in the Jalisco highlands and cultivation overseen by a local grower, per the Emerald Coast Magazine account of the brand's founding. The company's own site claims aging in Tennessee American oak for at least part of its portfolio, a detail confirmed separately by a CB Insights company profile. Beyond that, verifiable financial or ownership detail is thin. We found no SEC filing, acquisition record, or third party production audit tied to the brand.
Purity claims and our database
Black Sheep markets itself as verified pure and kosher certified, and the company's retail listings describe the tequila as the purest in the world. We have not independently verified either the kosher certification or any verified pure claim through a lab test or third party audit, and Black Sheep does not currently appear in our bottle database. That means no blind score and no Verified Pure or Unverified designation from us at this time. Given the brand's growing marketing footprint, it is a candidate for future blind evaluation.
What we are watching
We are watching whether SFWSC or The Tasting Alliance publishes a searchable, dated results archive that lets outside reporters confirm medal claims without relying on brand press releases. We are watching the gap between the 2025 competition date and the 2026 release date on this announcement, and whether Black Sheep clarifies the discrepancy. We are watching whether Black Sheep discloses a NOM number or distillery of record, which would allow us to place its production within Jalisco's known distilling infrastructure. And we are watching whether the brand submits a sample for independent, unaffiliated blind tasting, the only way its purity and quality claims move from marketing copy to a verified score.