Olmeca Altos Tequila’s Jesús Hernández is in Australia this week, running a series of tequila masterclasses and presiding over tonight’s Australian final of the Tahona Society Cocktail Competition at El Loco in Sydney’s Surry Hills.

The maestro tequilero – or master distiller – conducted his first Australian masterclass at Sydney’s prohibition-themed Palmer & Co. on Monday, running a small group of bartenders and alcoholic journalists through the tequila-making process from harvest to final bottling, as well as conducting a guided tasting of the label’s offerings. The tasting marked the first time a bottle of Olmeca Altos Añejo has been opened in Australia.

Contestants in tonight’s competition will be required make cocktails that highlight the brand’s tequilas and are competing for the chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to Jalisco, Mexico – the spirit’s spiritual home – where they will represent Australia in the international final. The winner there will become a Tahona Society global ambassador for a year.

Daniel Gregory from The Apo in Brisbane, Nick Selvadurai from The Ugly Duckling in Melbourne and Alex Gilmore from Tio’s Cerveceria in Sydney are in the running.

Hernández urged his Sydney audience to treat tequila less something to be shot and endured – he seemed saddened but unsurprised to learn that most Australians’ knowledge of the distillate remains limited to slammers and the lick-sip-suck method – but rather as a complex, versatile spirit that can be used to make a surprising array of cocktails or even sipped on its own like a whisky.

He also spoke about the snows that blanketed Jalisco earlier this year and the effect they will have on state’s blue agave crop and about the threat posed to uncultivated, wild agave by the growing popularity of tequila’s uncouth, brawling cousin mezcal.

Olmeca Altos Tequila was founded in 2009 when London bartenders Dre Masso and Henry Besant partnered with Hernández to create a 100 per cent agave tequila – as opposed to the category of tequilas that are legally allowed to contain 49 per cent non-agave sugars– at an affordable price. A champion of traditional techniques, Hernández oversees a labour-intensive process that includes harvesting and trimming the agave plants, not with machine assistance, but with razor-sharp, hoe-like tools called coas; slow cooking the results for up to three days in a brick oven; and crushing the now-cooked agave with a two-tonne volcanic stone wheel. With most large-scale producers opting for a more efficient roller mill system, Olmeca Altos remains one of only a few distilleries to employ the method, which dates back to the Aztecs and is quite literally ancient. You don’t get much more artisanal than that.

In addition to judging the Australian final of the Tahona Society competition tonight, Hernández will present masterclasses in Melbourne tomorrow and Brisbane on Thursday.