Desert Door Texas Sotol

Desert Door is a Texas sotol distilled at Driftwood near Austin from wild Dasylirion texanum, the thin leaved green desert spoon cut from the Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas. Sotol is not an agave spirit and Desert Door sits outside the Mexican denomination of origin, so it is a Texas sotol rather than a Mexican one, its herbal creamy character mirroring that desert ground.

The hearts are harvested by hand and trucked weekly to the distillery, cooked in a large custom pressure cooker, machine shredded, then fermented five days in stainless tanks with a proprietary yeast before distillation and proofing with purified water. Bottled unaged at 40 percent, it shows a sour, lemony, eucalyptus nose with no smoke and an unusually mild palate, sweetish and buttery with vanilla, toffee, anise and cinnamon over a short finish. It never saw a barrel.