Ella Cobb
If you’re up to date in the world of liquor — or pop culture — you know that celebrity tequila is so
popular right now. From Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila to Matthew McConaughey’s Pantalones, numerous new brands have been launched or endorsed by influential names in the last several
years. Due to the celebrities’ extensive social media reach, these brands tend to blow up quickly, flying off of liquor store shelves.
As a result, smaller tequila brands — like Boulder’s Suerte Tequila — have recognized the power of a strong celebrity endorsement.
Earlier this year, Suerte began looking for a famed spokesperson to help create buzz about its small-batch, single-distilled añejo and blanco tequilas.
“We tried to get that Austin Butler Guy – not sure if you’ve heard of him, he’s a hot new actor, but he was busy,” said Chuck Porter, marketing advisor at Suerte. “We tried to get Taylor Swift on board, but I guess she has a tour going on right now.
“So we got the next best thing — a rabbit. He doesn’t have a first or last name, but he’s pretty funny.”
While not exactly a household name, the rabbit is the perfect fit to be the voice and face of Suerte. According to legend, rabbits were the first mammals to experience the effects of tequila. Hundreds of years ago, a farmer’s wife noticed a large flock of rabbits bouncing through her fields rather joyfully after sipping the juice from fermented agave plants. Curious, she collected the nectar in jars, brought the liquid into the hacienda, and poured up the first tequila shots.
Without the help of rabbits, tequila may not exist, and without tequila, Suerte would not be in business — so founders Laurence Spiewak and Lawrence Sokol decided to pay homage to the little critters by making one the face of the brand.
“I meet people all the time and tell them that I’m the founder of a tequila brand, and the first thing they say to me is, ‘Oh, well who is your celebrity?’” Spiewak said. “I’ve always told people we don’t have a celebrity — and we don’t necessarily want or need one. So our rabbit is our version of a celebrity.”
The tequila industry, said Spiewack, is saturated with celebrity-affiliated brands, and a bottle attached to a big name doesn’t necessarily equate to a quality product.
Suerte is dedicated to authenticity, which sets its tequila apart. The distillers roast agave in brick ovens, crush them with a traditional tahona wheel in Jalisco, Mexico, and rest the blanco for two months in stainless steel tanks before bottling.
Unlike the dozens of new brands introduced at celebrity soirees, Suerte’s journey began with Spiewak selling the first bottles out of his car trunk in Aspen.
The brand has always embodied this grassroots, devil-may-care, punk-rock approach to tequila-making. It’s the kind of tequila that Tolkien’s Aragorn would drink if he lived in the 21st century — or if he was a real person.
“Really, our rabbit is more of an anti-celebrity,” Spiewak said.
Indeed, Suerte’s rabbit — as portrayed by Boulder-born comedian BK Sharad — is a rough and tumbled Leporidae who wears a denim cutoff vest and a blue bandana tied around one ear, giving the impression that he’s been around the agave patch once or twice before.
For Sharad, now based in Los Angeles, collaborating with Suerte to bring the rabbit to life was an exciting — if somewhat warm — experience.
“Suerte approached me with this idea to portray their rabbit and basically become him,” Sharad said. “The idea was that I would put on the rabbit suit — which was, by the way, really, really hot once I got in it — get onstage and perform some of my jokes as the rabbit. It was such a fun writing exercise, I pretty much had to imagine that I was this kind of burnt-out rabbit that was well along in his comedy career and that cracking jokes onstage was just another Tuesday night for him.”
In one of the short clips posted to Suerte’s Instagram account (@suertetequila), the rabbit cracks a joke about fatherhood: “Man, I drank so much tequila the other night that I had sex (hooked up with?) an antelope.” The camera pans to a shot of a taxidermied jackalope head, and (Sharad) the rabbit continues, “I probably shouldn’t do that joke, because my son’s here tonight.”
“[Sharad] is the perfect person to play the rabbit,” Porter said. “He has these incredible one-liners, and his puns are terrific. He has this way of delivering jokes that are lighthearted and funny, even if he’s talking about something that’s more raunchy or dark. That’s exactly what we were going for with our rabbit. He nailed it.”
Head over to Suerte’s Instagram account to check out the collab.
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