Guadalajara, Jalisco. Because it is the main raw material for tequila, and the quality of the distillate depends on its cultivation, this weekend the first edition of the Agave Festival in the municipality of El Arenal, nestled in the Agave Landscape in the Valles de Jalisco region.
The objective is to increase in the consuming public the knowledge of the agave Tequilana Weber Blue varietyfrom its plantation to the harvest and the process to obtain the tequila, explained Gildardo Partida, director of the production house El Castillo de Tequila and responsible for organizing the Agave Festival.
“This great event seeks to make the general public aware that this plant is what gives the Agave Landscape its name and is the origin of the process of the most representative drink in Mexico: Tequila,” said Partida Hermosillo.
He explained that it is during the dry seasonfrom May to the first weeks of June, before the start of the rainy season, when it is customary to plant the agave so that the conditions of the storm allow it to develop better, and stressed that the plant takes between six and eight years before being harvested.
The businessman indicated that to produce a liter of Adictivo tequila (his brand), eight kilos of agave are required, so each year that company plants more than 300,000 agaves in order to produce a million liters of the drink.
The general director of El Castillo de Tequila, asked the local and federal deputies present at the celebration, to promote from the Legislative Power that a date be established in Mexico to celebrate the National Agave Day.
According to statistics from the Tequila Regulatory Council (CRT), in 2021 the tequila industry consumed more than two million tons of agave for the production of the drink, and in the first quarter of this 2022, 823,000 tons of the raw material.
The director of Rural Development of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Sader) of JaliscoJuan Gerardo Ruiz Delgado, reported, for his part, that at the end of 2021, 72,609 hectares of agave were cultivated in the state.
“In Jalisco, seven municipalities concentrate 52% of the agave production, among which Tequila stands out with 11.5% and Arandas with 10.2% according to data from the Agrifood and Fisheries Information Services of 2021,” said the state official.