Former test wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist has swapped the commentary box for the bottle shop hustle as he launches his new tequila, El Arquero – “The Keeper”.
It’s come to this. Cricket great Adam Gilchrist has been reduced to walking the streets with a bag full of tequila bottles.
“I’ve finally realised my lifelong dream of becoming a sales rep,” Gilchrist tells Forbes Australia.
In a world where many celebrities just slap their name on a bottle of booze or perfume, Gilchrist was determined to take the grittier path: founding, funding and selling his own tequila brand with a group of friends. And even “dragging the bag” around independent retailers.
That brand, El Arquero, has soft launched in recent weeks. But its genesis goes back almost 30 years.
Gilchrist admits to having been turned off tequila by a “bad experience” as a young man. But as his star was rising in the mid-90s, his then new manager, Stephen “Axe” Atkinson, put him onto a Patron Silver and he’s been a devotee ever since.
“About three years ago, having been threatening, jokingly, that I’d do a label one day, [wife] Mel said to me, ‘Are you going to have a go at this or not?’ And I said, ‘That sounds like a green light,’ and asked her if she would be involved with me.”
He got manager Atkinson, a lawyer by trade, on board as a shareholder, plus his best mate from school, accountant John Eastham [with whom he’d shared some of those “bad experiences” on tequila]. But they needed drinks industry expertise.
“I was doing my podcast with [former England captain] Michael Vaughan. It was a light-hearted cricket podcast. But my main objective was to tell the world how much I love tequila and that I’d love to do a label. And if there’s anyone out there, please get in touch.”
As it turned out, the brother-in-law of somebody associated with the podcast played golf with Eddie Brook from Cape Byron Distillery. He mentioned Gilchrist’s call out. Brook had been talking to Dan Fitzgerald from Fourth Wave Wine about maybe going into a new spirit.
“The big joke has been, will I be mentioning El Arquero in the first delivery of the Ashes this summer?”
Adam Gilchrist
Fitzgerald was about to head to Mexico. “I was thinking about trying to make an Australian rum brand that could be as good as what comes out of the Bahamas,” Fitzgerald tells Forbes Australia. “Then this tequila opportunity came up.”
Their first meeting was at the Cape Byron Distillery in early 2024.
Gilchrist had the name, El Arquero, which means “archer” in Spanish but which also translates as “goalkeeper”. They loved the name. Not so much the logo he’d roughed up. But they found plenty of common ground.
“We all wanted to do it in Mexico, authentically produced, with all the history and heritage,” says Gilchrist. “It had to be additive free, which is a really interesting space in the tequila category at the moment. There’s big class actions [against Michael Jordan’s Concoro, and Diageo’s Casamigos and Don Julio] about it not being 100% Blue Weber Agave as advertised.
“We spoke a lot about other tequila brands,” says Gilchrist. “Whether we see them as successful, not just in taste but also marketing, branding, and style of business.”
Fitzgerald had engaged a consultancy, Tequila Partners, in Guadalajara, Mexico, to curate a meet-and-greet tour of the major tequila-producing state, Jalisco.
They met eight distillers ranging from the very large to small. One was run by the Banuelos family in the town of Arandas. They entered a humble set up, behind a big wall that looked almost like a home before going through the back into the large distillation area.
They heard the story of the Banuelos family and their three generations in the business how they sold the Cazadores brand to Bacardi in 2002; how they were the biggest employer in the town; how they built the school.
“It was probably the humility of it. It was the quality of liquid in the glass that we tried. It was knowing that they produced three other labels who, like us, create their own recipe in partnership with the distiller and own that IP [intellectual property].
“One of them is a brand called Mijenta, which is a high quality tequila that we love … So that’s where we landed.”
Knowing how much to order was “like throwing a dart at a dart board,” says Gilchrist. “We’ve already ordered more than what we thought we might have initially because of the way we’ve been received in market.
“We produced about 50,000 glass bottles. They’re not all full yet. But we’ve had 15 or so pallets arrive already. We’ve got another container on the ocean at the moment.
“What I’m learning very quickly is the first challenge is getting it onto a shelf or in a bar, but then the real challenge is helping move it off and get another bottle put on there, working in partnership with a distributor, with a retail outlet, with a bar owner, just working together to move the stock and get it on people’s lips.”
El Arquero is soft launching over the next few weeks and should be available in independents and Dan Murphy’s. It will be in 1,200 outlets by the end of October, says Fitzgerald.
They hope to move 60,000 to 70,000 bottles in the first year, says Fitzgerald. “With our whole go-to-market strategy, we’re going be making a lot of noise in the next three months … We feel we’re going to do this in a way that’s far better than any other tequila brand has done in Australia before us.”
Dragging the bag
And then they’ve got the cricket superstar out dragging the bag “big time”. “I’ve finally realised my lifelong dream, at nearly 54 years of age, of walking the pavement with two bottles of product that no one’s ever seen,” says Gilchrist.
“I’ve turned into a sales rep and I’ve loved every bit of it. It’s been fascinating to meet the family groups of publicans and independent bottle shop owners who might have one store or 20 stores.”
Gilchrist, who was headed towards becoming a PE teacher before his cricket career took off, has never had his own business. He is a silent partner in former AFL player Matthew Pavlich’s business PickStar, and has been endorsing products for almost 30 years.
“I tongue in cheek say I’m finally a sales rep, but I’ve loved it because it’s my … it’s our brand, it’s our passion. I’m not a brand ambassador who’s been brought in to help flog this, I’m major shareholder and founder of this business. So I’ve got no drama going out there and talking to anyone who wants to listen, really.”
He’s already been travelling the country doing the rounds but says the cricket season will only make him more ubiquitous. “I’m going to be in a lot of places, via my Fox cricket commentary, so that can lean into helping engage with people and introduce them to the product.
“The big joke has been, will I be mentioning El Arquero in the first delivery of the Ashes this summer? El Arquero translates loosely to the keeper. So [Australian wicket-keeper] Alex Carey might get called that a few times through the summer. ‘Whoops, did I do it again?’”
Gilchrist declines to put a dollar figure on how much it’s cost the investors to get this far, but says the number has been rising constantly as they’ve met with greater demand than expected.
“People have been so interested in the story. I’m not a salesperson, but I’ve just loved meeting the people and talking to them.
“In a world where alcohol consumption seems to be dipping and that health conscious mindset is being factored in, tequila seems to be bucking the trend. I think that’s a lot to do with how clean and pure it is. Ours is agave juice, yeast and water.
“Then when we get them to taste it, we’ve not had anyone say no. That’s such a thrill.
“It’s a real passion project … and one of our lines at the forefront of our marketing is that ‘we’re all in this tequila’. That’s what it feels like.”
