The light is still young; a new day has just been born. The day seems stunned and not quite ready to begin. The high desert wind blows constantly—without tenacity you will die here—this inferno of parched landscape, this temple of torment. Life either avoids the daytime sun or powers down to survival mode. Rain comes infrequently but resuscitates all who can wait.
The sotol is one of those tenacious regional plants that choose to live in harsh conditions—succulents they’re called. Conservators of moisture. This means life on the edge, subsistence on the scarcest of nutrients. No excess, no waste, efficient, lean, and all-business. Some believe this life form lacks beauty, even represses it. They’re wrong. In springtime, sotol shoots up a glorious shaft of delicate flowers, unmatched in elegance, to dominate the skyline.
If you’ve ever been to West Texas, you’ve seen sotol. It’s an evergreen plant that grows in a large symmetrical mound called a rosette. Around a central “heart,” it sports long sharp spikes, like blades, that attach around a shortened, central stem. In the sotol, unlike the yucca, each blade is lined on either side with deadly serrations that easily cut through flesh. With maturity, the plants will eventually grow a small woody trunk. Sotols come in both male and female versions, requiring pollinators for reproduction. Once mature, sotols will send up a 9-15 ft. stock in early summer bearing a 2-3 ft. spike of exquisite yellowish flowers. Plants typically flower only once every few years.
Except for botanists and plant nerds, there’s much confusion about what this shrub is. At the flesh-and-blood level, ordinary folks often think sotol is a cactus. It is not. Others notice its spiky dagger-like leaves and declare it a yucca. Not so. Still others take a look at it and insist it must be in the agave family. Nope. The current cease-fire in academic classification wars places sotol in the asparagus family (Asparagaceae). Taking it a step further, sotol is found in the genus Dasylirion. Dasylirionis a grouping of North American plants (20-some species), all native to Mexico with the ranges of 3 species also extending into the south-western United States, including Texas. While D. texanum is found in the Texas Hill Country, D. leiphyllum grows in the Trans-Pecos. The third type, D. wheelieri, is found in far West Texas.
Distinguishing among these sotols requires something on the order of a mother’s love, but here’s a simple comparison:
D. texanum is known as the Texas Sotol, or Green Sotol. Not surprisingly, it is a distinctly pale green color. Some plants, particularly in very dry areas, are significantly smaller than the other species (leaves 2.5- 3 inches long).
D. leiophyllum is found in New Mexico (as well as Mexico) in addition to the Trans-Pecos. It is commonly referred to as the Smooth Leaved Sotol. The plant is just as viciously spiny as any of the others—so much for common names. It is pale green too.
D. wheeleri is dubbed the Blue Sotol, or Desert Spoon. If a leaf is removed in its entirety the base of the leaf is stiff enough and shaped to spoon peanut butter out of a jar. The plant is a bluish-green color.
As you might imagine, past generations have used sotol creatively for many purposes. In its most primitive form, the heart of the plant was baked and then pounded into chewy patties that could be dried and stored. Sotol hearts have even been used as fodder for cattle during droughts. Evidence has been found in the Lower Pecos archeological region that sotol seeds were also eaten by early man. The leaves, after treatment to remove sharp edges, were used for everything from making foot sandals, ropes, and twine to weaving baskets and thatching roofs. Woody flower stalks were often used as walking sticks and weapons, like spears and arrow shafts. But perhaps the most sophisticated use of the sotol plant was to make liquor.
In Mexico, ancient troughs cut into stone (with discarded sotol remains nearby) are thought to be where ancient people produced the sotol drink as far back as 9,000 years ago. Still a common drink in Mexico, it’s the “state drink” of the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Durango, and Coahuila (more on this later). It’s only been until relatively recently that sotol (the beverage) has been distilled with commercial success in the U.S. In terms of bragging rights, this is still a controversy between Texas and Mexico. Here’s the story:
As an M.B.A. student at the University of Texas at Austin, a former marine pilot named Brent Looby befriended two other veterans, Judson Kauffman, and Ryan Campbell. As could only happen in Texas, the three amigos pitched, as a graded business plan to win over investors, distilling sotol liquor as a business. They decided to put the plan in action. Without benefit of ancestral knowledge passed down by word-of-mouth, the trio struggled mightily to discover the secrets of sotol. However, persistence eventually paid off. In 2017, the men began selling Desert Door Texas Sotol, but as stated in a recent New Yorker Magazine article, it was touch-and-go for much of the way.
“We’re under the cover of dusk, jumping over people’s fences off the highway and ripping plants out of the ground to teach ourselves how to do this. The first few goes—oh, my God, they were just so amazingly foul,” Looby said. “There’s no YouTube videos on how to do this.”
The international relations part of this story comes from the fact that under Mexican law, a spirit can be labelled “sotol” only if it is produced in the three Mexican states of—you guessed it—Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango. So how did our M.B.A. students-turned-entrepreneurs escape legal trouble? As far back as 1994, as part of NAFTA, the U.S. has agreed to honor the so-called “designations of origins” (labelling rights) for the Mexican spirit of tequila and its cousin, mezcal. In 2020 the trade deal was renegotiated, and this time initial drafts of the document included protection for sotol, along with two other Mexican liquors. Then state senator John Cornyn was a strong proponent of the virtues of sotol and, in a Senate Committee on Finance hearing, recommended it to all his legislative colleagues. As it turned out, the body politic wanted to promote a rising Texas industry, and thus, the protective provision was struck from the final agreement!
Today, Desert Door Distillery in Driftwood, Texas, produces Texas sotol liquor, very similar to agave-based spirits like tequila, mezcal, bacanora, and raicilla. According to the aforementioned magazine article, hard feelings still fester in Mexico against this transgression of the north. Simply, the process involves taking harvested hearts of the sotol plants to the distillery south of Austin. The hearts (with leaves removed) look something like a pineapple and are called “pinas.” These pinas are steamed, then pressed to produce a juice which is placed in copper pots for distillation. The result is a spirit much lighter on the pallet than the more smokey tasting tequila. Distillery owners are careful to sustainably harvest the sotol plant, leaving the roots intact to grow back once again. By comparison, in making mezcal or tequila, agave plants are cut down completely before being distilled. Desert Door has also launched a nonprofit arm of the business called Wild Spirit Wild Places, with the broader purpose of restoring and preserving wild lands.
This is merely the latest twist on a very old story. The sotol plant has played an important part in the lives of countless peoples of the desert, not to mention wildlife, for many generations. While debates may rage about naming rights, the fact is these plants have grown in Texas for just as long as they’ve grown in Mexico. And Tequila already dominates U.S. sales as the signature spirit from Mexico. Maybe it’s time for Tequila’s little brother to come out of the dark and make itself known throughout America. We know not where a little raft of hope could carry it. Taking an old practice and updating it to modern and sustainable standards cannot be a bad thing. The Graduate School of Business at U.T. Austin can be justifiably proud of the creativity and perseverance of these three Texans. Hook ‘em Horns!
By Larry Gfeller