M Cantina, a Mexican restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan, holds a Guinness World Records title for the most varieties of commercially available agave spirits offered at a restaurant anywhere in the world. WXYZ Detroit and The Detroit News reported that Guinness adjudicators certified the count on June 10, 2025, after chef and owner Junior Merino spent years building the list.
The tally that earned the title: 1,825 distinct bottles of 100 percent agave spirits, a category that spans tequila, mezcal, raicilla, bacanora and sotol, not tequila alone. That figure surpassed the previous record of 1,033 bottles, set the year before by Meximodo, a restaurant in Metuchen, New Jersey.
The Count, Step by Step
The record has moved fast. Before Meximodo's run, the informal benchmark sat closer to 500 bottles, held by Mama Rabbit Bar in Las Vegas and Mezcalito Chelsea in London, both of which had hit that mark by 2019, according to The Drinks Business. Meximodo cleared that bar in 2024 with what its own count put at 1,033 bottles of tequila, mezcal and other agave spirits. M Cantina's total is nearly 800 bottles more than that prior record, a jump that outlets covering the certification, including Yahoo News, attributed directly to Merino's collection.
Who Built the List
Merino, known professionally as the Liquid Chef, has been recognized by the Mexican government as an ambassador for the country's gastronomy and beverage culture, and he has said he sourced much of the collection directly from small, artisanal producers during repeated trips through Mexico. The Guinness adjudicator on site, Chloe McCarthy, described the bottles as high quality and authentic after personally confirming each one was commercially available for purchase, the standard Guinness requires for this category. Confirming availability is a logistics exercise, not a tasting panel, and Guinness does not rate what is inside any bottle.
What 100 Percent Agave Does Not Guarantee
Coverage of M Cantina's list has named specific labels on the shelf, including Patrón, Herradura and Casa Dragones, along with celebrity brands such as Kendall Jenner's 818 Blanco. That roster overlaps with our own database in ways worth flagging for buyers. Patrón Silver and Herradura Silver both carry Unverified purity status in our blind scoring, meaning we have not confirmed the absence of additives permitted under Mexican tequila standards even in 100 percent agave product. 818 Blanco, by contrast, scored 81 with Verified Pure status in our testing. The distinction matters because a restaurant's headline number, 1,825 bottles of 100 percent agave, describes agave content, not additive disclosure. Those are separate claims, and trade coverage of the record has largely conflated the two. We have not blind scored the rarer, higher priced pours reported on M Cantina's list, including a gold jaguar shaped bottling that retails near 235 dollars and a limited Fortaleza Winter Blend reposado priced around 600 dollars a bottle. Fortaleza's standard blanco, reposado and añejo expressions all carry Verified Pure status in our database at scores of 95, 93 and 92 respectively, but a limited barrel finish is a distinct product we have not independently tasted.
What We Are Watching
Whether Meximodo or another operator files a new Guinness challenge, given how quickly the title has changed hands twice in two years. Whether M Cantina publishes a full, itemized bottle list that outside reviewers or publications like ours could cross reference against purity and NOM data. Whether future coverage of record setting bottle counts continues to use 100 percent agave language in ways readers might mistake for an additive claim. And whether any of the boutique or limited edition bottlings singled out in coverage of the collection eventually turn up on tasting panels, ours included, since a large list is a claim about breadth, not a claim about what any single bottle contains.