What do we call them when they’re not all agave spirits?
I was in Oaxaca drinking an agave spirit that wasn’t an agave spirit. It was distilled from penca larga, which is a furcraea. I did the least amount of digging I could do on that — on furcraea — and stumbled on a book from 1899 that discusses the reordering of several other species: Bravoa, Polianthes, and Prochnyanthes. And that made me wonder … can those be used to make spirits? If so, are they, somewhere, being used for that purpose? And when those spirits enter the market, doesn’t that further confuse the conversation, which is already convoluted enough with people lumping Sotol into Agave Spirits. All of which makes me wonder … should we be using a different name for the category? Monocot spirits? Asparagales spirits?
Agave Road Trip is a critically acclaimed, award-winning podcast that helps gringx bartenders better understand agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico. This episode is hosted by Lou Bank with special guest Linda Sullivan of seynasecreto with wisdom from Dr. Hector Ortiz Cano of the Chicago Botanic Garden.
The problem with the Washington Post article about Mezcal
Do you want to preserve the biodiversity of agaves? Or do you want to preserve agaves in the wild? Because those are two different things, often at odds with one another. And you can’t have that conversation without talking about the reasons for the disappearing wild lands in Mexico. But that’s exactly what the Washington Post did last week, when they concluded that the biodiversity of agave is disappearing because “[f]oreign mezcal drinkers have adopted a taste for the wildest, scarcest agaves.” I wish foreign drinkers had adopted a taste for the wildest, scarcest agaves. And Mexican drinkers, too. But instead we’re all drinking spirits made from monoculture blue weber agave in Jalisco and soon-to-be-monoculture espadin in Oaxaca. And that’s the problem the Washington Post should have covered. So we do it here, instead, in this set-the-record-straight episode of Agave Road Trip!
Agave Road Trip is a critically acclaimed, award-winning podcast that helps gringx bartenders better understand agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico. This episode is hosted by Lou Bank with special guest Sergio Garnier of Mezcal Ultramundo, with supporting insights from Dr. Hector Ortiz, conservation scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden.