This article was written by Nathan Vanderklippe and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 1, 2026.
As typical crop yields shrink in the face of drought, growing and distilling agave may be a sustainable solution because of its ability to transform dry earth into the fat, sugar-laden piña hearts
Humans have made the agave plant an object of prickly obsession for thousands of years.
For ancient Mesoamericans, it was a civilization-building source of fibre and food. For early European explorers, it was an object of curiosity, transported home and given new places to grow in monastery gardens.
For scientists, it continues to be a source of biological fascination, equipped with three different methods for reproduction and an unusual type of photosynthesis. And for drinkers, it is the plant base for tequila, which has overtaken whisky sales in the U.S. and is now challenging vodka for boozy dominance.
Now, for a small group of California dreamers, farmers and distillers, agave – and its remarkable ability to transform dry earth into the fat, sugar-laden piña hearts at the plant’s core – is a source of hope in parched times. As water shortages force the state’s irrigation-dependent agricultural sector to contemplate the fallowing of up to a 10th of its fields, a hunt is on to find a crop that can flourish without floods of artificial hydration.
In California’s Central Valley, almonds require roughly 125 centimetres of water a year, and pistachios need 100. Agave needs six centimetres – or maybe, even less. It is “crazy water-tolerant and drought-tolerant,” said Stuart Woolf, who farms southwest of Fresno.
Mr. Woolf is the overseer of a generational family operation that, today, extends across 30,000 acres and supplies roughly one in five tomatoes used by ketchup-maker Heinz in the U.S. Its success depends heavily on irrigation supplies that are expected to diminish greatly in the future. Without some major changes, Mr. Woolf will no longer be able to grow crops on thousands of his acres, provoking existential questions.
“We’re on a glide path where we’re only going to be able to farm about 60 per cent of our land. So I have to find what do I do with the other 40 per cent?” he says.
One solution lies in installing solar panels in fields, which can generate revenue without requiring local water. Another option could be growing guayule, a desert shrub that can be used to make rubber. But building a facility to process rubber is unlikely to be a small investment. Besides, “rubber is probably more of a commodity than a nice bottle of tequila,” Mr. Woolf says.
He can’t use the name “tequila” for anything he later chooses to distill from his agave, however – that name is protected in Mexico. So, too, is “mezcal.”
But he can grow the plant, and his state recently designated “California Agave Spirits” as an official label. Mr. Woolf has now planted hundreds of acres, making him California’s largest grower. “For me, looking at a world where I don’t have enough water – this is a natural thing to lean into,” he said.
California has already built itself into a major force in global booze, expanding its wine industry from a small regional producer to the world’s fourth-largest, behind Italy, France and Spain. Its climate and geography brought new character to an established product.
Mr. Woolf hopes agave can tread a similar path.
“I’ve done a lot of research sitting in airport bars talking to people. And honestly, every time there’s this level of enthusiasm – like, this is the greatest idea. You’re growing a drought-tolerant crop. And why wouldn’t we have a spirit that’s different from Mexico?”
Traditionally, tequila is made from Blue Weber agave, while mezcal comes from Espadín agave. Both are plants with established lineages and distinct features: Blue Weber, true to its name, is identifiable by the cobalt hue of its leaves. Espadín distinguishes itself with blood-red tips. The distilled spirit it yields has a flavour, too, that is distinct from tequila.
Then, there is Yolo, the plant with an uncertain pedigree that has become the foundation for California’s nascent industry. Not even Craig Reynolds, the man who is arguably the state’s agave pioneer, can tell you where it came from.
“I got it from a guy in Riverside who said he got it in Mexico and it was Blue Weber. But it turned out not to be,” said Mr. Reynolds.
He dubbed it Yolo for the county where he began growing a test plot in 2014.
The rows of agave there form an unlikely experiment, presided over by an unlikely figure. Mr. Reynolds is an affable former political staffer to California state Democrats. These days, he navigates farm fields in his Toyota Tacoma, several bottles of spirits perched on the backseat for impromptu tasting sessions. He developed an interest in agave by accident, as part of a charity project nearly two decades ago that involved making tequila.
The experience planted a thought that maybe agave was an appropriate crop for the California environment. When a friend offered a plot of land, he decided to try.
