California Tequila? An Interview With the Farmers Betting Big on US-Made Agave Spirits

Perched snugly in the Mayacamas Mountains between the wine-growing behemoths of Sonoma County and Napa Valley, you’ll find fields of agave destined for use in the next generation of American-produced agave spirits.

You’ll also find Stargazer Spirits, an operation on around 125 acres run by husband and wife Laurie and Adam Goldberg.

The Goldbergs are members of the California Agave Council, a recently formed group of farmers and distillers who realized the potential similarities in climate and terroir that exist between parts of California and agave spirits capitals like Jalisco, Michoacán, and Oaxaca, Mexico. The Council is a small, tight-knit group, albeit one that has already been working with the likes of the University of California, Davis, to help establish a $100,000 agave research fund for producers in the area.

Tequila can’t be called “tequila” nor mezcal “mezcal” unless it has been grown and produced in one of a handful of Mexican states.

But as tequila continues to balloon in popularity, several international producers have begun to experiment with agave spirits of their own.

Alongside unrelated upstarts in South Africa and Australia, the California Agave Council is part of a burgeoning trend of non-Mexican agave spirits producers who can tinker with all sorts of new varietals and methods that might not necessarily fly within Mexico’s tightly regulated tequila industry.

We sat down with Adam Goldberg of Stargazer Spirits to understand the ethos of California-grown agave. Admittedly, Goldberg and his peers are years away from large-scale distillation and are for now just tinkering with the exciting possibilities of what might come to fruition.

 “What we’re doing is experimenting, seeing what works,” Goldberg said.

It’s Not Tequila, It’s Something New

Flipping through an in-flight magazine on a trip out of Hong Kong, Goldberg stumbled upon an article detailing Mexico’s mezcal boom. He was taken aback by how similar the Oaxacan landscape looked to his homeplace in California.

“This looks just like our property,” Goldberg thought.

Goldberg had been a fan of mezcal since he was first introduced to the spirit through Del Maguey decades ago. He soon realized that the similarities between Oaxaca and California weren’t just superficial.

Agave can be grown readily without pesticides in many parts of California and needs only minimal water input, an advantage in California’s notoriously drought-prone environment. The Goldberg’s property, which is located in the limestone-heavy bowl of a former volcano, turned out to be the perfect spot.

“We’re up high enough that we get air from the ocean to the west,” Goldberg said. “A lot of wind, great for dealing with frost.” 

In total, Stargazer currently has around 30 varietals of agave in the ground. That number includes several variants of blue weber agave, mezcal staples like agave espadin, cuishe, cupreata and durangensis, and even some niche varietals rarely used in spirits like agave desmettiana.

If you’re familiar with how agave is typically grown, Stargazer’s biodiversity-centric approach might seem a bit odd.

The majority of agave spirits that go to market are single varietals. Though this is most evident with tequila, which can only be made from blue weber agave, it remains equally true for many mezcals, as well.

The popularity of monocultures within the agave industry has sparked spirited debate, in part because it makes crops much more susceptible to disease.

Goldberg hopes to take a different approach.

“There’s a tradition in Sonoma county, dating back to when the first Italian settlers came out in the 19th century,” Goldberg explained. “They just planted a bunch of grapes, and whatever came out in a given year they’d bottle and call ‘field blends.’”

Analogous to a mezcal ensamble, Goldberg’s idea of an agave field blend was partly born out of necessity; his largest plants are still three to four years from maturity, and he doesn’t know which will perform well in the Californian climate.

But this experimental approach is also the potential gateway to something entirely new.

“There’s a lot of freedom,” Goldberg said. “Think of craft beer in the United States; boundaries were able to be pushed from the English and other brewing traditions.” 

Politics of Non-Mexican Agave Spirits

 The importance of tradition and heritage is quite important within the world of Mexican agave spirits. Goldberg hopes to come onto the landscape with as much humility as possible but admitted to some trepidation when he started out. 

“When you’re talking about a family that’s been growing agave and distilling spirit for six, seven generations in Mexico, no one knows the process better than them,” Goldberg said. “And there’s a cultural context for what they’re doing which we just don’t have.”

The politics of non-Mexican-produced agave spirits are contested, but it’s also a field that has rarely been explored. In many ways, that lack of exploration is exactly the point here.

Tequila’s designation of origin in Mexico has given birth to an interesting dynamic; since California agave spirits can’t be called tequila or mezcal, they are allowed to become wholly new spirits of their own. Stargazer’s field blend methodology — and eventual ability to cook, ferment and distill using a variety of approaches — represents a departure from what could be possible within Mexico’s tightly regulated system for the classification of agave spirts. Time will only tell what new techniques may be born from that departure.

Goldberg has been working in collaboration with a number of Mexican growers and producers and says that he’s received tremendous support.

“There’s been a lot of appreciation for the idea of broadening the base of where agave is grown, to decrease the growing pressure on the Mexican side of the industry so long as it’s done respectfully,” said Goldberg.

Stargazer on the Horizon

Today, the Goldbergs only have about six of their 125 acres planted with agave. They’re three years away from seeing any of those crops grow to maturity and are yet to build the stills that will allow them to convert their agave into liquid gold.

As the California Agave Council continues exploring what’s possible in its state, Stargazer Spirits will expand its crop and keep up the experimentation. 

Cliché as it might sound, the horizon for these kinds of spirits is limitless. The untapped potential for new growing methods, distillation techniques and terroir could give birth to any variety of new flavors.

“You know, we were in Santa Barbara a few months ago,” Goldberg said. “On the median strips between the two sides of the road, there were unirrigated blue weber agaves. They were growing beautifully.”

We’re yet to see how easily vast fields of agave might grow in California. We’re also yet to see how it will actually taste.

It’ll take time. Three years from now, we may very well be looking at a new classification of spirits in the United States.

If you want to check out their work, you can find Stargazer Spirits on Instagram.

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