Bertha González Nieves remembers the moment tequila stopped being simply a drink and became a future.

While at university, she was selected for a cultural program sponsored by the Japanese government to represent Mexico. Preparing for the experience took her to Tequila, Jalisco, where something clicked. She called her parents almost immediately.

“I know what I want to do with my life,” she told them.

More than a decade in the tequila industry followed. Then came the bigger leap: González Nieves and Bob Pittman co-founded Casa Dragones with an ambitious question in mind. What could tequila become if it were approached with the same consideration as the world’s great sipping spirits?

The answer would become Casa Dragones Joven, and eventually a brand that helped present a distinctly contemporary vision of Mexican craftsmanship and luxury to the world.

For González Nieves, now co-founder and CEO, the goal was never simply to make another tequila.

“We started with a blank sheet of paper,” she says. “From the start, our purpose has been not simply to make tequila, but to help expand the possibilities of the category and the way people experience it around the world.”

Leadership Has No Gender

González Nieves also became the first Mexican woman certified as a Maestra Tequilera, a distinction that inevitably made her a reference point for women entering an industry historically dominated by men.

But she is careful about how she defines the achievement.

“Leadership has no gender. It is about preparation, excellence and results.”

What excites her today is not being the exception, but seeing that landscape change. More women now occupy leadership positions across the industry, bringing new perspectives and setting examples for those coming next.

Her philosophy is straightforward: do the work, support others, and create opportunities.

Passion. Determination. Naïveté.

Ask González Nieves to describe entrepreneurship in three words and her answer comes quickly: “Passion. Determination. Naïveté.”

The last one might be the most interesting.

Despite entering entrepreneurship with more than a decade of industry experience, founding Casa Dragones made her realize how much she still had to learn.

“You think that experience means you understand the business. Then you become an entrepreneur and suddenly you are starting again with a blank sheet of paper. It is incredibly humbling.”

She now considers a certain degree of naïveté essential. Know every obstacle in advance, she argues, and you might never start at all.

That curiosity continues to shape how she works. Her advice for anyone hoping to enter luxury is to find something that genuinely fascinates them and become an expert in it.

“Luxury requires extraordinary attention to detail, and you cannot fake that level of commitment.”

And then, patience.

“Building something with meaning takes time.”

Casa Dragones and a New Idea of Mexican Luxury

The concept of luxury comes up repeatedly when González Nieves talks about Casa Dragones, but rarely in the traditional language of status or exclusivity.

“For me, true luxury is about intention, craftsmanship and the human touch.”

Every bottle of Casa Dragones Joven is individually engraved, labeled, signed, and numbered by hand. But craftsmanship is only one part of her definition. She believes contemporary luxury also has to consider how something is produced, which is why sustainability and innovation have become central to the company’s approach.

More broadly, she sees consumers moving away from luxury as a demonstration of status and toward something more personal.

“People are increasingly curious. They want to understand who made something, where it comes from, how it was created and the story behind it.”

For Mexico, she sees enormous possibility in that shift. The country’s traditions of craftsmanship, creativity, and innovation offer a different language for luxury, one grounded in provenance and culture but not confined by the past.

It is also central to what Casa Dragones has attempted to build: an expression of Mexican luxury that can sit confidently on the international stage while remaining unmistakably connected to where it comes from.

The Greatest Luxury Is Time

Perhaps surprisingly, González Nieves’s own favorite extravagance has nothing to do with something she can buy.

It is time.

“When you’re an entrepreneur, your calendar can very easily belong to everyone else.”

Given a little of it back, she wants to travel somewhere simply out of curiosity, discover a restaurant, see an exhibition, walk through a city, or sit through a very long meal with people she loves.

In New York, where both her life and the Casa Dragones story have deep roots, that might mean dinner at Cosme, a favorite for its contemporary expression of Mexican cuisine, or returning to the places she loves for their hospitality, design, and sense of community.

The same philosophy applies to tequila.

Her perfect way to drink Casa Dragones?

“Slowly, and preferably with great company.”

No elaborate ritual required. Just good food, conversation, people worth sitting with, and enough time to actually enjoy all of it.

After years spent expanding the possibilities of what tequila can be, perhaps that is González Nieves’s most compelling definition of luxury: not having more, but having the freedom to pay attention.