It is said the earthly flavor of tequila can be traced to the sweat of the jimadores who cultivate and harvest under the harsh Mexican sun the ancient blue agave from which this popular spirit is distilled. This “man-agave symbiosis” has a deep history and with the fusion of Old World technologies has influenced the trajectory of both human society and this domesticated succulent in the Jaliscan highlands for nearly 500 years.
Travel any direction out of the city of Guadalajara in western Mexico and you will soon see fields tinted a peculiar color of blue signaling you are in agave country. Among these rolling fields agave-culture has emerged; a blend of plant husbandry techniques, instruction in ecology, and ritual observances intended to nurture the growth of this noble plant. But before tequila flowed out of the rich, volcanic Mexican earth into tiny glasses around the world, agave was a caloric gift and supplier of raw material for clothing, basketry and footwear for our ancient ancestors. Before Cuervo and Sauza, agave had membership in a special grouping of plants that had much to do with our success as a species.
Through specially evolved photosynthetic processes for maximizing light-gain during the day and water-conserving strategies at night, species of agave store a special carbohydrate known as fructan. Present in varying quantities in some 36,000 plants around the world – such as artichokes, onions, bananas – fructan carbohydrates, unlike starch found in such foods as potatoes, cannot be digested in the human stomach and small intestine so therefore “move along” to the large colon where they serve as a nutrient base for the trillions of micro flora in one of the earths most diverse ecosystems: the human colon.
Naked Pizza Co-founder, Randy, holds up a 25 lb section of agave while the jimadores harvest additional agave heads (penas) in the background. Note the white "paste" of the agave is pure, prebiotic fructan. Note also these agaves are being harvested from soils built up by eons of alluvial and volcanic activity. The high ash and mineral content of the soil create ideal growing conditions for agave. Still active today, the Colima volcano can be seen in the distance.
Agaves inability to be digested by gastric enzymes technically make it a dietary fiber, and its functional role as a nutrient base for the micro inhabitants in the ecological wonderland of the human gut make agave a prebiotic fiber – a kind of super fiber that selectively stimulates the growth of “good bacteria.” And its agaves special prebiotic fiber that has scientist and nutritionist around the world thinking its time we (re)introduced agave back into the human diet to improve microbial balance in our decidedly out of balance guts.
Agaves emergence as a prebiotic fiber in the food world is the reason we recently traveled to the small town of Usmajac, located about 100 km south of Guadalajara. In this tiny agricultural zone, the Corona Orozco family produce a premium tequila under the brand Penacho Azteca at a state of the art facility recently built to meet increased global demand for this ancient spirit. But as you approach the facility along a bumpy dirt road, you are immediately struck by two things: First, the distinct smell that large volumes of tequila must lie just behind the high, rustic brick wall enclosing the distillery and secondly, a recent construction that has extended the fortress wall another couple of hundred meters. But unlike the rustic brick wall, this new extension is plastered smooth and painted white. You can’t help but notice that the only openings in the massive brick wall is marked by very Spanish-looking wrought iron gates, while the two openings in the more modern wall is a solid, elegant and flat aluminum gate. The look and the lines of the gate are very much what you would expect in a high-end, modern kitchen.
It does not take you long to figure out that the two different walls, and their very different entrances, are a visual metaphor between the old and new uses of agave and how they are processed at this facility. Through the Spanish gates you enter a grassy courtyard surrounded by massive brick buildings housing fermentation vats, oak barrels and bottling lines. These are the tools and techniques of the ancient art tequila making. But through the smooth, aluminum gate some 100 meters away you enter a large open space with a very modern, L-shaped building with more smart looking aluminum doors. Here, the Corona Orozco family, along with Dr. Gustavo Bustillo, a chemist and food technologist, have erected a multi-million dollar processing facility to render naturally, the prebiotic fiber from the ancient agave. A tour of the rendering facility also reveals one of the most, if not the most, well-equipped laboratories for carbohydrate analysis of any lab in all of Mexico outside a major university.
As agaves are harvested in the fields and brought to the facility, some are steamed in large autoclaves for 16 hours to break down the fructans into simple (short chain) sugars so they can be fermented and ultimately distilled into tequila, while others skip the cooking process and move along a system of belts and rollers that literally squeeze the prebiotic juices from the more fibrous parts of the plant. By skipping the cooking, the fructan structure is kept in tact in its long chain form and its this longer form that is not digestible by our gastric enzymes thus making these juices a dietary fiber. Once the prebiotic juice is rendered it moves from the old plant along a stainless pipe over to the more modern, prebiotic facility where it undergoes several mechanical, non chemical processes, before its spray dried into a powder that is bagged and ready for use in every Naked Pizza.
