Australia's Agave Farms Face Spiky Hazards and a Promising Future

Making mezcal spirits, like tequila, comes with some serious spiky hazards.

No-one knows that better than the manager of Australia's only commercial agave farm.

"We're affectionately known as the prickle farm to the locals, so they are very dangerous," Brett Smail said.

"The other thing a lot of people don't know is that if you get the sap on you a very itchy rash can come up."

Mr Smail has worked at the Eden Lassie agave farm near Bowen in Queensland since it was set up seven years ago.

It is home to half a million tequilana agave plants, a variety which until recently was only commercially grown in the birthplace of tequila, Mexico.

The spiky succulents, which can live for 10 to 30 years, are only now reaching maturity when the plant's heart, or piña, has developed enough sugar to make spirits.

But last year, just as harvesting was picking up, the future of the whole farm looked in doubt when former owner, Australian distiller Top Shelf International, collapsed with major debts.

Purchasing half a million agave plants

Another local beverage company, Blue Sky Drinks, stepped in to buy the struggling distiller and its farm.

"Mature categories like bourbon, vodka, wine, [are] all flat or declining, and you've got agave or tequila globally growing more than ten per cent a year," said managing director Mick Spencer.

While the tequila boom in the US has slowed, Mr Spencer said Australians were only starting to discover agave spirits.

The Byron Bay based entrepreneur is focusing on getting the most out of what's already in the ground rather than expanding the farm, with plans to open a cellar door in the coming weeks.

There is also growing interest in farming agave, especially among struggling wine grape growers looking for alternative crops.

In South Australia, Oli and Tara Madgett are replacing some of their McLaren Vale vineyards with five different varieties of agave.

"A lot of our grape varieties like shiraz, they kind of curl up when it gets over 42, 43 degrees," Oli Madgett said.

"Agave generally powers through. They also need a lot less water."

Challenges of harvesting agave

They may be easier to grow, but their razor-sharp structure creates an expensive obstacle when it comes to getting them out of the ground, especially with labour costs higher in Australia than Mexico.

"It's why we need to automate, especially with harvesting. We've got to be able to pull these out of the ground and chop the leaves off ideally without any human involvement at all," Mr Madgett said.

Queensland engineering company EHS Manufacturing is developing an agave harvester and has already secured a patent for the invention.

In the meantime there is still a lot of hands-on work, especially as agave plants produce a lot of babies which can compete with the mother plant.

"They need managing," Mr Madgett said.

While some varieties like Americana are seen as a weed in parts of Australia, the plant's productivity and ability to self replicate in marginal areas are also seen as strengths.

"Each plant, in theory, can grow to a tonne, and that's the biggest living plant on the planet apart from trees," Adelaide University plant scientist Professor Rachel Burton said.

"If you can get a massive amount of biomass from a hectare and it can grow in many, many different areas, much broader than things like sugarcane or canola, then you've got potential for just a huge amount of biomass that you can use."

Could agave be the next biofuel?

Rachel Burton has been studying agave for 15 years.

She said the real potential of the spiky succulent in Australia was in biofuels where sugar from the whole plant can be turned into ethanol and other chemical compounds used to produce sustainable aviation fuel.

"I think that the current global situation [such as] climate change, lack of fuel, people's desire to be more sustainable … can really play into setting up an agave industry that is multifunctional," she said.

"I would hope that we would see a very big change in the way that agave is viewed in the next five years."

But to support such a large-scale industry you need a lot of young plants coming through.

For now the heavy lifting is done by just two nurseries, including one run by Jane Goodfellow in the Adelaide Hills.

She grows 35 species and sub-species to suit different Australian conditions and said all of her field-ready plants were spoken for.

"We've got to reduce the inputs, we've got to make the soil more viable again and this plant will embrace that attitude."

She said for biofuels to take off, industry would need to invest in nurseries far bigger than hers, with most of her plants still going to distillers.

Among her customers is Adelaide distiller Chris Dix who has recently released his first two agave spirits after decades in the wine industry.

While he described the process of chopping, cooking and extracting the juice from piñas as "a bit masochistic", he said the market was a good motivator.

As agave spirit bars open up, like Bar Bar in Adelaide, the demand for local drops is growing, although there are a few hangovers to get past.

"I feel like a lot of people have had that horrible experience with a shot of tequila or a whole bottle of tequila at a house party and they don't ever want to touch it again," Bar Bar owner Matt Harrison said.

"I find it good that we can show people you can sip it like a whiskey. It's complex. It's cool."