New York Post – Page Six

Not Just Another Tequila Sunrise

By CINDY ADAMS
Last Updated: 1:27 AM, May 23, 2013

A book’s out called “The Patron Way: The Untold Inside Story of the World’s Most Successful Tequila.”
So the question is, so what? So the answer is: author Ilana Edelstein, a financial adviser who drops names like Cruise, Bowie, Hillary, Cher, Clint, etc, had a lover named Martin Crowley.

“We met in 1988,” she tells me. “A wild fast party life. On one trip to Mexico, visiting a tequila factory, he said, ‘Wow! Never tasted anything like it.’ The first bottle had a fly in it, and that’s where the phrase Spanish fly comes from.

“This drink, reserved exclusively for holy men, was a local gasoline slammed back in a shot glass. Martin discovered and financed it. We were creative junkies. I did the sex, drugs and rock ’n roll marketing. Half-naked good-looking sexy-dressed Patron girls. Hand-blown glass bottles, chilled glasses. Together we turned it into the world’s ultra premium tequila.

“The Paul Mitchell hair products owner John Paul DeJoria owns this good high today. Giving 10,000 cases to his friends, it’s become the $1.1 billion biggest tequila brand in the world.

“Hillary said on ‘Letterman’ it’s her relaxation shot. It’s all Cher, who made the DeJorias’ wedding, drinks. George Clooney and Rande Gerber sell their own brand of it. In a ‘Line of Fire’ closeup, Clint Eastwood’s posed with it. In a movie, David Bowie played a bartender, and center screen was our bottle. Roseanna Arquette’s a fan.

“Bruce Springsteen concert contracts included a bottle in his dressing room. Tom Cruise, at the Bel Air Hotel, had a cigarette lighter filled with tequila.”

We know what happened with the booze. What ever happened with the lover?

“What he became drunk with was success. He never married me. I ask myself all the time, why? For a while it hurt too much for me to write this book. We broke up two years before he died, and I was shut out of what should have been mine. I appealed but lost on a technicality. It’s a story of the cobbler needing shoes. A financial adviser, and the only one I didn’t advise financially was me.

“Look, I can only say he was the love of my life and I had an amazing ride.”

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