Here are five things you probably don’t know about the agave plant. 1) It makes a really dramatic statement when potted in a Southwestern garden. All green and pointed, casting a slightly blue hew in the sun. 2) The nectar from the plant, dubbed “honey water,” has been used in Mexican dishes for centuries. You can get squeeze tubes of it in health stores now, like a trendy honey. 3) People used to make clothes out of the baked fibers extracted from the plant. 4) And they would roast and eat the heart of the plant, like a big, hearty artichoke. 5) Before Europeans showed up with the power of distillation, natives would ferment the heart of the agave by spitting into it (no kidding) and make a kind of beer with it. Cool. Gross, but cool.
Oh, and they use it to make mezcal and tequila. Tequila like Suerte.
Suerte is one of the newest brands to hit the tequila market. A couple of years ago, a Boulder, Colorado based duo partnered with a family-run distillery in the highlands of Jalisco, Mexico to produce, bottle, and market the family’s hand crafted, small batch tequila. Suerte has been slowly expanding the distribution of its three styles of tequila (Blanco, Reposado, and Anejo) ever since, and winning awards left and right in the process. Most notably, the Blanco won silver at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2013.
Like all high-end tequila, Suerte uses 100% blue agave, but the similarities stop there. The agave at Suerte’s distillery is harvested by hand, then roasted in brick ovens instead of being steamed in stainless steel. Then the agave is pressed, not shredded. The distillery uses micron filtering instead of charcoal filtering, and relies on gravity to power the filtration process, instead of pumps and motors. All of this painstaking care is taken to make sure the tequila retains the flavor of the agave, which has an earthy, downright herbal character. Think of good tequila as gin’s cousin from south of the Border. And Suerte is good tequila.