Agave is the plant that is used to make Mezcal and Tequila. We'll talk about Sotol here as well, but technically the sotol plant is not agave.
These Mexican spirits are made by taking the heart of the desert plants, baking them, then fermenting and distilling the sugars in the shredded pulp. While some people tend to use these spirits for shots, they are a wonderfully complex drink, meant for sipping.
Mezcal uses around 30 varieties of agave plant. After maturing over 7 to 14 years, the agave leaves are stripped to reveal the piña. Several of these are then placed into an oven pit and covered with earth to bake. This converts starches in the plant into sugars for fermentation and distillation. This cooking process also imparts the deep smoky character into mezcal.
Tequila is a particular type of mezcal, which uses only Blue Agave. It can only be made in specific areas around the city of Tequila and in the Los Altos (highlands) region of Jalisco. The piñas are baked in a traditional oven, leaving out the smoky quality. Piñas grown in the highlands produce a sweeter spirit, while the lowland plants give a more herbaceous flavour.
Sotol employs the same basic process as tequila, using the Dasylirion, ‘Desert Spoon’ or ‘Sotol’ plant. However, these plants are more vulnerable to pests, and the average yield of spirit per plant is about 1 litre, making sotol a difficult commercial product that’s harder to find outside of Mexico.
Each of these can be released as young spirit (plata or silver), or can be aged in wood for several months to a year (reposado) or 1 to 4 years (añejo) to create a smoother and more complex spirit.