Agape and Agave: Toya Banks and the Lifesaving Elixir

When the short film clip begins, an audience member – Toya Banks of Chicago’s southside – is on her feet. The setting is a cozy corner of Godmothers Bookstore in Summerland. Self-made “Eyebrow Queen” Anastasia Soare and Oprah Winfrey are sunk into enormous Alice in Wonderland wingback chairs that look to be upholstered in something like fawn velveteen. They’ve conducted a well-attended public conversation and have opened up the floor for questions. Toya, having raised her hand, is about to complete a momentous circle. She stands.

“I’m from Chicago, Illinois, and you actually came to my high school,” she says to Oprah. “Anastasia, you also changed my life.” The audience is hushed and uncertain. Excuse me… who is this person? Toya continues, her message escaping her like the pent-up, complicated love song it is. “I lost my husband, my mother, and my brother, all within a year,” she says, voice cracking minutely. The Godmothers audience spontaneously moans and gasps as one, people pivot in their seats. The sudden, inarticulate empathy from this crowd of strangers is like a burst of starlings entering the room. 

Toya’s daughter Rebecca, a recent Westmont grad, is seated next to her mom in the Godmothers audience. Through summer vacationing in Santa Barbara, Toya’s family had grown to love the area. Rebecca had but one request on those family vacays. “Mom, okay – every year you have to take me to Anastasia.” Anastasia Soare – Romanian American businesswoman, self-made CEO, and founder of Anastasia Beverly Hills beauty brand – is rapt with happy attention as Toya continues. Oprah looks on with a half-smile of recognition. 

“I lost my nucleus,” Toya says shakily to the Godmothers audience, to Anastasia, and to Oprah. “And I would tell my daughter, I want to do something. And Rebecca said, ‘…mom, look what Anastasia did! You can do this.’”

Toya takes a deep breath. “And so I am an African American woman from the south side of Chicago and I have a tequila brand.” At this unexpected revelation there is a pin-drop silence – and Godmothers erupts in celebratory whoops. Toya hoists a Courvoisier-like bottle of her Hermanas Amigas tequila. The label features a silhouette of four women in haute cocktail wear striking a triumphant pose of unity. “On this tequila brand are my four best friends who carried me through,” Toya says, voice breaking. She and Rebecca produce Hermanas Amigas bottles. A moment before, these had been destined for the journalist with whom they have a later appointment. So it goes.

Toya offers a bottle to Anastasia and hands it to her. The Godmothers audience is dewy-eyed and delighted. “May I offer you a bottle?” Toya asks Oprah, who is beaming.

“Yes, you may!”

Four Loving Besties and Toya’s Renaissance 

Toya steps into the Montecito Journal offices and her charisma fills the place. To those who spurn such gushing sentiments as “her charisma fills the place” (and I’m ordinarily one of those), I have a one-word rejoinder: Toya. She’s accompanied by her daughter, recently matriculated Westmont grad Rebecca; an English major who looks like a novelist-in-waiting. 

Toya’s losses are frankly inconceivable, her story of being resuscitated by four selfless friends a reminder of how deeply potent human friendship can be. Her growing despair spanned the juncture of 2015–2016, the accumulating series of blows like something from the Book of Job. 

“I first lost my brother in June. Then I lost my husband in October. And then I lost my mother. I became a widow and a single parent overnight.” Toya and Rebecca are seated in my office, Rebecca listening quietly as Toya gives me the story. “But I had these four best friends who every Friday would come by my home. These are dear friends of over 30 years, all CMOs, CEOs, and entrepreneurs. One came and stayed with me for two months. One would come and cook dinner for me and my daughter every Sunday. One would just sit in the bed with me so that I could cry. And one made sure my daughter got to school.”

With the drop-everything support of her friends, Toya Banks weathered the worst thing that can happen. The alchemy of desperate, freefall grief is unpredictable. We’re changed by it, not always for the better. Thanks to the no-frills infusion of unadorned love from her four pals, Toya emerged from that crucible with an energy she may not have foreseen. As is broadly known (though not in so many words), love is spiritual octane. 

