New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Litchfield Distillery’s Agave Spirits goes great in a margarita
Afew years ago when Litchfield Distillery was looking to import a high-quality tequila to produce its canned margarita-style cocktail, the distillery’s owners ran into a problem.
“Due to Mexican export laws, they’re not allowed to export highgrade tequila [in bulk], which would be 100 percent agave,” says Jack Baker, who co-founded Litchfield Distillery in 2015 with his brothers. “They’re only allowed to export the low-grade tequila, which is 51 percent agave, 49 percent cane sugar, and it has half the flavor of 100 percent agave.”
More than 300 million blue agave plants are harvested each year in the Mexican state of Jalisco. These plants give tequila its signature rich flavors. While Baker and the team at Litchfield Distillery couldn’t import high-grade tequila, they could import 100 percent organic blue agave syrup and use that to make their own spirit — emulating tequila-distilling techniques in Connecticut. The resulting spirit was, and still is, used to power the distillery’s Batcherita canned cocktails which are distributed in the state.
As they developed the spirit for the canned cocktail, the wider potential for this smooth, agave-powered liquid began to dawn on them. “We realized we’re producing a really good agave spirit,” Baker says. “We thought it would make an excellent offering to our customers.”
The distillery released its Agave Spirits drink in 2020. Though its taste is identical to a tequila, it is not technically tequila because it’s not made in Mexico. The term “tequila” is reserved for spirits produced in and around the city of Tequila and the Jalisco region in Mexico, the same way Champagne can only be made in certain regions of France and bourbon can only be produced in the U.S.
“Trade agreements that have evolved over the years give Mexico the exclusive rights to the word ‘tequila,’ ” Baker says. “Our regulations say that we have to call it ‘agave spirit.’ ”
But even with these tight controls, Litchfield Distillery’s agave spirit is getting noticed. It won a platinum medal at the American Spirits Council of Tasters Awards in 2021 in the white spirits/rum/tequila category.
“We use a method called slow distillation, where we use just enough heat to keep it boiling, which gives us some really good separations of the things that taste good from the things that don’t taste good, and it gives the vapors a lot of contact with copper, which makes it smoother,” Baker says. “The style that we’re selling is reposado, which means ‘rested’ in that it’s a 2month to 11-month-old tequila or agave spirit.”
Litchfield Distillery also offers a rare añejo (old)-style agave spirit that is aged for 1 to 3 years in a wooden barrel. Litchfield’s reposado agave spirit is a worthy addition to the liquor cabinet of any tequila drinker. It has a true agave flavor, great aroma, and a smooth finish.
For Litchfield Distillery, the agave spirit is a popular and growing part of its portfolio. “It’s an unlikely candidate for a small distillery in Connecticut, but it did evolve,” Bake says. “We didn’t start out one day to say, ‘Hey, let’s make agave spirit.’ But because we needed it, by necessity we learned how to do it.”
Litchfield Distillery
569 Bantam Road, Litchfield Open daily. Tours start at 11 a.m. 860-361-6503, litchfielddistillery.com, @litchfielddistillery on Instagram