California has a new take on mezcal, tequila
Agave farms boom as US demand rises and new spirits sold
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — On a brisk March morning in Woodland’s rolling hills, Raul “Reppo” Chavez was already covered in sweat.
Chavez and his cousin Antonio had spent the last half-hour hacking away at their agave plants — monstrous pineapple-like beasts whose spiky leaves are all that can be seen above the soil.
The jimadors, as the farmers of the succulent are called, were harvesting agave they planted six to eight years ago. After a stormy weekend, they will roast the 100-pound agave hearts (or pinas) for five to seven days in an 8-footdeep pit covered with pumice and volcanic rocks.
This is where the burgeoning “Mezcalifornia” movement begins. It ends up in small-batch agave spirits produced by craft distilleries.
But don’t call it tequila or mezcal. That distinction is specific only to agave spirits produced in certain parts of Mexico, where tequila comes from Blue Weber agave and mezcal can be made from any agave variety.
Regardless of the name, it’s still a niche drink.
Agave grows slowly and doesn’t yet have streamlined production in the U.S. The resulting liquors are scarce and expensive.
Yet more growers are planting agave — and tequila and mezcal are among the United States’ most popular drinks. When asked about the demand for California-grown agave, farmer and agave advocate Craig Reynolds replied, “I think it’s endless.”
“The craft distillers in California would buy up every mature agave 10 times what I’m producing, 100 times. They’re able to sell their agave spirits at a
premium,” Reynolds said. “And it’s just a matter of it scaling up. We have a long way to go to ever come close to saturating the market for agave spirits, in my opinion.”
Agave plants grow all over California, from metropolitan sidewalk plots to dirt patches bordering freeways. But most aren’t Blue Weber agave.
That’s what Reynolds and Chavez grow on neighboring hillsides owned by brothers Joe and Tom Muller in Woodland. The Chavez cousins became acquainted with the industry while growing up in the Mexican state of Jalisco where tequila is made, in a 6,000-person town called Tonaya.
“Tonaya is a little town, but it’s got a lot ... of acres of agave. So we started to work a little bit over there. Not too much — more over here, when (Reynolds) came and started to plant
that (plot),” Reppo Chavez said.
Reynolds began growing agave in Colima, Mexico, in 2006 that would later be used to make Dos Volcanes tequila. He used his vacation days to check up on the agave and moonlighted as a Dos Volcanes importer to the U.S. while he was working full time as thenstate Sen. Lois Wolk’s chief of staff. After retiring, he planted his first stateside agave in 2014.
He started with 500 plants and ended up with a movement. St. George Spirits master distiller Lance Winters made the first batch of spirits in 2019. Others came calling, both for processed agave and seedlings to start plots.
Reynolds founded the California Agave Council in April 2020 to unite growers and set standards across the board.
One such principle, signed into state law in September: Any bottle marketed
as California agave spirits must be 100% made from agave. Traditional tequila requires only 51% agave juice, with the rest coming from corn or cane sugar and coloring agents.
Though Reynolds pioneered commercial agave production in California, he’s quick to differentiate between himself and “real farmers” such as the Chavez cousins, who harvest his plants as well as their own.
That harvesting is hard work. Once the Chavez cousins cut the agaves’ quiotes (flowering stalks that shoot from the center that indicate the plant has fully matured), they have about eight months to extract the pinas.
The jimadors hack off the spiky leaves and root out the pinas, which they then pull out of the dirt by hand. All that time spent growing, and that’s it for the agave, which can be harvested precisely once.
They then load the pinas into a truck for roasting, which can take a week. The agave leaves are then tilled into the soil where beans, clover and mustard grow as cover crops.
Once roasted, the pinas are shredded and pressed to extract the juice. Liquor makers then ferment and distill that liquid, proof it down to around 40% to 45% ABV and bottle it for sale. Each 750-milliliter bottle requires about 11 pounds of agave.
When Venus Spirits began importing Mexican agave juice to make spirits in 2014, the Santa Cruz distillery was one of three in the U.S. to do so, founder and distiller Sean Venus said. A couple hundred distillers do the same now, he said, but not many get their agave from California. Venus Spirits is one of the few. It released 450 bottles of El Ladrón Yolo, its first California-grown take on tequila, in 2021, using
Reynolds’ agave.
The first El Ladrón Yolo bottles were sold only in the distillery’s tasting room, though the next batch will be larger and distributed through other retailers. Venus Spirits still makes Mexican agave spirits, but they’re not the same.
“It’s quite a bit different. We get more of the vegetal notes from California agave. It’s less sweet, but more minerally, so it’s got more of a true character and flavor than Mexican agave spirits,” Venus said. “It’s a really interesting thing. We’re roasting over almond wood, and a little bit of that smoke character gets into the agave and comes through in the spirits.”
California dirt costs more than Jalisco land, and the traditional cooking method Reynolds uses is time-intensive.
Those factors drive up the price of the resulting beverage: a bottle of El Ladrón Yolo sells for $90, while Venus Spirits’ liquors made from Mexican agave go for $42 to $68.
Yet demand is high. Americans are expected to spend more than $13.3 billion on agave spirits tequila and mezcal this year, overtaking vodka and whiskey as the nation’s most-bought spirit, according to beverage research firm IWSR.
Venus and Reynolds expect prices to fall as California’s agave industry grows and becomes more efficient. If more California farmers grow agave, Venus Spirits will buy it.
In the meantime, Venus has planted a few seedlings around the distillery and is exploring larger plots outside of Santa Cruz. “The whole kind of farm-tobottle thing is a process that is really interesting and unseen by (many) other distillers,” Venus said. “I think it’s something really unique that is happening right now, and we’re just excited to be part of it.”