Two days after listing their craft agave spirit, Rancho del Sol, for sale online, the leaders at Shelter Distilling in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. started to sweat a little. “We have to take this thing down and stop selling,” they told themselves. There was a Margarita festival the next day. And the distillery was perilously close to running out of bottles.
That particular spirit — made from six agave varieties, all grown in California — was special. The price said as much: “We were like, ‘Oh gosh, who’s going to spend $150 for a bottle?” says Patty Swenson, Shelter’s executive chairwoman. “Apparently, a lot.”
If the 90-bottle run was a little anxiety-inducing, it was also a sign of an emerging, enthusiastic — albeit niche — market for California agave spirits. Tequila and mezcal from Mexico, of course, already have a massive foothold in the agave spirit market. According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., there’s been a 273 percent volume sales increase of tequila and mezcal stateside since 2003.
But in an arid landscape similar to Mexico’s agave-spirits-producing region, California can grow the base material, too. So a plucky group of distillers and growers in the state are betting on establishing their own foothold in agave spirits.
“That’s kind of the gamble a lot of us are taking in this industry,” says Gian Pablo Nelson, co-founder of Jano Spirits. “Tequila’s hot right now — tequila’s here to stay. People love the product but do they love California agave? We’re
