A friend of mine told me the other day that the price of tequila is about to go way up, because the agave used to make tequila is nearly extinct. Blue Agave takes 8-10 years to reach maturity, so, this is perhaps believable. I know several people who refuse to drink tequila because they claim it is a horrilble waste of resources. Anyway, it seems that any intelligent tequila fermenter would have fields and fields of this stuff growing so as keep a steady supply.
I did a google search, and the closest thing I could find was that some species of agave in the US are endangered.
So, anyone know if there’s any truth to Blue agave going extinct, tequila becoming an expensive sought after drink, available only to the wealthy, margaritas becoming a thing of the past, and too many other horrors to name?
Just as American luthiers (guitar makers) in the 1960’s could not have anticipated the huge uptick in demand for acoustic guitars that depleted all their stocks of aged wood (permitting foreign makers to gain a foothold in US markets), so it is that the tequileros were unable to predict the gigantic increase in popularity that tequila has gone through.
You already know that the agave plant is like the pineapple, in that it takes many years to mature. Well, how could the growers have justified increasing their plantings without firm assurances that their market was going to increase?
Do a search with the words (agave tequila shortage) and a whole host of results come up. Most reports are from 2000. The shortage is attributed to underestimation of tequila’s growth in popularity and a fungal plague that hit in 1999-2000, tied in with the blue agave’s long maturation period, 8-10 years.
For another take on the issue, there is an interesting post on tequilaaficionados. Read “What Agave Shortage?”
Also consider what means “extinction.” It may go really, really, rare, but things we know about won’t go extinct, unless there’re only a couple of them left and we can’t breed 'em.
FWIW, you’ll always be able to get cheap tequila. How do they say: “‘To each his own,’ said the Irish woman when she kissed the cow.”
I do know from firsthand experience, though, that sometime in 2000 to 2001, some of the “good” tequilas that used to proclaim “100% agave” suddenly went missing that message. Corralejo comes to mind (a great Guanajuato-producted [as opposed to Jalisco] tequila), but still tastes great. I think Don Julio still sports the 100% designation.
Don’t buy tequila on price – avoid Cabo Wabo and Porfidio at all costs! Don’t even worry if the “maguey” (the name of the agave plant) is in short supply. Doesn’t matter with this rot-gut.