South African Agave Spirit

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="044785a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>DeLancey Direct</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="DeLancey Direct"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id65.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Products from Countries Represented by D"><U>Products from Countries Represented by DeLancey Direct</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id72.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Best of Class Suppliers"><U>Best of Class Suppliers</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id75.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Meandering the Mosel"><U>Meandering the Mosel</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id76.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sound of Music"><U>Sound of Music</U></A>   |   <B>South African Agave Spirit</B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>South African Agave Spirit</I></div> <bR> <div> <B>Agave Distillers make blue-agave spirit just outside Graaff-Reinet, South Africa</B></div> <div>  </div> <div> <B>S. African drink takes a shot at tequila market</B></div> <div> By John Murphy</div> <div> BALTIMORE SUN</div> <div>  </div> <div> GRAAFF-REINET, South Africa -- It's the fiery alcohol that might bring to mind drunken college nights, salt-covered hands and some oh-so-terrible mornings-after, but tequila, above all else, is Mexico's national drink.</div> <div> The spirit is as much a part of the Mexican landscape as the sun, a source of pride that is controlled so tightly under law that no one outside of one small part of Mexico is allowed to produce it.</div> <bR> <div> But thousands of miles from Mexico, a tiny distillery in a lonely valley of South Africa hopes to bring an end to Mexico's monopoly over the multibillion-dollar tequila market.</div> <bR> <div> Agave Distillers Ltd., operating out of a single white farm building, is producing a spirit it promises looks, smells and tastes like top-shelf tequila. In fact, it is distilled from the same blue agave plant used to make the Mexican drink. But you won't find anyone at Agave Distillers calling their spirit "tequila"; tequila is a trade name fiercely guarded by Mexico in the way France protects champagne, Spain its sherry and Portugal its port.</div> <bR> <div> Mexico, of course, is not too happy about this South African spirit trying to take a bite out of its tequila market. Mexicans have dismissed it as nothing better than a fake, hardly comparable to the cheapest of their tequilas.</div> <div> It will be up to the drinkers in the United States, who consume 80 percent of the world's tequila, to decide.</div> <div> The first shipments of the South African spirit called Agava Sunrise, available in silver and gold brands, are expected to start arriving on liquor store shelves in the United States this year. Its prospects look good.</div> <div> "It's already causing a stir," says Keith McLachlan, director of Agave Distillers.</div> <bR> <div> In the late 1990s, a blight wiped out about one-third of the blue agave crop in the state of Jalisco in Mexico, where most of the world's tequila is produced, driving down production and causing tequila prices to skyrocket.</div> <div> The blight hit just as demand was increasing when tequila became the hip drink to slam down with salt and lemon or mix into a margarita.</div> <bR> <div> Mexican distillers have been scrambling to make up for shortages ever since. The blue agave plant was in such high demand recently that there were reports of rustlers stealing them from farms.Producers started blending agave spirit with cane sugar alcohol to deal with the crisis, which might last for at least a few more years. The agave plant can take as long as 10 years to mature before it can be harvested to make tequila.</div> <bR> <div> But thousands of miles away in the middle of South Africa's brutal desert plains known as the Karoo, two South African brothers saw an answer to the tequila industry's woes. The blue agave plant thrives here. According to local lore, the first agave plants arrived in South Africa as ballast on Portuguese ships returning from South America in the 1800s.</div> <bR> <div> The plant with the thick, almost rubbery, green spiked leaves lines the highways, grows as border markers between farms, gets chopped up during droughts for cattle fodder and stops erosion on hillsides.</div> <div> Keith McLachlan and his brother, Roy, believed the plant also could be a moneymaker. They opened a distillery and set out to produce a tequilalike alcohol that could quench the world's thirst.It took some time to get the recipe right, but the brothers arrived at a product they say can stand beside the world's best tequila.</div> <bR> <div> One reason they're so confident is that they modeled their product on Jose Cuervo, the world's best-selling tequila. Each batch of Agava Sunrise is chemically matched to taste like Jose Cuervo, the brothers say.</div> <div> "In blind tasting, we've never come last," says Roy McLachlan, managing director of the distillery. "We are usually second or third of six products. We've got good ratings."</div> <bR> <div> The Mexican government has been less kind in its reviews of the South African upstart's drink.</div> <div> "Even the best quality of their spirits tastes too much like alcohol," reports Alberto Aura, spokesman for the Embassy of Mexico in South Africa. "It had a very rough agave flavor, but definitely not tequila."</div> <bR> <div> What's more, the Mexicans say, the blue agave plant known as the Agave americana used by the McLachlan brothers is not the same species found in Mexican tequila. In Mexico, the Agave tequilana Weber azul is the only species allowed to be used in tequila production.</div> <bR> <div> "Agave Distillers cannot be considered as a threat to Mexican tequila, because the South African product is not tequila," Aura says. "Besides, South African production is insignificant, representing 3 percent of Mexico's tequila production."  Even so, the McLachlan brothers say just winning a fraction of the world's tequila market -- a $6 billion industry, they estimate -- is nothing to scoff at.</div> <bR> <div> Their headquarters is just outside the town of Graaff-Reinet, a quaint community of Victorian mansions and whitewashed cottages along the bend in the Sundays River in Eastern Cape province. If you didn't know the McLachlan brothers were distilling alcohol here, you would think you had stumbled on a top-secret biochemical weapons center.</div> <bR> <div> There's no welcome sign out front, just a long list of warnings on a cheerless metal entrance gate: "Stop! No guns. No cell phones. No cameras. No alcohol." "We like to keep people guessing," explains Roy McLachlan.</div> <div> But the secret is out in town. At Graaff-Reinet's restaurants, waiters proudly offer complimentary shots of what they call their locally produced "tequila."</div> <bR> <div> It's more than just another drink in this economically depressed region of sheep farmers. It just might bring some spark into the town. Agave Distillers employs 40 people, making it one of the largest industries other than the town government. "A lot of people see it as our savior," says Tim Murray, a farmer in Graaff-Reinet who raises sheep, wild game and ostriches, and also grows blue agave for the distillery. It's no surprise that residents here are praying that their local spirit is a hit with American drinkers.</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>