One Brand is Betting Everything on Sotol, the Next Big Trend in Mexican Spirits

(Photos: Hacienda de Chihuahua)

Peruse the backbar at your local watering hole, and there’s a good chance you’ll find enough tequila bottles to fill out an entire liquor store. More often than not, these offerings hail from the state of Jalisco, Mexico. The area has done everything to popularize its now world-famous spirit to consumers of all ilk, many of whom began trading up for Oaxaca’s most famous export, mezcal, in the early 2020s. The arrangement worked for everyone. Tequila for the mainstream, mezcal for the niche liquor enthusiast crowd. For a time, the two spirits skipped along hand in hand, content as the two icons of Mexico’s acclaimed distillation scene.

But a new name has arrived at the bar, bringing with it a new region.

Allow us to introduce sotol, synonymous with, though not exclusive to, the northern state of Chihuahua. The characteristically grassy spirit has experienced a breakout over the past few years, garnering attention everywhere from Forbes to The New York Times. Some fans describe its bright, earthy flavor profile as a mishmash between gin and mezcal. Others have portrayed it as a “little cousin” of tequila. Though these comparisons are all true in their own way, the first thing to know about sotol is that it’s not a subvariety of tequila or mezcal, nor is it even made with agave.

We sat down with the team at Hacienda de Chihuahua to learn more about the past, present and future of this oft-misunderstood spirit. Launched by the Elias Madero family in 1996, Hacienda is widely recognized as an innovator in the industry, popularizing the spirit at a time when sotol was miscontrued not as a form of tequila, but as a form of illicit moonshine consumed by the “wrong sort” of people. Today, Hacienda is by far the biggest name in this fast-growing cateogry. And it’s clear that the team has set its sights firmly on the horizon.

“Sotol has everything it takes to become the next big Mexican spirit,” brand manager Maria Elias told us. “It’s unique, it has a story of its own, it’s wild harvested, it’s organic. It’s still not very well-known, but it’s going somewhere – and quickly. Just as tequila and mezcal evolved from something small into these big monsters of the industry, we think sotol has everything it takes to become that and more.” 

Inside the Hacienda

The story of sotol begins with dasylirion wheeleri, better known as desert spoon. A genus of plant independent from agave, the shrub is native to arid stretches of the southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, namely the states Chihuahua, Coahuila and Durango. The plant’s thin, leathery leaves resemble a cluster of hair exploding in every direction. From a distance, however, the first thing you’ll probably notice is its flowering stalk, a 10- to 15-foot-tall reminder of the plant’s origins in the asparagus family.

Elias explains that the shrub has been imbibed by humans for well over 900 years. The indigenous Rarámuri people of modern-day Chihuahua used the plant not only for food and fiber, but also in fermented beverages consumed during religious rituals. So begins the predictable history that played out all across Latin America in the 1500s. Spanish conquistadors arrived with distillation technology, turning a centuries-old tradition into a now centuries-old liquor that’s still being consumed to this day.

But sotol wasn’t so quick to make a name for itself. And when it finally did, it wasn’t in the best light. The spirit was illegal in Mexico between 1944 and 1994 due to a wrongly earned association with moonshining (put another way: The spirit was produced largely by rural countryfolk). Even within its home state, Elias says that sotol remained an unknown quantity to most consumers until relatively recently.

In 2002, sotol was granted a protected designation of origin by the Mexican government. Two years later, Hacienda de Chihuahua became the first brand to export the spirit.

If you ever have the pleasure of chatting with the Hacienda de Chihuahua team, you’ll notice that the word “first” comes up quite often. Hacienda was the first to market, the first to export, the first official distiller recognized on the market. Hacienda is so ingrained in the bedrock of its spirit that the brand owns the domain name for sotol.com.

Elias says that Hacienda’s core mission is to show that “sotol can be just as smooth, refined and complex as any other premium spirit.” To that end, the brand has done much to professionalize the process, arguably redefining what sotol can look like along the way.

The team treks into the Chihuahuan wilds every winter to harvest shrubs, which have so far eluded mass cultivation. The plants are lugged back to the distillery, steamed via indirect heat and fermented with a combination of Champagne and wine yeast. Double distillation occurs in a set of towering column stills. From a technology perspective, the process has a lot more in common with the industrial-grade tequila facilities of Jalisco than the mezcal palenques of rustic Oaxaca — and that’s exactly the point. If a sotol boom rears its head down the road, no distiller would be able to accommodate skyrocketing demand quite like Hacienda.

