About Agaves

The agave is the most complex and interesting plant distilled by humans. All the intense energy and flavorful components built up in the 8 to 15 years it takes the plant to mature, meant to be used to grow that huge stalk and produce flowers – just before it dies... is instead concentrated and purified by distillation into the agave spirit: mezcal, raicilla, tequila. Prehispanic indigenous peoples roasted the agave to eat, drank the sap (or let it ferment into pulque), used the thorns for needles, used the leaves for roofing, used the fibers for thread, cordage, and clothing.

So don’t talk to me about barley or corn or grapes. Mezcal fresh from the still is as complex and interesting and tasty as excellent brandies and whiskies after years of aging. At Germain- Robin, often called one of the world’s finest spirits, we made brandy from very good wine grapes, but they were all variants on one species, vitis vinifera: there was a stylistic uniformity. Some 25 or 30 genetically different agaves can be distilled, some of them so rare that they have not been given scientific names, and the range of flavor, aroma, intensity is astonishing.