By: Roger Naylor
The agave farm at Castle Hot Springs resembles a garden of giant prehistoric flowers. Striking colors and distinctive rosette shapes hint at ancient mysteries. Like everything that grows in a harsh climate, agaves are uniquely adapted for survival. Yet few plants can make resilience and hardiness look so beautiful.
Agaves are known for their large thick leaves like fleshy swords that grow outward from a central crown. They are evergreen plants that can withstand extreme heat and are drought tolerant. Their fibrous leaves store water, protected from evaporation by a waxy coating. They can be stiff and rigid or swooped and curving. Agaves are succulents but often are as well-armed as an Arizona cactus. Many species have sharp spikes along leaf edges and a fierce terminal spine at the tip.
Despite their defenses, agaves have long served as a marketplace for Indigenous peoples. For thousands of years, Native Americans have extracted food, fiber, medicine, soap, and rope from these purposeful plants. They used the leaf fibers for thread and the big spine tip as a needle to sew with. The agave’s sweet sap could be used as a sugar substitute and its juice fermented into an intoxicating beverage known as pulque, which brings us to more current uses.
Today, the agave may be best known for the production of tequila, mezcal, and other agave liquors. This is what the desert tastes like.
One of the newest offerings to guests of Castle Hot Springs has also become a wildly popular activity. The Agave Spirits Tasting Class takes place in Bar 1896. Here some of those ancient desert mysteries are revealed.
The experience is the brainchild of mixologist Gavin Peña. It is not your standard tequila tasting class. In the warm afternoons, guests come in out of the sun to relax in the cool welcoming space of the bar. Here they can sip and savor rare and unique agave spirits while learning about the creation of each.
“We sample eight different spirits distilled from the agave,” says Peña. “That includes tequila, mezcal, and spirits distilled from agave in Mexico which cannot legally be called either. All have their own unique flavor profiles. We even pour an agave-based gin.”
While experiencing the rich tastes, guests learn about the distinctions of each spirit. Peña helps define tequila and mezcal, and what differentiates them. He also provides information on the agave life cycle. Plants can be started from seed or pups, and he explains how they are grown and tended, all the way through the distillation.
“Guests are very interested in learning the difference between mezcal and tequila,” says Peña. “They know mezcal is “the smokey one” but they want to know why. We start off by explaining that tequila is actually a specific type of mezcal. It can only be distilled from a single type of agave in five specific regions.”
Castle Hot Springs currently grows more than four acres of agaves, including 1,500 that were planted this year. Guests can visit the Agave Farm with a short hike. The Agave Trail, a wide gentle path rambling across saguaro-studded hills, connects the resort with the farm, where an abundance of desert royalty grows.
What you won’t see at the farm are agaves in bloom, although it is an impressive sight. The plant sends up a stalk that sprouts a mass of flowers, a veritable chandelier of blooms. But it also signals that the end is near. Agaves are monocarpic, meaning they flower and produce seeds only once, and then they die. When the mother agave dies, the stalk will topple, seeds will scatter and the cycle will begin again. Large agaves are often called century plants for their long growing period before their once-in-a-lifetime bloom. Of course, most agaves also produce ‘pups’—young plants on runners throughout their life. Keep an eye peeled as you hike through the desert around Castle Hot Springs and you’re likely to spot agave plants and dried stalks, as well as mature plants surrounded by pups.
“We have more than 15 different cultivars/varieties on the farm,” says Peña. “In the tasting, we like to offer a few agave spirits distilled from the same cultivar of agaves we are growing. In a way, the tasting connects them to the land.”
Castle Hot Springs has already perfected the farm-to-plate experience and now they are working on desert-to-glass. It is a chance to understand the natural world around us, how it can be utilized in a sustainable way. Learn even more when you sign up for the hour-long Agave Spirits Tasting Class.
And the straws at Bar 1896? They are made from agave, much kinder to the earth than the plastic variety.
“What fascinates me most about the plant is how all the cultivars taste so different,” says Peña. “Not only do cultivars have their own unique flavor profiles but the same cultivar grown in a different region will taste different. You can taste a Lechuguilla grown and distilled in Durango, Mexico and a Lechuguilla grown and distilled in Sonora, Mexico side by side and they will taste different. It’s a lot like fine wine with different grape varietals and terroir.”