Agave Road Trip

Apr 02 2025 252 ep. 24 mins 78

Agave Road Trip Podcast artwork

Agave Road Trip provides gringo bartenders with firsthand knowledge about heritage agave spirits from Mexico, including mezcal, raicilla, bacanora, and destilado de agave.

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Maguey and Madagascar

Apr 02 2025 43 mins

For hundreds of years, Madagascar has been growing sisal … agave sisalana. The leaves — pencas — are chopped off and processed into fiber for use in textiles. And the heart of the plant is left to rot in the fields. And then, one day, a Peace Corps volunteer thought, Isn’t that the stuff they use to make Tequila? Yeah, you and I both know the problem with that thought — b

You pay more for Tequila

Mar 26 2025 32 mins

A few years ago, the story all over the news was that Tequila outsold whiskey and was on pace to outsell vodka. But that was just journalists misreading the annual reports of DISCUS, the Distilled Spirits Council of the US. Now DISCUS has released final numbers for 2024, so I take my own shot at misreading the latest numbers! My big takeaway? Ounce-for-ounce, you pay more for Tequi

How do you differentiate different Tequilas?

Mar 19 2025 25 mins

When the details are so … detailed? How exactly do you communicate those details to bars, restaurants, and liquor stores? And how do they share those differences with their guests? And how do those guests explain those differences to their friends? It’s another overwhelming episode of Agave Road Trip! Agave Road Trip is a critically acclaimed, award-winning podcast that helps

Is Mezcal's moment over?

Mar 12 2025 29 mins

Since at least the early 2000s, there have been news stories about Mezcal “having a moment.” But when I search that phrase now, in news stories, I get one hit in the past month — and that’s from Australia. And where I used to get contacted for news stories about agave spirits every other month, it feels like it’s more like every several months now. Which makes me wonder,

Puntas: Drop-dead delicious or just drop dead?

Mar 05 2025 25 mins

Puntas are (among) the first spirits that come off a still – the heads, is what they’re called. Or foreshots, if you’re reading some of the online resources for moonshiners. And those resources suggest they might be harmful. Mezcaleros suggest they’re definitely delicious. Tom Bartram and I attempt to settle that score in this episode of Agave Road Trip! Agave Road Trip is

An American Distiller in Mexico

Feb 26 2025 22 mins

First I’ll say, the title of this episode breaks one of my rules: I try not to refer to people from the USA as Americans. Not because they aren’t, but because Mexicans are Americans, too. And Canadians. And Guatemalans. Welcome to the Americas. So “American” lacks distinction in this context. But I traveled through Mexico with Yankee distiller Brian Rabon from Florida’s 3

A Tale of Two USAIDs

Feb 19 2025 25 mins

USAID has been shut down. Or maybe it's been suspended for 90 days. It depends on which member of President Trump's administration you believe. And it's hard to believe any of them, when the claims they used to justify the closure -- or suspension -- are so clearly, demonstrably false. And it's frustrating to hear from NGOs in Mexico how this upending of funding will damage their a

The devils in the angel share

Feb 12 2025 18 mins

We’ve spent a fair amount of time talking about fermentation and talking about distillation. But there’s another -ation we’ve not really addressed: evaporation! There are devils in the angel share and in this episode of Agave Road Trip! Agave Road Trip is a critically acclaimed, award-winning podcast that helps gringx bartenders better understand agave, agave spirits, and ru

What do we call them when they’re not all agave spirits?

Feb 05 2025 18 mins

I was in Oaxaca drinking an agave spirit that wasn’t an agave spirit. It was distilled from penca larga, which is a furcraea. I did the least amount of digging I could do on that — on furcraea — and stumbled on a book from 1899 that discusses the reordering of several other species: Bravoa, Polianthes, and Prochnyanthes. And that made me wonder … can those be used to make s

What’s the deal with Rusty Mezcal?

Jan 29 2025 19 mins

A couple weeks back, we dropped an episode that suggested that Tequila Oro might have originated from distillers dropping chunks of the cooked heart of the agave into their finished spirits. And after that episode aired, I started thinking about another golden phenomenon I’ve seen around Mexican spirits: rust. And maybe rusty Mezcal can give us some additional insight into Tequil