Philadelphia’s Siembra Spirits Debuts 100% Blue Agave Tequila

“At Siembra Spirits, our guiding ethos is the future of tradition, restoring and preserving the historic flavors that make tequila and mezcal so distinctive,” says Suro. “Ancestral is a bold step toward what we believe is the future of agave spirits—from-scratch, hand-crafted spirits that embrace history and sustainability.”

To create this unusual tequila, Suro facilitated a long-overdue collaboration between exceptional mezcaleros, the Vieyra family, and tequileros, the Rosales family, who converged in El Arenal, Jalisco, a lowlands region where tequila is produced. Working side by side, they used time-honored production methods dating back to vino mezcal de Tequila, or “mezcal from the region of Tequila,” which have largely been forgotten as tequila production has become industrialized and grown to favor efficiency over quality.

Distillation and Production of Ancestral

Hand-harvested agave hearts, or piñas, are roasted in a hand-dug pit oven six feet deep for no less than 113 hours, where heat and smoke yield deeply flavorful fruits via methods that have not been used in tequila production for more than a century.

They are then hand-macerated with wooden mallets to release just enough of their now perfectly roasted juices and distinctive agave flavor.

Bagasse fermentation takes place in oak and brick, and the distilled juice rests in demijohns capped the traditional way, with corn cobs that allow just enough oxygen to interact with the spirit as it stabilizes.

The result is an extraordinary spirit of distinctive depth and character and richly historic flavor that is unlike any other tequila available today.

Jimadores

Siembra Spirits is unusually attentive to the welfare of the jimadores, family farmers who care for and harvest agave for the production of spirits.

The carefully trained jimadores work with heavy blades called coas to precisely trim each massive piña, the heart of the agave plant (which can weigh up to 200 pounds), for harvest and roasting before distillation.

Siembra Spirits advocates for sustainable, traditional practices in the industry, as well as better pay and effective healthcare for the jimadores, documenting their quality of life and working to find solutions that will preserve their hard-won expertise, a critical component of exceptional agave spirits.

Bat-Pollinated Agave

Ancestral joins a small group of tequila producers in working with the Tequila Interchange Project (TIP, a nonprofit organization and consumer advocacy group for agave spirits), the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the famed “Bat Man of Mexico,” Rodrigo Medellín, to protect local bats, the valuable pollinators that make the production of spirits from night-blooming agave plants possible.

By law, “100%” tequila must be produced exclusively from blue agave, in a specific region in Mexico. Flowering is the only way for blue agave to pollinate and reproduce naturally, but growing a flower makes the plant unfit for tequila production, so most growers rely on clones to maintain a steady supply.

However, clones are too genetically similar to withstand blights and other natural enemies, so natural, pollinated reproduction is critical to the plants’ long-term survival.

Bat-friendly tequila producers, working with TIP and UNAM, humanely trap the bats and test the pollen on their fur to track their migratory patterns, then feed them a nutritionally sound meal and release them back into the night to pollinate more agave.

Caring for bats and encouraging natural pollination contributes to the evolution of more robust, hearty agave for this generation and the next.