The Tocayo cocktail at Mírate in Los Angeles is a conversation-starter in a glass. From the Mexican mole base to the garnish—an entire cricket, shiny and golden, perched on an enormous rock—the drink all the time elicits a response. But when there’s one ingredient bartender Max Reis hopes will spark curiosity amongst his visitors, it’s his proprietary “nogave” syrup, which he calls his “sustainable reply to agave.” The Tocayo incorporates a beneficiant splash of the stuff, which is made with Demerara sugar and orange blossom honey to imitate the wealthy, spherical sweetness of the actual factor.
Reis might have been one of many first to coin the time period “nogave,” however he’s not alone in his critique of agave ethics. Over the past a number of years, the beverage business has opened its eyes to the perils of mass-produced agave spirits, shaken awake by the current tequila scarcity that stirred growers and fraternity presidents alike right into a state of panic. The world’s thirst for tequila is so sturdy immediately that almost each celeb, from George Clooney to Kendall Jenner, has their very own model, competing for a bit of the still-growing multibillion-dollar tequila market. However maintaining with demand has confirmed problematic on all sides.
Agaves are massive succulents native to the deserts of the Americas, the place they flourish with the assistance of the long-nosed bat, a key pollinator. In contrast with different industrial money crops like corn, the blue agave crops used for tequila are slow-growing and take no less than seven years to achieve full maturity. Underneath stress to satisfy their quotas, agave farmers throughout Mexico have taken to harvesting extra underage agave crops earlier than they flower, stripping bats of an necessary meals supply and wild agaves of one of many solely methods they will reproduce. In a wholesome ecosystem, bats unfold various and resilient genes from plant to plant. However agaves which are cultivated by way of clonal shoots in massive fields, just like the huge swaths grown for tequila, are genetically equivalent, making them extra prone to illness and drought. This leaves growers extra weak to large losses, as within the Nineteen Nineties, when agave farms had been devastated by lethal fungal infections.
Equally disturbing to bartenders like Reis is that immature agaves have far much less sugar content material, driving up the necessity for chemical processing and components when it comes time to make the syrup. He notes that agave syrups and nectars had been first launched in america as a wholesome various to standard sugar. However immediately, store-bought agave’s status as an all-natural “superfood” is usually simply advertising.
With better visibility into the agave business’s issues, the nogave refrain has gotten louder. Extra bartenders are mixing up their very own alternate options, together with the winner of Netflix’s inaugural Drink Masters, LP O’Brien, whose riff on a traditional Margarita wowed judges in 2022. Garnished with salt foam and a lime Jell-O wedge, the Past Glass Ceilings was crafted with two varieties of tequila and a pineapple nectar nogave syrup.
“The objective in that second was actually to convey consciousness … to a component of a Margarita that not many individuals take into consideration,” says O’Brien.
When she first broke into the business, O’Brien, like so many different burgeoning bartenders, was skilled to make Margaritas with the usual specs: tequila, agave syrup and lime juice. It’s a template that was popularized within the ’90s by Julio Bermejo, creator of the Tommy’s Margarita, which substitutes agave sweetener for orange liqueur. However now that she’s extra established, O’Brien steers away from agave syrups. For sustainability causes, positive—but additionally as a result of she simply doesn’t like the flavour.
“When making an distinctive cocktail, the objective for me is to focus on the bottom spirit,” she says. The extremely processed agave gloop available on the market immediately detracts from “the premium high quality and work” that goes right into a craft tequila, O’Brien provides. Her pineapple nectar nogave syrup, alternatively—made with cooked chunks of the fruit and a mix of different sweeteners—makes use of all-natural substances which are extra complementary.
On the manufacturing facet, there’s a slow-growing effort to curb the exploitation of agave crops in Mexico. The Tequila Interchange Challenge created a “Bat Pleasant” certification program, which stipulates that 5 % of the agaves utilized in a model’s manufacturing have to be allowed to totally mature and flower. Podcaster Lou Financial institution additionally based SACRED (Saving Agave for Tradition, Recreation, Training, and Improvement), which raises cash to help rural agave-growing communities in Mexico, in keeping with the nonprofit’s web site.
Financial institution emphasizes that whereas most agave syrups out there within the States are extremely processed, it could be a mistake to write down off the whole class—particularly as a handful of smaller, family-run specialty growers have entered the market, partly via a program piloted by SACRED. Within the Mexican state of Hidalgo, the nonprofit is working to help households producing pulque, a milky agave spirit that predates tequila, and to develop a syrup created from the crops in these small-batch operations. “Each batch is exclusive and scrumptious and actual and true to the heritage of those communities,” Financial institution says. “So suggesting that every one agave syrup is industrial is throwing up one other roadblock to those pulque households, who have already got a tough time sustaining their cultural heritage.”
There’s additionally a rising variety of distillers seeking to produce agave spirits exterior of Mexico, which can alleviate among the burden on Mexico’s deserts. (Although, like Scotch in Scotland or bourbon within the U.S., Mexican legislation stipulates that tequila can solely be produced within the state of Jalisco and choose different Mexican municipalities.) Low-water succulents like agave are engaging in locations like California, the place the agriculture business makes use of 40 % of the state’s already tight water provide. To that finish, Pedro Wolfe, an editor at Tequila Raiders, mentioned the California Agave Council is without doubt one of the greatest teams investing in home agave manufacturing. And though “they’re nonetheless years away from really distilling spirits,” they’re rising agave now in hopes that they will enter the market throughout the subsequent decade.
We could also be a methods out from a full-fledged nogave revolution, however the sap of change is flowing. Each time a buyer stumbles over “nogave” on the Mírate menu, Reis takes the chance to coach—although he retains the syrup speak “quick and candy.”
“It’s dangerous for the visitors and dangerous for the setting,” he summarizes. “So we created our personal.”
