Importing the Family Stash|CaliFino Tequila (DH 029) - a podcast by Shawn Walchef

Miguel Luna was known by soccer fans as a clutch scorer who brought four championships to the San Diego Sockers. Miguel was also known as the guy who brought his teammates really good tequila.



“I started bringing plastic water bottles with tequila to the locker room on gameday in 2010,” reflects Miguel Luna on his championship playing days with the San Diego Sockers on the Digital Hospitality podcast.“When we were done with the games we’d celebrate with a quick shot.”
That tequila in the plastic water bottles didn’t have a name in 2010.It does in 2020.

The Story of CaliFino Tequila:CaliFino Tequila, a family company in the truest sense, may be to the San Diego Sockers what Gatorade is to the Florida Gators.

“I introduced the team to the tequila very early on,” remembers Miguel. “Everyone wanted a bottle! I couldn’t even get a bottle myself, I had to ask my dad for some from the family stash. That’s kind of how it started.”That family stash is located in Arandas, Jalisco, Mexico where CaliFino existed amongst the Lunas before it ever existed as a business.



“I come from a Mexican background, both my mom and dad were born and grew up in Mexico,” notes Miguel. “We have a close family tie with the town the where tequila is made in.”How close? Generations deep.

“Back in the ‘70s, my grandfather used to hang out at these tequila distilleries on a regular basis. He became close friends with the Gonzales family who is now the tequila distillery we work with,” as Miguel tells it.Getting close to the families had to come with great perks like a special discount, right? Nope, even better.

“He wasn’t getting the tequilas that were being marketed and sold, he was getting their family batch that wasn’t for sale. He’d get these special batches and that’s kind of how it got going.”As the story goes, Miguel’s grandfather – Don Jose Luna – would be privileged to all the best moonshine style tequila the family had. Over the years, Don’s taste got so good that he shared the best batches of tequila with his own family and friends.

By the early 2000s, that tequila would make it to members of the Luna family in Southern California.“Everything San Diego is very close to me,” notes Miguel, foreshadowing a rich future that stems from a storied past.

Growing up a huge soccer fan and pretty talented player himself, Miguel was an avid supporter of the hometown San Diego Sockers pro soccer club. By the time he was old enough to leave the house, he went on to play soccer at the University of Portland.By the time he was one semester in, he realized how much he missed home.

Following his college career in the Pacific Northwest, he was back home in San Diego with soccer seemingly in the rearview. In short order, that would change.“Around 2008 is when I got to meet Phil Salvagio,” says Miguel of the local soccer star he watched as a kid. “He was tinkering with the idea of bringing the Sockers back.”

Think about it: can you imagine meeting a pro athlete you looked up to as a kid and them telling you as a young adult they wanted to bring back the team?Wilder yet, what if that childhood hero said they wanted to have you on it?

Like many future business propositions between Phil and Miguel, the idea would be met with laughter. How could this be true?“I grew up watching the Sockers at the Sports Arena in the ‘80s so I knew what that franchise meant,” Miguel says looking back at that fateful meeting. “It seemed a little far-fetched, but me and Phil got to know each other on a player/coach relationship first and then we became great friends.”
Phil, no longer a player but now both owner and coach of the Sockers, had just secured a piece of local talent to bring the club back and eventually bring even more success to the both of them.“When Phil brought it back it was purely for the love of the game, he wanted to bring indoor soccer back to San Diego.”

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