As Americans drink more tequila, the agave industry in the country’s Southwest grows : NPR
With the growing popularity of tequila and mezcal in the U.S., a new generation of growers and distillers in the Southwest is trying to create a uniquely American agave liquor.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Sales of tequila and mezcal have more than tripled in the U.S. in the last decade. No wonder growers and distillers of – in the American Southwest are hard at work planting the spiky agave plants used to make them. John Burnett has the story.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Agave plants thrive in the arid climate and brilliant sunshine of Texas. Couldn’t you harvest them and distill a Lone Star mezcal?
LEONARDO SANCHEZ: I am Leonardo Sanchez. I am co-founder of Ancestral Craft Spirits.
BURNETT: We’re standing in a clearing not far from the muddy Rio Grande and the border town of Roma, Texas. It’s hotter than Hades. A couple of years ago, Sanchez and his partner planted 2,500 sharp-tipped agaves down here. What happened next did not bode well for the future of the first Texas mezcal.
SANCHEZ: We came back one day, and what we found is that there’s a lot of hawks and javelinas in this area, and they like a lot of these little plants. So they ate thousands of them at the end of the day.
BURNETT: So the Texas wild hogs destroyed your Mexican agaves.
SANCHEZ: Yeah, exactly.
BURNETT: Sanchez persevered. He brought more baby Agaves from his native Mexico and put them in a plant nursery. Once he puts them in the ground and erects a hog-proof fence, it will take at least seven years for them to mature. Mexican distillers have been making tequila and its smoky cousin mezcal for more than 400 years. Like Champagne from France, it has to come from Mexico if it’s called tequila or mezcal. If it’s made anywhere else, it’s called an agave spirit. While his agaves are growing, Sanchez is importing agave juice from Oaxaca, Mexico, distilling and bottling it in Roma. Here’s the story about how it got its brand name – Blasfemus.
SANCHEZ: Eduardo, my partner, was sitting in the board of the Mexican company that makes the mezcal. And he was telling them, we have done some special editions – (non-English language spoken), so why don’t we do a special edition Tejas? And one of the board members told him that would be a blasphemy.
BURNETT: And that’s how the first Texas mezcal, Blasfemus, came about. But Texas was not the first. Californians have been growing and distilling agave for nearly a decade. On the West Coast, they don’t have to worry about feral pigs. For them, the challenge is finding the right agave varieties that can withstand the cold, wet weather in the northern part of the state. Craig Reynolds is president of the California Agave Council, with 50 members. He says everyone focuses on the downsides of climate change.
CRAIG REYNOLDS: But climate change also creates opportunities, particularly in agriculture.
BURNETT: Reynolds says as California winters get warmer…
REYNOLDS: Other crops become more desirable, and agave is one of them.
BURNETT: But how does it taste? I brought some samples of Blasfemus to a pair of veteran bartenders in Brownsville, Juan Flores of Terras and Chris Galicia of Las Ramblas.
Cheers.
(LAUGHTER)
BURNETT: They sniffed it and sloshed it around their palates.
CHRIS GALICIA: It smells sweet.
JUAN FLORES: A lot of spice to it, too.
GALICIA: Like, it smells like apple pie for some reason. Is that just me?
FLORES: No, actually…
BURNETT: I asked Galicia how Texas-made mezcal compares to traditional Oaxacan mezcal.
GALICIA: As traditionalists, I don’t think we’d necessarily drink this, But you know, somebody who’s barely getting into the category – it’s definitely right up your alley. I think things like this are good for a growing market, and it has a place on the back bar.
BURNETT: American agave is in its infancy. Fifty years ago, Texas showed skeptics that it could make wine. Today, the Texas wine industry has an impact of $20 billion. With tequila and mezcal now outselling American whiskey, the new agave entrepreneurs hope there’s room for a made-in-America agave spirit. John Burnett, Roma, Texas.
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