This is the South. This is where you make bourbon. Right? Not if you’re Toriano Banks and Ralf Golden. You make tequila.
Banks, 47, and his business partner, Golden, 37, are founders of Disbelef Tequila. Banks came up with the idea when he worked in nightclubs. “Being in the industry, I saw that tequila was being sold in abundance,” he says.
Banks, who also has his own clothing line, Baseball Rich, and owned a record label, Toriano Entertainment, saw where George Clooney sold his Casamigos tequila company for $1 billion. “That lit a fire up under us.”
In 2017, Banks went to Mexico, where he met Jose Villanueva, who works at a distillery in Jalisco. “First thing he told me was I need to get a license,” Banks says, “but I didn’t know tequila could only be made in Mexico at that time. That killed the idea almost.”
Villanueva said Banks could make the tequila in Mexico and ship it to Memphis. “I did studies on what was selling and what wasn’t. I studied market prices and things of that nature.” He decided to go with a clear “blanco” and an almost-gold “reposado.” The color “comes with the aging.”
Bottles were expensive in the United States, so Banks told Golden, “Let’s go to China and find somebody who can make bottles for cheap.” That meant another trip to his bank. “I realized we were in over our heads. We made 100,000 bottles at the beginning.”
Meanwhile, they tasted various tequilas, which their distiller shipped to Memphis. Banks didn’t want theirs to have the “burnt” or “harsh” taste associated with other tequilas. He wanted something people could drink in a cocktail or straight.
Disbelef was the perfect name. “You drink it, and you’ll be in disbelief: [You’ll think,]‘This is not tequila,’ but it really is.”
When their tequila was ready, Banks and Golden shipped the bottles from China to Mexico by sea. “It’s cheaper that way. So now you get to Mexico, you have to have someone pick up these bottles from the dock and take these bottles to the distiller to be filled.”
Banks then had to find a distributor, but he couldn’t get a meeting with any local distributors. So he eventually got his own distribution import license.
Then came the pandemic. His other businesses were suffering. “Money was stressed. We got all this tequila and money tied up. Bank loans to pay.”
Majestic Wine and Liquor was the first liquor store to handle Disbelef tequila. It was a hit. “We sold maybe 1,000 bottles the first day.” But Banks says, “We were missing one number in our license. So we couldn’t sell from October 6th all the way up to December 9th.”
They eventually got everything cleared up. “We were back rolling. Since then, Disbelef tequila sits on the shelves in over 100 establishments throughout the state of Tennessee.”
Most people probably would have given up at some point, but Banks says, “I am a very driven person. Outside of the Lord waking me up in the morning, I push myself. It’s hard to tell myself I’m going to do something and not accomplish it.”
And, he says, it doesn’t hurt “having a business partner like Ralf and a strong woman behind me like my wife Synettra Banks. She’s the infrastructure of the company. She does all the paperwork. She’s a partner.”
Future plans? “We are going to have four flavored vodkas in the first quarter of next year.” Why vodka? “Sean Combs is doing very well with Ciroc. People are taking to vodka just as well as tequila, so I want in on that.”
Does Banks take a nip of his tequila every now and then? “We do tastings a lot. So if we’ve had a successful tasting, I may take a shot later that night just to give myself a pat on the back.”
But he says, “The less product I drink, the more money I make.”
Visit disbelefspirits.com for more information.