Cristalino tequila is aged tequila, reposado or añejo, that has been filtered (usually through activated charcoal) to strip the colour back out while keeping the barrel flavour in. The result is a clear spirit that drinks like an amber one: smooth, oaky, faintly sweet, and built for sipping neat rather than shooting. It is the fastest-growing corner of a category that has spent the decade quietly taking over the British back bar.

Pour it for a friend without showing them the bottle and watch the confusion settle in. It looks like a blanco, all crystal clarity and cool restraint, the sort of thing you expect to meet in a margarita. Then it tastes like something that has spent a year or two in oak: vanilla, toffee, a whisper of cinnamon. Clear on the eye, aged on the tongue. That small act of sabotage is the whole appeal, and it is why cristalino has gone from curiosity to the bottle everyone suddenly wants.

So what is cristalino tequila, exactly?

Start with a good reposado or añejo: tequila that has rested in oak long enough to take on colour and sweetness. Then run it through activated charcoal, the same kind of filtration that polishes a vodka to clarity. The charcoal lifts out the amber and much of the tannic grip while leaving the softer barrel notes behind, so you end up with a spirit that looks unaged and tastes anything but. It is a style the industry invented faster than the rulebook could keep up with, which is half the reason purists have spent years arguing about whether it counts as cheating.

Why is everyone suddenly drinking it?

Because tequila is on an extraordinary run, and cristalino is where the run is heading next. Agave spirits have been the drinks world's great success story of the past decade, and Britain has caught the bug properly: tequila is no longer the stuff of student shots and lime wedges but a considered, sip-it-slowly category with a growing shelf in every serious merchant. Casa Dragones proved people would happily pay Cognac money for a beautiful blanco. Cristalino is the next logical step: the bottle that lets a tequila drinker have the smoothness of something aged without the weight, and lets a whisky or Cognac drinker cross the border without feeling they have left home.

Is it actually worth it?

Mostly, yes, with one caveat: you are paying for an extra step, so it only earns its keep if you drink it the way it wants to be drunk. Buried under triple sec and lime in a margarita, the delicacy you paid for simply vanishes, and a good blanco would have done the job for less. Poured neat into a small glass, a touch below room temperature, it makes complete sense: the texture is silk, the oak sits politely in the background, and the finish is long and gently sweet. The best of them, and Volcán de Mi Tierra makes the clearest case, taste expensive in the quiet, confident way a very good aged rum does.

If you are starting out, start with the Volcán Cristalino at £69.99. It is the bottle that converted most of the sceptics, a highland-and-lowland blend filtered to a bright clarity that still carries proper cooked-agave sweetness and a dusting of oak. When you want the house at full stretch, the Volcán XA at £159.99 is the grown-up in the room: Xtra Assemblage, a marriage of reposado, añejo and extra añejo that trades clarity for depth and rewards an unhurried evening. One to learn on, one to show off with.

Whichever you reach for, treat it like the aged spirit it secretly is. This is not a bottle to drown.

How should you drink it?

Neat, in a small glass, and a few degrees below room temperature so the texture firms up without turning numb. No ice if you can help it, or a single large cube if you must. Skip the salt and the lime entirely; that ritual belongs to a different, cheaper bottle. If you want a longer drink, the kindest thing you can do is top a measure with good soda and a twist of grapefruit, nothing more. Treat it the way you would a fine vodka or a soft añejo: the pleasure is in the quiet, so give it room to be heard.

If you remember one thing

Cristalino is aged tequila that decided to dress in white. You are buying the smoothness of the barrel without the colour, and the only way to taste what you paid for is to pour it neat and slow. Grasp that, and the same logic that governs age statements on a bottle of Cognac suddenly reads clearly across the agave shelf too. It also makes a quietly striking gift: a clear bottle that drinks like a dark one is a genuinely good surprise to unwrap. The dance floor can keep its shots. This one is for the sofa, the good glass, and the long evening.