Richard Betts, co-founder and co-CEO of Casa Komos Brands Group, told trade outlet Global Drinks Intel that Tequila Komos is broadening its agave-waste recycling program into a multi-producer alliance called Tierra en Común, which now counts more than 50 members.
The interview, part of Global Drinks Intel's recurring Sustainability Matters series, covers the origins of the company's waste-to-brick program, its 2024 industry award, and Betts's views on greenwashing in the drinks trade. It follows a string of sustainability announcements from the ultra-luxury tequila brand since 2019.
What Tierra en Común Does
Betts described the expansion to Global Drinks Intel as broadening the company's initiative from the Komos Foundation into a larger alliance called Tierra en Común, bringing together multiple producers to tackle the industry waste problem, he said, adding the group already has more than 50 members. The alliance builds on the Komos Foundation, a not-for-profit that Tequila Komos created alongside its distillery partners to convert tequila production byproduct into adobe bricks used for local construction. The foundation, launched in 2019 alongside the Tequila Komos brand, takes bagazo, the cooked and pulped agave fiber left after distillation, and vinaza, the liquid waste byproduct, and turns both into building material. In November 2024 the foundation opened its first structure built from that material, a schoolhouse in Amatitán, Jalisco, with additional classrooms planned for 2025, according to a company announcement carried by Business Wire. Separately, in November 2023 Tequila Komos began working with Jalisco-based Green Loop to source shipping pallets made of 70% agave fiber and 30% wood from managed forests, a packaging change the companies said recycles more than 80 tons of agave fiber for every 1,000 pallets produced and cuts logging tied to standard wood pallets by 30% to 70%.
Richard Betts' Path to Tequila Komos
Betts built his reputation in wine before moving into agave spirits. He passed the Court of Master Sommeliers' Master Sommelier exam in 2003, becoming the ninth person to do so on a first attempt, and worked as wine director at The Little Nell in Aspen from 2000 to 2008. He went on to found and exit the spirits brands Sombra Mezcal and Astral Tequila, along with the wine ventures Betts & Scholl and Scarpetta. According to the Komos Foundation's own account, Betts first developed the agave-waste-to-adobe-brick process in Oaxaca in the early 2000s during his work on Sombra Mezcal, years before Tequila Komos existed. Betts and Joe Marchese founded Casa Komos Brands Group in the spring of 2019 to build what the company calls one-of-a-kind hospitality brands; the portfolio now spans Tequila Komos, the ready-to-drink line Superbird, the aperitivo Doladira and a hot sauce brand called Stuzzi. Komos itself is marketed by the company as the fastest-growing ultra-luxury tequila in the world, a characterization made in the company's own press materials rather than by an independent market tracker.
What Betts Said About Greenwashing and ESG
Global Drinks Intel noted that Tequila Komos won Waste Reduction Achievement of the Year at the outlet's inaugural ESG Awards in 2024. Asked how the award changed his approach, Betts said the recognition lent credibility to the company's efforts and made people take the brand more seriously. On the industry's broader ESG challenge, he reframed waste as opportunity rather than burden, telling the outlet that repurposing industry waste doubles as a way to reach consumers who want reassurance about the choices they are making. His advice to other companies on ESG was blunt: "Make it real, make it impactful, and stick with it." He also addressed greenwashing directly, calling it a problem that obligates people to act in a genuinely substantive way rather than in messaging alone.
What this means
The interview is a company update delivered through a trade outlet rather than an independently audited disclosure: the 50-plus member count for Tierra en Común, the classroom construction pace and the packaging figures all trace back to Komos or its partners, not a third party. Komos Añejo Cristalino, one of six expressions in the current lineup, carries a TW Score of 65 of 95 in this publication's database and no organic certification is on record for it. Whether Tierra en Común publishes independent membership or waste-diversion data as it grows is worth watching.