He built his own pit to cook piñas – the first step to release their sugars before distillation – the traditional way. He imported basic tools and vocabulary from Mexico, such as the round-headed coa hoe used to chop down plants.
Any road trip through California makes it obvious that agave can grow in the state, where the Mexican community has planted it as a decorative element for years. What Mr. Reynolds didn’t know – and what he and others continue to learn – is how to nurture fields of it.
Full answers have not yet been established to basic questions: What time of year is best to plant? How much water is required? What will happen to plants in low-lying areas susceptible to frost? How long will they take to mature? How much will they yield?
Those uncertainties inform what is likely to be the most important question of all: Is there money to be made in California agave?
Early signs, however, look good. In Mexico, it typically takes seven years to grow a 30-kilogram agave piña. In California, Mr. Woolf harvested an 84-kilogram piña in four years that had 60 per cent more sugar content than what is common in Mexico. That suggests it might be possible to distill four times the bottles per acre in California.
“The technical challenge is how to accelerate growth to become a more profitable enterprise,” said Josué Medellín-Azuara, a University of California, Merced, professor who studies water management and sustainable agro-ecosystems.
Labour costs in California are far higher than those in Mexico and mechanical agave harvesters are not yet commercially available, although work has begun to develop that technology.
“But to me, it looks very promising. I personally would invest in it if I could,” said Prof. Medellín-Azuara.
Interest has already begun to spread outside U.S. borders. Mr. Reynolds said the director of agriculture operations from Jose Cuervo has paid a visit from Guadalajara, Mexico, to see his plants.
Mr. Woolf, meanwhile, has been chatting with Revival Stillworks in Sidney, B.C., which designs distilleries across North America. Revival co-founder Brandon Fry has spent the past year researching tequila, the size and type of equipment required, and how much it might all cost to set up.
Revival is now working on two larger California distilleries, “and then a number of people have contacted us about smaller distilleries,” Mr. Fry said.
“We do believe that it’s going to be fairly popular.”
Those who are optimistic suggest California farmers could plant tens of thousands, or perhaps 100,000, acres of agave. This would be a hugely ambitious expansion, although modest compared with the state’s 710,000 acres of grapes and 1.5 million acres of almonds. (More than 300,000 acres of agave are grown in Mexico for tequila.)
Less clear is what use Californians could find for agave. Current levels of interest suggest a surge in output that could exceed distillation capacity, while relatively limited production capacity would mean “the spirits themselves are going to be very expensive for the foreseeable future,” said Clayton Szczech, a sociologist and author of A Field Guide to Tequila.
That’s not to mention the difficulty of making something people want to drink. “Fermenting agave is very different than fermenting other sugar sources,” Mr. Szczech said, adding that those in California are in a different environment, “where people haven’t been doing this for hundreds of years.”
Other products may also emerge. Agave, like corn, could be used to make biofuels. Its inulin may have value as an additive with the potential to sweeten food and improve mouth-feel.
“If it can be grown, California agribusiness will find a way to make it profitable,” Mr. Szczech said.
Whether the transformation of agave into fuel or booze actually cuts water use remains to be seen.
But there is a historical resonance to a drought-stricken state turning to agave, a plant that has helped humans “live in these rugged environments for 10,000 years,” Mr. Szczech said.
In many ways, though, agave is bringing California into unknown territory. Yolo agave yields a spirit that tastes different from both tequila and mezcal. The plant may, in fact, be a hybrid between Blue Weber and Espadín.
Which creates another question that doesn’t yet have a good answer: “What is a California agave spirit? How is it different? And what does it have to offer to the wider world of spirits?” asks Henry Tarmy, a founder of Ventura Spirits, a California craft distillery.
Ventura has begun to explore some of what that could mean. A penca spirit that is made from agave leaves yields a clear distillation with an intense floral character. A liqueur fashioned from agave aguamiel, the sweetened liquid extracted from cooked piñas, is a coffee-coloured concoction, sweet with notes of caramel and cacao. It’s the farthest thing from a margarita or the tequila-lime-salt combination that most people associate with agave.
“It steers headfirst into adventure,” says Hans Galindo, who works in the Ventura tasting room.
“Because we’re not making tequila, we don’t necessarily have to stay within the standards of tequila.”
Maybe, he says, it’s a taste of what California can do.
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