Mexico’s wild agave plants are disappearing — will mezcal follow?

NPR’s Scott Detrow talks with The Washington Post‘s investigative reporter Kevin Sieff about the shortening supply of agave plants in Mexico.

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Cocktail drinkers in the U.S. have fallen more and more in love with a smoky spirit from Mexico called mezcal. From the mezcal margarita to the mezcal mule, it’s a favorite in American bars. And according to Mexico’s Mezcal Regulatory Commission, demand for the spirit shot up 700% between 2015 and 2022. Now, unlike whiskey or vodka, which are produced from farm crops, the most top shelf mezcal is made from wild agave. And wild agave is becoming harder to find, in large part because of how long it takes to grow and mature. Eight of the wild species that make mezcal are disappearing.

Washington Post international investigative correspondent Kevin Sieff recently traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, to report on the shortage and what it means for Mexican distillers and American producers. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

KEVIN SIEFF: Good to be here.

DETROW: I want to start with the thing that blew me away in this story, and that’s just how long agave plants take to grow and mature. You’re talking about upwards of, you know, 20 or 30 years before they’re ready to be harvested and turned into mezcal. I mean, if one of these plants started to grow at the very beginning of this global mezcal boom, it would be nowhere near ready to harvest and turn into mezcal at this point.

SIEFF: Yeah, that’s right. And I think that that sort of gets at just how unprepared the mezcal industry as such was for this boom. You know, these are plants that take, as you say, decades to flower, decades to mature. And decades ago, mezcal wasn’t a drink that anyone really was consuming in the U.S. or in Europe. And so the people who both grow the agaves that make mezcal and the people who distill mezcal are sort of trying to catch up.

DETROW: Let’s take a step back. For people who have not tried it…