Agave spirits made in Madera? College is investing in crop’s future distillers, farmers
Inside a winery surrounded by farmland in south Madera County, community college students will use commercial-grade equipment to make alcoholic spirits from the increasingly popular agave plant, famous for its production of tequila and mezcal in Mexico.
They’ll use 10-barrel fermenters and 1,000-liter stills. On occasion, they could learn directly from the CEO of Tequila Fregón, Rodrigo Carranza, who pledged to travel to Madera to teach weekend classes when time allows him to.
“Madera Community College is going to be known as a place for distillery science, and for agave in particular,” Justin Garcia, dean of CTE and STEM, said last month during a meeting about agave’s potential for the campus and for Madera County.
Establishing an academic agave distilling program would be an innovative step for the state’s youngest community college: Not only would it be the first of its kind at a public college in California, but it would train the future workforce of the state’s growing agave industry. The push for the ambitious program by college President Angel Reyna has received some criticism from members of an instructor governance group that recently approved a “no confidence” vote against him, alleging he tends to skirt faculty input on college operations. But Reyna’s agave initiative has drawn support from local government agencies, elected officials and farmers who see the plant as a potential game-changing crop for the Fresno-Madera area.
Most agave growing operations in the state are small, but one local farmer, Stuart Woolf, now has hundreds of thousands of plants in west Fresno County. And the California Agave Council, a coalition of farmers and distillers, has for years promoted the plant as an ideal crop for the state’s vast, arid agricultural spaces.
State legislators have seen the writing on the wall. They passed a law in 2022 that requires alcohol sold here under the label of “California agave spirits” to be made completely with California-grown plants and no additives. (Tequila and mezcal are names reserved for agave drinks produced in specific regions of Mexico.) College administrators say Madera’s program would also help address the current skills gap faced by the food and beverage manufacturing industry, where more than 70% of hiring staff reported difficulty filling jobs in a 2022 survey.
“At community colleges, we find the trends, we look at the industry and we look to see where we can be on the cutting edge,” Garcia said.
In the long-term, capitalizing on agave-based education could lead to an economic and cultural boost for Madera County, Reyna said in an interview with The Fresno Bee. He envisions a future where distilleries and a “binational agave route” draw tourists to the area, where Maderans with agave distilling roots are able to use the college’s equipment to craft spirits, and where students interested in the plant are able to transfer to four-year universities to continue their education.
Reyna’s work on this project began more than two years ago, when he and some of his colleagues began traveling to Mexico to seek partnerships and learn about agave. He told The Bee that the college is taking a “holistic approach” to crafting its program, taking into account everything from growing to distilling water needs to agave’s cultural significance — a particularly important piece for a Mexican American-majority campus, he said.
In the short-term, it’s about teaching students what they need to know in order to get good jobs in the beverage manufacturing industry. And teaching farmers what they need to know about getting into the agave growing industry.
If all goes as planned, Madera Community College will host a soft opening of its future distilling lab in early 2025 at Balbas American Winery, which decided to re-purpose its equipment for the college’s use rather than decommission it after an owner’s death. The first classes of the college’s Agave Distilling Program could begin there in the spring, with sign-ups potentially opening up around March. The program will start as a contract training initiative, not for college credit.
“Agave is attracting a lot of buzz,” Reyna said. “People are like, ‘Yeah, we want to do that,’ so we have a high level of excitement.”
Farmer education, land repurposing
Researchers from the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco (CIATEJ), an institution with the financial backing of the Mexican government, visited Madera college last week to present an overview of the science of agave to farmers in the county interested in growing the plant.
Following the science workshop, farmers were invited to farmer Kevin Herman’s 10-acre agave operation north of the city of Madera. Herman purchased his plants from Woolf, the Fresno County farmer with a large agave operation, and said he is planning on supplying Madera college with agave for distilling. He said he will be growing his operation by 10 acres per year until he has 60 acres of agave planted in Madera.
Madera County has also taken notice of agave’s potential and is allowing farmers to apply for funding from the Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program if they plan to transition their agricultural land for agave growing.
Stephanie Anagnoson, director of water and natural resources for Madera County, told farmers last week that, with the county being home to three critically overdrafted basins, “we are looking for options to keep basins replenished and also keep (agriculture) thriving.”
Agave’s potential as a crop that uses far less water than others is one of the features Herman hopes to benefit from.
“If this works out, this could enable me to continue to farm a part of this ranch as trees with an adequate water supply, and then still have a source of revenue from the agave plant itself,” Herman told a group of fellow farmers last week.
Agave distilling academic program
Garcia, the Madera college CTE and STEM dean, said the academic program will leverage online instruction plus weekend face-to-face class meetings that teach technical skills at Balbas American Winery. The program will initially be structured as short-term training sessions.
“We’re designing everything so ... individuals can get in and get out,” Garcia said. “They can learn what they need to learn and they can get employment.”
The college worked with local experts as well as out-of-state experts. Garcia said they stressed that the program should teach recipes, mashing processes, agave cutting, aging, barreling, fermentation, juice extraction and more.
“They said, ‘Go big. Buy a lot of equipment,’” Garcia said.
There’s also the cultural piece. College President Reyna, who was born in Mexico and raised in a migrant farmworking family in the U.S., said that’s one of the driving forces behind the project.
“It’s not just about distilling agave and other products, but it’s the connection to culture and the social impact that this will have,” he said last month during the college’s agave conference.
Where could the academic program end up?
Joshua Viers, a UC Merced engineering professor and faculty director for the university’s F3 (Farms, Food, Future) Initiative, said during the October meeting that there is interest in eventually creating transfer pathways in engineering and environmental sciences.
“We see a role even further with respect to the research we do in our Experimental Smart Farm,” he said.
Hector Pulido Gonzalez, a scientist and president of the Jalisco Technological University in Mexico, told The Bee in October that he is on board with student and instructor exchanges with Madera college. He signed an MOU with Madera college for the collaboration.
“We want to have students from Mexico come to Madera and students from Madera come to Mexico,” he said. “When they’re in Mexico, we can take them to the beer brewing companies, to the large tequila companies, and they will also learn wastewater treatment methodologies and how to control the processes they will encounter here (in the U.S.)“
This story was originally published November 25, 2024 at 9:17 AM with the headline "Agave spirits made in Madera? College is investing in crop’s future distillers, farmers."
