Drought and climate change make agave an appealing California crop. Now, distillers look to turn it into spirits

For years, California farmers have seen some of their crops struggle amid the impacts of drought and climate change. Many have sought out more resilient plants that don’t need a lot of water — like agave.

And as more growers cultivate the plant here, distillers interested in making their own California agave spirits have been drawn to it as well. This gained enough traction that in 2022, California solidified the use of the term “agave spirit” into law. It stated that anything labeled as a “California agave spirit” must be made from 100% California-grown agave without any additives or coloring.

Either way, if an agave spirit is made in the United States (regardless of where the agave itself is sourced), it’s called an “agave spirit”. This differentiates California’s product from mezcal or tequila, both monikers that are attached to the regions in Mexico where they’re produced (just like champagne, which can only get that title if it’s a sparkling wine made in the Champagne region of France).

David Ortego (left) and Gian Pablo Nelson (right) unload Agave americana piñas on August 3, 2024.Manola Secaira/CapRadio

The California Agave Council, a nonprofit looking to connect growers and distillers with resources, has seen steady growth in its membership since it formed in 2022. It now includes 80 growers and eight distillers.

But the process for making an agave spirit in California is still a work in progress. While many distillers base their process off of what they’ve learned from Mexican tequila and mezcal makers, making it here often requires some adaptation.

CapRadio spoke with Gian Pablo Nelson, a Napa-based distiller and co-founder of Jano Spirits who released his first batch of agave spirit in 2022. While most distillers use Agave tequilana, or blue agave, to make their spirit, Nelson is committed to only using agave that’s native to the U.S. He says he’s had to get creative when sourcing it.

Gian Pablo Nelson hauls Agave americana piñas to a heated earthen pit where they’ll steam for about a week before being turned into agave spirits on August 3, 2024.Manola Secaira/CapRadio

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Interview highlights

Growing agave is still pretty new in California. What has sourcing it been like?

Every day, there's a new grower in California growing more agave, planting new agave, but it's going to take seven to 10 years for those agaves to fully mature for us to harvest and turn into spirit.

So in the meantime, we have to find those agaves out and in the wild. That's why we've been going around and kind of adventuring. We'll pin them on our map on our phone, if we see a bunch of wild agave on the side of the highway, and then if there's ever a chance we go try to knock on [the owner’s] door and see if we can use those for future agave production.

Jano Spirits distiller Gian Pablo Nelson and others pose next to a freshly harvested Agave americana core, also known as the piña. He says the piñas for this type of agave can weigh up to 500 pounds.Photo courtesy of Gian Pablo Nelson

Brian [Mascia], my other partner in this, has flyers in his car and when he sees [Agave] americanas on the road on the way to work, he'll put it in their mailbox to let them know that we'd be interested in taking these agaves once they reach their peak maturity.

So yeah, it's definitely not just, call up the agave grower and get a couple tons delivered the next day. We're doing this in a really organic, not grassroots, but almost agave roots movement.

That’s a pretty intense process. How many agave plants are needed to make a bottle of agave spirit?

That can vary, really depending on the sugars and the size of the agaves that we harvest. But thankfully, with the Agave americana, they can be up to 500 pounds. So if we're doing a 4,000 pound pick, it really doesn't take that many Agave americanas to make it. And then for every ton, every 2,000 pounds that we harvest, we can get anywhere between about 85 to 120 bottles.

I’ve met other distillers who use Agave tequilana, or blue agave, which is what’s most frequently used when making tequila or mezcal. But you’re using a U.S. native agave, the americana. Have you met anyone else doing that?

No, I think we’re kind of the stubborn bastards — like, I think what everyone is doing is great. We have absolutely nothing against using other agave species for production.

Just for us, we look at this on a bigger scale and go, well, what is going to define the California agave spirit? It has to be, not only just quality and the story, but we have to differentiate ourselves just enough so we are not perceived as an imitation of an already established spirit and spirit profile, right?

When you do taste a tequila and mezcal and then a California agave spirit, can you, in a lineup, go, “Oh yeah, you know what, that's agave [from] California because of these flavor profiles or because it's a certain variety of agave.” That may pique some interest. But I can see the viability of using Agave tequilana right now because it's mostly what's available in California, and it tastes great.

The novelty of making agave spirits in California is also part of the reason that it’s an expensive process. How commercially viable is it to make these spirits right now?

That's a really good question because I think a lot of us are trying to answer that question ourselves. Right now, a lot of us are really leaning on the side of passion and we just really love the idea and the concept of making a California agave spirit. It's very new. There's been a lot of interest among consumers and professionals. So that part is going well [but] as far as the business and the sales, I think that's yet to be determined.

I think what makes agave so expensive right now is that it's such a new method of production here in the United States. We don't have the specialized equipment like they do in Mexico to make agave spirits. We don't have the big autoclaves and the ovens and also the labor force that they do have, from in the fields harvesting the agave down to the production facilities.

So we've just been backwards engineering, to be completely honest with you. But I think every harvest that all of us here in California do with agave, we're only getting better at it. We're only getting more practice.

But it's a labor of love, so I don't know if it's ever going to be a below premium product in California.

David Ortega, one of the founders of Jano Spirits, sharpens a coa on August 3, 2024. The tool is typically used to slice off the leaves of an agave so that the piña, or core, can be harvested.Manola Secaira/CapRadio

Some of this information about making agave spirits is coming from Mexico, and then some of it is being reconfigured for California. Can you walk me through what you've learned from the Mexican process of making this spirit, and what you’re still figuring out?

They're the ones that kind of wrote the recipes and the playbook, right? So, we've taken the general principles and ideas of taking an agave through its process to turn it into a fermented product, to then distill and make into a spirit. Now, how you get there is completely up to all of us in the craft.

Where it's been really interesting is exactly what you're saying, that there has been some of those techniques and processes that have been borrowed, but we've adapted them to what we have up here. So, like I was saying, we don't really have those really specialized pieces of equipment that make agave production so efficient. We've had to engineer [the] equipment and tools that we have here and and turn them into tools that we can use to make our process more efficient, or at least to get us to the finish line.

You really have to have that pioneering spirit. You really have to look at this and really want to want it.

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