Opinion | Forget Kendall Jenner’s tequila and try sotol, raicilla or bacanora – 3 lesser known agave spirits
- Tequila is famous, mescal is pretty well known, but there are other varieties of Mexican agave spirit out there
- From bacanora, with green apple and grass flavours, to sotol and ‘funky’ raicilla, we eye up tequila’s relatives as the US marks July 24, National Tequila Day
There’s a wide world of agave spirits out there.
Sticking to tequila is like only drinking cabernet sauvignon: a perfectly delicious decision, but you’ll be missing out on an array of options.
And you won’t have anything intriguing to bring to the conversation next time you’re having dinner with one-time tequila-makers George Clooney or Kendall Jenner.
Our first lesser-known category is bacanora, the closest relative to mescal on this list. While mescal is a broad category that can be made using any of more than 30 designated agave species, bacanora can be made only with yaquina, or Agave angustifolia, which is native to the Mexican state of Sonora.
Hot desert days and cold nights play a key role in bacanora’s flavour profile, bringing notes of green apple and herbaceous grass. Yes, terroir – the soil, climate and “sense of place” that impacts the taste of wine – is a thing in agave, too.
This makes perfect sense given that grapes attain this from developing over the span of a year, whereas agave generally takes from six to a whopping 35 years to reach maturity, giving it much more time to be affected by what it draws from the land. Bacanora is a wonderful exploration of this.
