The Drink Maven: Maria Jose Lehman

“Tequila Ambassador” is more than just the job you dreamed of in college.

Maybe the most unique business card in the state is María José Lehman’s; it reads “Tequila Ambassador.” It’s a title she pitched four years ago a bit in jest, but if you’ve ever met Lehman it’s no surprise that she got both the job and the title.

Educating the hospitality market about the spirits produced from the blue agave plant is, in fact, not her first career. Like many women who reinvent their occupations, Lehman’s second act feels fantastical in nature—though in reality she criss-crosses the state tirelessly, introducing restaurants and retailers to a premium category of tequilas for Breakthrough Beverage Group, one of the nation’s largest distributors of wine and spirits. On any given workday she extols the intricacies of about a dozen labels or “families” of tequila.

Lehman moved to Miami from Nicaragua as a young teen and to Greenville at the age of 21, became a successful financial advisor and immersed herself in the fabric of community. In 2004, an autoimmune disorder sidelined the executive, much to her disappointment. “I thought my career was over,” she says. “I didn’t understand a picture of myself professionally as anything but as a financial advisor. I didn’t think I’d work ever again, but my mind never stopped.”

Having missed the technology boom, Lehman felt inadequate to reenter the workforce—but as her health improved, she opened her heart to new opportunities, relying on something that had served her in the financial sector: an inclination to network. “I’m a natural connector—above all else I know that,” she says. “I love to connect people, and a friend-of-a-friend had a tequila company who needed a distributor. I’ve never chosen what I want to do; I find that funny, but the key to life is to show up and things happen.”

While helping to locate a distributor in the southeast, Lehman found herself included in an intense training course on tequila, learning everything she could about an industry foreign to her. Then, at an event at Larkin’s On The River, she made a connection that eventually led to her role today as the Tequila Ambassador.

It is an industry she loves. Lehman recalls working at a restaurant in college, an experience that stayed with her long after the part-time job ended. “There’s not a better place to learn about emotional intelligence than with restaurant and beverage people,” she says. “It’s a beautiful career to participate in the special moments in someone’s life because people don’t go out to eat everyday. You get to be privy to their celebrations. You have the ability to contribute to people’s happiness and I’m dazzled by it.”

She’s equally enamored with the production of tequila and has become a level-2 certified catador, a designation similar to that of an accomplished sommelier. She believes the essence of tequila is comprised of three things: labor, family tradition and legend. “It is passion, it is craft and it’s hands that pass down the ability to make it from one generation to the next,” she says.

Nearly every step to produce tequila from the blue agave plant happens by hand. Experts called el jimadors, who know exactly when to cut a ripe agave by eye alone, shave pencas away from the heart of the large succulent. The length of the penca contributes to the 600 aromas of tequila— more aromas than scotch or wine. If you cut an agave too young, Lehman explains, the tequila will be herbal with less sugar to render. “Everything you do to the recipe for tequila is the same,” she says, “but every single detail from planting to harvesting to shaving to shredding to cooking will change the juice in the glass.”

As the market for premium tequila continues to grow, Lehman believes consumers will begin to disassociate its party shot reputation and hopes she’s impacted what diners have access to in the South Carolina market. So what’s next for South Carolina’s Tequila Ambassador? She’s going back to Mexico in November to sit for her level-3 catador, deepening her knowledge at the source. “Tequila is from the earth. It’s a totally natural product,” Lehman explains. “If all the blue agave were cut today it would take 7-10 years to make another drop. It’s a magical plant. We think the agave plant goes back 11 million years, so it had to survive everything.” She considers, “It’s a survivor spirit.” Just like its ambassador.