One weekly group ritual came to anchor Toya’s period of triage. 

“So every Friday we would do a tequila night,” Toya says. From this shared weekly communion with her cohort of lifelong friends, an idea emerged. Well… a couple of ideas. “As time went on, I said, ‘Okay, none of these,’” Toya says of their sampled tequila, waving a hand dismissively. “We were drinking different brands, expensive brands, but none of the tequila looked like us, advertised to us, or told our story.”

In the meantime, those gilded family summer vacations on the central coast were exerting a gravitational pull on daughter Rebecca’s academic intentions. “I’m from the south side of Chicago,” Toya says, “but my only child by then had applied to colleges only here in California.” Mom grins with mock-exasperation. “She decided on Westmont. And so what am I going to do?” To the rhetorical reply ‘I hear you! What can one do in that situation?’ Toya’s non-rhetorical rollout will come as a mild surprise. 

“So I’m like, I’m going with you to California!” There was more. “As I was going to move to California, I told my friends I was also going to make us a tequila.” Seeing my face fall, Toya confirms the reception of her plan back home. “Yeah,” she says, smiling. “They were like, ‘you’re kidding.’” 

Proveedora y Procesadora de Agave Tres Hermanos

As some parents do, Toya would indeed accompany her Rebecca to university. Unlike other parents enacting that template, Toya would take the opportunity to begin visiting distilleries. 

“So for three years I went back and forth to Mexico to give a love letter in a bottle to the women that held me up. I knew what I wanted the bottle to look like. I wanted the women to be interlocking arms, as you can see. Hermanas Amiga means sister friend.” The complicated project would integrate Toya’s grief and introduce her to a new cohort of supporters. 

“I was so grief stricken I threw myself into something that took away my time from thinking about what I’d lost. These were deep wounds,” Toya says. “None of these women needed anything from me. I couldn’t give them any gifts. But I can do something to let them know how much I love them and how much I appreciate them.” 

How did Toya even known how to proceed? There was a learning curve, from brewing to importing. 

“I researched all of this, and I went back and forth to Mexico till I found a distillery that I felt comfortable with; Proveedora y Procesadora de Agave Tres Hermanos.” Fate waded into the scene to anoint another cohort of rescuers.

“When I first went, I cried every day – and they would just quietly let me cry,” she says of the distillers. Please imagine this scene, reader. “They knew my story.” Toya’s inputs during the production process were those of an appreciator. “I told them I want something very smooth. I don’t want anything to burn.” 

The end of the process was no businesslike affair. Toya’s inclusive mission had made friends of her co-conspirators at the distillery in Amatitán, Jalisco, Mexico. 

“And so the bottling day came. Fifteen of us went to Mexico for the bottling party. Yeah, they threw a huge party with a Mariachi band,” Toya laughs lightly, her eyes glistening. “And they said, ‘we’ve never had a party like this!’” 

Today Hermanas Amigas is as all-conquering as the love that launched it. 

“I’m in 35 stores in Chicago. I’m going to be in the El Encanto,” she says. “That was my favorite place. I would go and spend weekends there. The general manager there said ‘Toya, you must come!’ I knew everyone there and they knew my story. I’d sit at the bar and just go for massages. That is the best place where I nursed myself back to life.”

Contrary to the ancient Greek poet Menander, time does not necessarily heal all wounds. But time and the unconditional, projectile love of our fellow mortals just may. That corner-turning ascent into light can happen by degrees. 

“The distillery in Mexico,” Toya says haltingly. “They knew my story and they would let me cry. Until one day they said, ‘Toya – you didn’t cry today!’” Toya’s teary smile is beatific in the remembrance. 

“No,” she answered her newest friends. “I didn’t cry today.”  

*****

Hermanas Amigas Tequila is available for your consideration here!