Agave Spirits by Gary Paul Nabhan

Author:Gary Paul Nabhan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2023-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Over decades of visiting the Alamos region of the Sierra Madre Occidental, Gary has stumbled upon several distinctive, desert-adapted varieties of Agave rhodacantha in Mayo Indian rancherias and pueblos not far from the ruin of the old Yocogihua distillery. Two of the only three collections of this species recorded from Sonora are his herbarium sheets made from sites within an hour’s drive to the old distillery.

Could these be survivors taken from Rancho Yocogihua, where the plantations around the distillery once stood? Could they be remnants of old stock rescued by the last Mayo or Guarijio Indian families working at the Aldama-Sugich family ranch on the Arroyo Masiaca? Were they informally “repatriated” to the Indigenous cultivators and harvesters as the distillery fell into ruins? Could they be the living bridge to the San Antoneña and El Chino folk varieties that the Aldama family once grew for mezcal in southern Sonora?

Would it be worth gifting these folk varieties or landraces of rare agave to some maestro bacanorero—like Ramón Miranda Urrea and his son Eduardo Miranda—who make the best agave spirits in Sonora at their El Real de Alamos distillery? That vinata lies less than an hour’s drive from where the Yocogihua distillery once functioned. If Ramón and Eduardo chose to grow them for distillation and history’s sake, Sonora could regain its historic status of having several agave distillates—not just bacanora—in the marketplace.

The work to recover these lost agave varieties and return them to distillers has now begun. Expeditions to the Yocogihua region below the Sierra Madre of southern Sonora are in the planning stages. We cannot yet guarantee that you will taste a resurrected mezcal soon, but are sure it will happen.

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