The brand is equally unrivaled when it comes to quantity. Unlike the vast majority of competing sotol distillers, which tend to release one or maybe two offerings, Hacienda boasts nearly 10. Lined up side by side, its catalog is a rainbow spectrum of colors and flavors. In addition to its Plata, Reposado and Añejo, customers can purchase the triple-distilled Platinum or the high-proof Rustico, seemingly designed for drinkers of vodka and mezcal, respectively. Dive deeper and you’ll find a five-year Extra Aged brimming with maple notes and not one but two sotol-based liqueurs. The distiller even offers an “Oro Puro” expression with 24-karat gold flakes suspended inside the bottle (“people gift it as a present,” Elias says).

This is, no doubt, another sign of Hacienda’s A-list aspirations. From the spirits skeptic to the all-knowing agave nerd, any kind of consumer could find a bottle on the brand’s website that fits their needs. We’re particularly fond of the flagship Plata, which has this wonderfully unique banana note that works great inside a highball.

Other drinkers seem to agree. The team says that interest in sotol has reached never-before-seen heights over the past couple of years, thanks in part to an assortment of unlikely benefactors. In 2023, Grammy Award-winning musician Lenny Kravitz became the first celebrity to get in on the sotol game; two years later, “Scream” star Matthew Lillard followed suit.

Elias says that her brand has been fielding questions left and right at conventions like Bar Convent Brooklyn, where bartenders have used the spirit in creative twists on the Negroni, Ranch Water and Paloma. Sotol’s popularity in the mixology world — especially in those latter two cocktails — hints at a tequila-sized elephant in the room. America’s fastest-growing spirit has been plagued by its fair share of lawsuits, regulatory drama and plateauing sales since its peak in 2023, giving way to vocal dissatisfaction from all sides of the community. Elias suspects that an alternative is long overdue.

“I think that the mezcal and tequila markets have become overcrowded. Sotol is a very good alternative for people who are looking for something different. And people are looking for something different. Now that Mexican spirits are having their moment, people are beginning to look into sotol with fresh eyes.” 

This is, we suspect, only half of the story. Though sotol is often characterized as the “third” Mexican spirit beyond tequila and mezcal, the truth isn’t quite as hierarchical. Mexico is a country rich in distillation heritage, one that’s splintered into dozens of regional recipes that make use of everything from nixtamalized corn to fermented pineapple husks. Pox, credited to the Tzotzil Mayans of the Chiapas highlands, boasts a flavor halfway between a toasted whiskey and a caramel-forward rum. Xtabentún, a delicious liqueur made from anise seeds and honey, tastes like a viral, post-Aperol TikTok sensation that never was. Travel to the state of Sonora for bacanora, a savory subvariety of mezcal, or to Michoacán for a vegetal blast of charanda. On paper, all of these spirits have the makings of a bona fide hit north of the border, if only consumers were familiar with the basics.

So why has sotol been singled out from the crowd as the next big thing in Mexican alcohol?

Rogelio Mercado, regional director at Hacienda de Chihuahua, chimes in with a theory. “All Americans ask, ‘Where does sotol come from?’  So we explain the story. And the one thing that always surprises people is that it’s wild-harvested. It’s the most unique thing sotol has going for it compared to other Mexican spirits.”

The spirit’s wild-grown attitude has its charms. For one, the scorching heat of the spring and summer means that Hacienda only harvests its plants during a two-week period in the dead center of winter. When the team finds its way across a plant, they try their best to leave the roots intact. The Mexican government has strict restrictions on the quantity and quality of desert spoon used for commercial purposes, as the plant is far more time-consuming to replant than agave. The process is, quite literally, down to earth. A perfect backstory in an era where sustainability and health consciousness have ignited the cultural zeitgeist.

The last and perhaps simplest explanation for the “sotol moment” is that Hacienda has put in a lot of legwork to platform the category. The brand has been available to international audiences for over two decades, a good deal longer than most tequila brands currently dominating the market. Hacienda has experimented with countless recipes appealing to countless consumers, a shotgun approach that has encouraged word of mouth among the perfect demographic — everybody. Along the way, it seems that Hacienda has piqued the interest not only of buyers, but of distillers who are now flooding the industry with a newfound confidence in this once-niche spirit.

30 years after sotol was ushered out of prohibition, Hacienda’s efforts are finally paying off.