BLACK OWNED TEQUILA BRAND HAS LOCAL ROOTS

Uduimoh Umola is the co-founder of Jon Basil Tequila. He founded the spirits brand with partner Bellal Taher in 2018. Photos provided by Chantelle Zuniga
Uduimoh Umola is the co-founder of Jon Basil Tequila. He founded the spirits brand with partner Bellal Taher in 2018. Photos provided by Chantelle Zuniga

 Black owned tequila brand has local roots

BY TIA CAROL JONES

Uduimoh Umolu is the Chicagoan behind the tequila brand Jon Basil, which pays
homage to his grandfather and the man who was instrumental in making Umolu’s father dream is coming to the United States possible.

Umolu wanted to jump into the spirits space. He understands the importance of
brand building and ownership. He has been working in the music space and event space. He started to realize the cultural capital. With the rise of social media in 2014-2015, Umolu and his partner Belall Taher started working on the tequila. Social media allowed Umolu and Taher to connect with the community directly.

Tequila has always been Umolu’s drink of choice. Because tequila comes from 100%
pure agave, it is one of the cleanest spirits someone can drink. There is a cultural, traditional and artistry that goes into crafting tequila.

“It was always tequila for us, we never wavered on that. If we start a spirit it would
be tequila,” he said.

So, Umola and Taher went down to Mexico. At the time they started Jon Basil, there were very few privately owned tequila brands in the U.S. market and even less
owned by people of color.

Umola and Taher were 22 and 23 years old when they went to Mexico. They really
did their homework, taking a lot of time to do research. They were able to learn from
an established, well-known distiller in Mexico, Felipe Camarena, who taught them
about the process, craft and tradition of distilling tequila.

As they learned and people realized they knew what they were talking about, they
made more headway into the space.

“We had to kind of prove ourselves and that took time. Knowing what we know now, it probably could’ve done it a lot quicker. But, back then, it took us about
four years before we were able to really launch our product,” he said.

Umola describes the process as interesting but wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Having Black people founding spirit companies has started to progress in
recent years. Umola wants more transparency in the spirits space. He points out
that there are about seven major family brands that own smaller brands. Being
outside of that it is extremely difficult to make headway, with the way the spirits
industry is regulated.

“Just in general, to be an independent spirit is already kind of crazy, but then to
be Black and building it and to be in your 20’s, it just makes a lot of things more
difficult, but we tried to use that to our advantage,” he said.

Umola knew once they proved themselves, launched the brand and were able to
connect with consumers, those consumers would feel the authenticity. He says the
authenticity is something that cannot be replicated. He adds, “understanding who
you’re connecting with is different when you’re actually part of the community
you’re connecting with.”

Once Jon Basil made it to market, Umola started with one or two stores, which included Kimbark Beverage. Umola met Kimbark owner Jonathan Swain from working
events in the community as a multicultural marketer for Jack Daniels. Taher’s family
has owned Matteson Wine & Spirits for more than 15 years, and the store started to
carry Jon Basil.

As Jon Basil started to grow, Umola and Taher pulled from their network. They got
the opportunity to sit down with Binny’s Beverage Depot. Jon Basil sold out the first
weekend it was in the stores. It opened up the door to more Binny’s locations.

Umola’s advice to other entrepreneurs who want to enter the spirit space: Take the
time to get the right education. He went to go work for spirits companies to see what
they were doing and who was doing it right. He wanted to understand how consumers
engaged with the products. The other thing is to have perseverance. Before Jon Basil
went to market, it failed.

“That’s why we always say, ‘keep dreaming forward,’ because you really just have
to have that perseverance and if you know every failure, every hurdle, or every door
that closed on your journey, if you understand that’s just something you have to get
through, as opposed to giving up, eventually you’ll get to a point where your idea
or your concept for your brand, or your product, or your spirit is realized. Once that
dream is realized from there, it’s just keep going, keep putting one foot in front of the
other,” he said.

For more information, visit jonbasil.com.

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