Brian Freedman is a wine, spirits, travel, and food writer; event host and speaker; and drinks educator. He regularly contributes to Food & Wine, and his first book, Crushed: How A Changing Climate Is ...

Some agave varieties can withstand temperatures as low as -20°F, making them suitable for colder climates. Agave plants typically require full sun and deep, infrequent watering for optimal growth.

Technically speaking, any agave spirit is a mezcal, the original agave spirit of Mexico that is thousands of years old, says Mike Moreno, Jr., owner of Moreno's Liquors in Chicago, Ill., a store with ...

One expert breaks down the differences and similarities between mezcal and tequila and shares the best uses for each Mexican spirit. Tequila is a type of mezcal, and they are made using different ...

Agave-based spirits are some of the most complex spirits on the planet. This is largely because the pineapple-shaped cores of the spiky plant can take up to 14 years to ripen, giving plenty of time ...

This past May my company Taste Select Repeat, a shopping and education resource for spirits, hosted a tutorial on types of tequila and mezcal. Besides sharing and analyzing pours, we also set the ...

Unlike tequila, which is produced in Jalisco using exclusively blue weber agave, mezcal can legally be produced in nine Mexican states—the bulk of which comes from the rolling hills and jagged cliff ...

Like wine or beer, mezcal is a blanket term. In its broadest definition, it’s any distilled spirit made from the agave plant, which is known in Mexico as a maguey. Mezcal is meant to be sipped neat in ...

Mezcal is one of the fastest growing categories in the global spirits market, regularly achieving double-digit growth over recent years, and is quickly becoming a go-to drink for connoisseurs looking ...

Leo Ortega started growing spiky blue agave plants on the arid hillsides around his Southern California home because his wife liked the way they looked. A decade later, his property is now dotted with ...