Earlier this year, Elon Musk created the idea of a Tesla-branded tequila, cleverly named Teslaquila, as part of an April Fools’ Day joke. But in 2018, what seems like a joke could become a real, honest-to-goodness thing, and that might be the case here.
Tesla filed a trademark for Teslaquila with the US Patent and Trademark Office earlier this week. The application identifies Teslaquila as either “distilled agave liquor” or “distilled blue agave liquor,” which, yep, that’s tequila. Tesla’s CEO and future former board chairman Elon Musk tweeted out a “visual approximation” of the label, which looks pretty true to form:
Of course, a trademark application doesn’t mean Tesla will actually make and market Teslaquila — it could just be a move to prevent anybody else from doing it. Tesla’s team did not immediately return a request for comment, presumably because they’re busy dealing with things that actually matter in the grand scheme.
Despite Tesla’s insistence on in-housing as much of its operations as humanly possible, I feel like it wouldn’t attempt to establish a distillery for Teslaquila. Rather, the liquor would be white-labeled from another brand, onto which Tesla would affix its own label. It might not permit the same kind of quality control Musk craves, but odds are Teslaquila isn’t going to rise to the level of Reserva de la Familia.
Teslaquila first appeared as part of Elon Musk’s April Fools’ Day joke earlier this year. It was a small bit in a larger “joke” about Tesla claiming bankruptcy, which didn’t exactly sit well with those taking actual financial stakes in the company at the time. Musk kept playing along with the joke, responding to Twitter users’ questions with more Teslaquila quips:
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Coming soon to Tesla merch. Free shots in stores every April 1st.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 1, 2018
We’re on the weirdest timeline.