‘We’re seeing a whole new generation.’ Why agave is booming (again), and why now?

Designed for cocktail bars and exclusive to the on-premise, the new Brookie’s Excise Strength Gin weighs in at a 38% ABV and is packaged in a sustainable, first-of-its-kind, 15L jug-in-a-box. The reduced ABV helps to reduce your pour costs, the new packaging removes 200kg of glass from your bar every year, and the juniper and rainforest botanicals of Brookie’s make for delicious modern mixing. The bonus? The jug can be reused to pre-batch cocktails, with an easy-to-use screw-on tap system that will minimise leaks and wastage. Local, sustainable, recyclable, reusable. Learn more at the link here and order now through info@capebyrondistillery.com or on 02 66847961.

The weather in Sydney is hot, and there’s a tease of summer hanging in the air, which means that we’re in the first hot flash of September that tends to come around the time of Sydney Bar Week. It’s like the starter’s gun has been fired as everyone sprints towards the festive season ahead, and all the drinks and parties and gatherings that brings.

And if you want a hot tip for what might be a Big Thing this summer, I think it might be all things agave: we’ve probably not reached peak Margarita just yet, and the array of agave spirits on offer has never been greater.

That’s what inspired the panel talk I hosted during Bar Week last week. Organised by Proof & Company, they put on a tasting of the agave spirits in their portfolio, before myself and three big agave brains — Reece Griffiths, Jay Khan, and Jeremy Blackmore — took to the stage and talked about the latest boom in agave spirits and what the future holds for the category.

And it was a smart panel: Reece Griffiths is the founder of Agave Cartel and the group bars guy for Sydney hospitality group, Solotel; Jeremy Blackmore is the co-founder of the Mucho Group and its bars including the agave-focused Cantina OK! and Tio’s; and we had a special international guest in Jay Khan, the owner and bartender of the Mexico-inspired cocktail bar Coa in Hong Kong, a bar that has been named Asia’s best bar three years running.

It’s probably the best panel talk I’ve hosted yet, thanks to the quality of these guests. A recording of the chat is included in this week’s episode of Drinks At Work, but I’ve got a few of the highlights from the talk below.

You can listen to the latest episode above, in the Apple Podcasts app, on Spotify, or your podcast player of preference.

“We’re seeing a whole new generation of 18,19, 20 year olds drinking tequila as their first thing to shoot — it kind of feels like going back in time a bit.”
Nostalgia is big business, but the 90s are back in a way that you might not have expected: tequila shots, complete with the requisite training wheels of lime and salt. What’s next — Sub Zero RTDs and goon of fortune around the backyard Hills Hoist? This blows my mind, given that so much of the chat around tequila for the last two decades has been focused on appreciation of the stuff. Then again, it shouldn’t be that surprising — bartenders and agave aficionados alike all love a little short glass of the stuff from time to time.

Over in Hong Kong, it has moved away from a world in which it is all shots, shots, shots; Jay Khan sees the premium, high end agave world as the big mover in his bar.

“It’s an expectation that a Margarita is on a menu or is available now.”
Reece says that people expect to find a Margarita everywhere: not just in venues across Australia, but across the globe, and in Bali and Fiji. There’s been a big resurgence in the popularity of the Margarita, and that is fuelling a lot of the interest in agave spirits. And it’s not just the Margarita — across the Solotel group, which has 27 venues, agave spirits as a category is in the top three of sales.

At Tio’s, Jeremy sees that there’s demand for the “recession special,” cheaper types of agave spirits, as well as demand for the high-end stuff, but not a lot of interested in tequilas and mezcal that falls in between the two ends of the market.

“For me, the exciting part is destilado de agave.” It used to be that you had tequila, and a few categories within that, to understand: mixto, 100 percent agave, blanco, reposed, anejo. Then there was mezcal, which was everything else. But the change in the mezcal regulations in 2017 introduced new rules to that category, and the introducing of stricter standards more recently for tequila, mean that the all encompassing destilado de agave designation is where a lot of the exciting, delicious agave spirits are at.

But whenever the bureaucracy or government get involved in defining what a spirit category should be, there are always winners and losers. “The process of certifying a mezcal takes about a year,” says Jay. “And sometimes it doesn’t get approved. So a lot of the producers in Mexico, they don’t have enough money to go through that certification process.”

He also thinks that they often taste better.

“You can’t really go in and tell someone who has been making spirits for 300 years to change their practices because we don’t like it because it doesn’t sound green.” So much of the conversation around agave spirits over the last decade or so has been about sustainability — and much of that has centred on the genetic diversity of different agave plant varieties, and of the boom and bust nature of agave growing. But what is less often talked about is the economic impact in the distilleries themselves, the conditions of the people who make the stuff. And as Reece points out, there’s some question as to whether or not picking up ideas of sustainability in fully developed economies like Australia and dropping them into small communities in Mexico is indeed helpful at all. “It’s not our place to do that,” he says.

And, of course, we talked about celebrity tequila. But if you want to know who was for and against it, you can listen to the full podcast.

You can listen to the latest episode here, in the Apple Podcasts app, on Spotify, or your podcast player of preference.

Designed for cocktail bars and exclusive to the on-premise, the new Brookie’s Excise Strength Gin weighs in at a 38% ABV and is packaged in a sustainable, first-of-its-kind, 15L jug-in-a-box. The reduced ABV helps to reduce your pour costs, the new packaging removes 200kg of glass from your bar every year, and the juniper and rainforest botanicals of Brookie’s make for delicious modern mixing. The bonus? The jug can be reused to pre-batch cocktails, with an easy-to-use screw-on tap system that will minimise leaks and wastage. Local, sustainable, recyclable, reusable. Learn more at the link here and order now through info@capebyrondistillery.com or on 02 66847961.