MURRIETA, Calif. — It originally started off as a landscape decision for the Ortega family, planting 50 agave plants around their Murrietta home.
That has now turned into 2,000 agaves and the family making a distilled agave spirit here in Southern California.
Sharla Ortega is a fourth-generation farmer along with her husband Leo Ortega, who are both from the San Joaquin Valley.
"It's the perfect place, that's the first thing, it's the perfect place. We get the Marine Layer, it prevents soil erosion, it's good for fires and everything else," Sharla said.
"My wife bought 50 agave and we planted them here and let's see how well they survive on this land, and then one day we started seeing these pups pop up and pop up," Leo said.
It was at that point when the light when on.
"So, that's when we said maybe we can go ahead and see if we can make a tequila," Leo said.
Sharla put that moment into perspective.
"Once you have too much of anything it becomes a farm, right? And then you go what am I going to do with a farm full of something," Sharla said.
But they couldn't make Tequila, which only comes from five states in Mexico. But they could make a distilled agave spirit.
"So, a lot of California distillers are all working together to figure out how to process this and actually make a good Agave Spirit," Leo said.
That would take years. An agave plant can take up to 10-plus years to mature.
"They will get up to, with the leaves, a thousand plus pounds," Leo said.
And knowing when it's ripe is another thing and Ortega has a special tool for that.
"I pull it out, squeeze it, and put it in a refractometer, and then measure the bricks. We're getting 25 - 32 Bricks off these plants," Leo said.
Now imagine dealing with a 1,000-pound plant with thorns that gets trimmed down for the harvest.
"We'll peel off the Pankas and leave the Pina which is basically the heart of the agave." Leo said.
That Pina is then cut into pieces, baked to start to change the inulin to fructose, then shredded into pegus, then juiced, put on ice and brought to the distillers to start the fermentation.
The end result is Agave Murietta, a 94-proof Agave Spirit with hints of pepper, fruit, and a little smoke. The first small batch was released in 2022 and sold out. The next small batch of Agave Murietta should be out early 2024.
From sweat to spirits, the Ortega family is a small group of agave entrepreneurs that is producing an agave spirit.
To give you an idea of how important this is to the state of California, they have passed legislation that states all fruit must be produced in the state of California and be distilled without any additives.
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