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Craft Distillery

splitting, pounding, steaming, pounding some
more. It’s sweaty and difficult work, but it’s well
worth it when you pour yourself a splash, and you
can taste the product you’ve been working on for a
month. With agave, you really get to taste the ter-
roir and varietal of the plant. It’s always different,
much like wine.”

Assessing Consumer Demand
for Agave Spirits

According to Anderson, while customers are
drawn to the nuance and flavor of their agave spir-
its, they need to be educated about the agave spir-
its market. In his experience, most people remem-
ber Tequila and mezcal from their college days and
haven’t learned the nuances of sipping premium
agave spirits.

Presently, consumer demand for Shelter
Distilling’s agave spirits exceeds the amount avail-
able. Anderson attributes this to the lack of agave
being grown in the U.S. and the difficulties of pro-
cessing the plants.

Along those lines, the growth of the agave spirits
market has altered the availability of quality agave
plants in Mexico. Lou Bank, founder and Executive
Director of S.A.C.R.E.D., a nonprofit organization
working to improve the quality of life in the rural
Mexican communities where heritage agave spir-
its are made, has concerns that, as agave spirits
increase in popularity, consumers will love the
plants to death. “If you drive around Oaxaca today,
it looks significantly different than it did 10 years
ago. Where you used to see a lot of wildlands, now
you see more and more agave farms popping up.”

Bank is concerned that the greater quantity of
plants may come at the cost of quality, that mass
agriculture methods will raise lower quality agave,
leading to lower quality spirits.

With the TTB beginning to define agave spirits,
Anderson predicts more distillers and growers will
look to enter this new market. “We do what we
can with putting out promotional material and edu-
cating our guests. The more U.S.-based distilleries
who get into this market and educate their cus-
tomers, the more people will understand that this
is an American product that can be as good as, if
not better than, what’s being produced in Mexico,”
Bank said.

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