Whiteout Tequila Blanco Review: The Additive-Free Blanco From Two Penn State Names

Every so often a bottle lands on the review pile with a backstory too good to bury under tasting notes. Whiteout Tequila Blanco is one of them: an additive-free, tahona-crushed blanco made at a respected Jalisco distillery — and founded by two former Penn State football players who grew up on the noise of a stadium White Out. A sample is on its way to us, so consider this the full workup before the pour: who makes it, how it's made, what the category context is, and exactly what we'll be putting it through when it arrives.

Who's behind Whiteout

Whiteout was co-founded by Christian Hackenberg, the former Penn State quarterback and NFL second-round pick, and Michael Mauti, a former Penn State linebacker who went on to a multi-season NFL career. The tagline says it plainly — "Born in Mexico. Raised in Pennsylvania." — and the name lands two ways: it's the brand's shorthand for "that feeling when the noise disappears and the moment is all that's left," and it's a nod any Penn State fan will catch, from the sea of white at Beaver Stadium's famous White Out games. It's a founder story with a real place attached, which is more than most celebrity-adjacent spirits can say.

That Pennsylvania connection isn't just marketing, either. Whiteout landed on the shelves of Fine Wine & Good Spirits, Pennsylvania's state store system, with in-person launch events in State College and Philadelphia — a genuinely hard distribution win for a young, small-batch brand.

What's actually in the bottle

Here's where a brand story earns or loses credibility, and Whiteout's specs hold up:

• 100% Blue Weber Agave — no mixto, no sugar-cane filler.
• NOM 1498 — Casa Armero, in Jalisco. The NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana) number is the distillery fingerprint stamped on every legitimate bottle of tequila; Whiteout's traces to an established producer rather than a mystery contract line.
• Tahona-crushed. The cooked agave is milled with a tahona — a heavy volcanic-stone wheel — the slow, traditional method that a lot of modern high-volume tequila skips in favor of a roller mill.
• Slow-cooked, small-batch, and additive-free — plus vegan and gluten-free (all tequila is naturally gluten-free, but the label makes it explicit).
• Blanco — unaged, bottled at 80 proof (40% ABV). Blanco is the only current expression; a "Blitz" ready-to-drink is listed as coming soon.

Why "additive-free" is the spec that matters

Mexican regulations allow tequila to carry up to 1% additives — glycerin, caramel color, oak extract, sweeteners — without disclosing them on the label. It's legal, it's common, and it's why two "100% agave" bottles can taste wildly different: one is dosed to a crowd-pleasing sweetness, the other shows you the agave. The additive-free movement is the industry's honest-label backlash, and independent databases like Agave Matchmaker track which brands verify it. Whiteout lists itself as additive-free and appears in that third-party registry — exactly the kind of claim we like to see corroborated outside a brand's own website.

For context on why this whole category is worth caring about, see our roundup of the best tequilas of 2026 and the rest of our tequila coverage, where additive-free, tahona-milled blancos keep rising to the top.

The hardware: awards

For a brand this young, the medal cabinet is already respectable. Whiteout Blanco has taken a Gold at the Agavos competition and a Silver at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition — the SFWSC being one of the most established blind-judged spirits contests in the world. Medals aren't gospel, but a silver at SFWSC for an additive-free small-batch blanco is a real, independent signal.

Where to buy it

Whiteout Blanco runs about $50 for a 750ml at the time of writing (prices vary by market). In Pennsylvania it's carried through Fine Wine & Good Spirits; elsewhere the most reliable route is direct from the maker. Whiteouttequila.com has the current lineup and shipping details — and to be clear, that's a plain link to their site, not an affiliate link (more on that below).

First look: what we'll be testing

We don't publish tasting notes we haven't earned, so the scored verdict waits for the bottle. When our sample lands, here's the workup we'll run and update this review with:

• Neat, at room temperature — nose, palate, and finish, scored on our 100-point scale. Whiteout markets a "clean, crisp finish" with "natural sweetness"; a tahona blanco should show cooked-agave, citrus, and mineral notes, and we'll say whether it does.
• The additive-free tell — does it taste dry and agave-forward the way a genuinely additive-free blanco should, or is there an unexplained roundness?
• Mixability — a Margarita, a Paloma, and a Ranch Water, to see whether it holds its own in a cocktail "without getting lost," as the founders claim, or disappears.
• Value — at ~$50, how it stacks up against the additive-free blanco benchmarks we already rate.

Check back — this piece gets the full scorecard, tasting notes, and our verdict the week the sample arrives.

Disclosure: Whiteout is providing a sample for this review. We were not paid for this piece. Unlike the spirits we link through our retail partner, every Whiteout link on this page goes straight to the distillery with no affiliate tracking — we don't earn a commission on Whiteout, so this is purely editorial coverage.