Meet the Producer: Morgan Weber of The Marfa Spirit Co. Maker of Sotol

The name Chihuahua is intimately associated with Mexico. It’s a city of over a million people, it’s the largest state in the country, and it gives its name to the largest desert in North America, covering almost 200,000 square miles, which is 25% larger than California. The desert’s so big that it stretches as far as Arizona, New Mexico, and especially West Texas.

Large swathes of the desert are covered by the dasylirion wheeleri plant, more commonly known as the desert spoon, or the sotol plant. It isn’t a cactus and it isn’t an agave, both of which it resembles, but a member of the asparagus family. However, it still makes for a distinct distilled spirit, also called sotol, again more commonly associated with Mexico. Unlike tequila and mezcal, however, sotol doesn’t have protected status so it doesn’t have to be made in Mexico itself. Enter the Marfa Spirit Company from Marfa in Texas, and their sotol based spirits, Desert Rose and Desert Melaza.

Morgan Weber photo credit Brooke Schwab

We caught up with Morgan Weber, one of the three co-founders of the company which is, naturally, based in the West Texas town of Marfa (population 1,600 and 60 miles from the Mexican border). Weber also owns the Agricole Hospitality, based in Houston.

How did the three co-founders meet?

I’d been colleagues and friends with Seth [Siegel-Gardner] through the restaurant industry in Houston for nearly ten years. Josh [Shepard], though not in the restaurant industry, frequented both mine and Seth’s establishments as a regular customer.

When and how was the decision to launch The Marfa Spirit Co. first discussed between you all?

Seth had been visiting Josh and his family at their Marfa home when I called Seth to catch up. I had been casually visiting Marfa for close to ten years at that point. During the conversation the idea of distilling sotol nonchalantly came up, and after hashing it out for an extremely brief period of time, all three of us felt like a real business model was worth exploring more deeply.

All three of us had long been obsessed with the agave spirits that had been flooding into Texas. Knowing that sotol plants grow wild in an abundance in West Texas, we felt like something really special could come from launching Far West Texas’s first distillery, one that focuses on sotol.

Within three months of that conversation, the business had been modeled out and seemed viable, at least on paper. After shopping the deck to investors and receiving good feedback, we pulled the trigger to purchase the old Godbold Feed Mill in Marfa, which had been operating in one way, shape, or form since 1917. Over the course of 2019-21, an extensive renovation was underway. The Marfa Spirit Company launched their first product into the Texas market in September of 2021, and opened the distillery doors to the public in October.

The Marfa Spirit Co partners photo credit Brooke Schwab

What would you say each one of you has brought to the table throughout the process of launching The Marfa Spirit Co.?

As partners, we all bring unique backgrounds to the table. Most importantly, we share a unified vision of sustainably building a category for sotol in the US. My background is in spirits, having run successful beverage programs within a host of restaurants and bars in Houston through my Agricole Hospitality group.

Seth has maintained a career as an insanely creative restaurateur and award-winning chef, cooking for decades in some of the most well-revered restaurants in the US and abroad in England.

Josh pioneered a data-gathering and marketing company through a mobile photo booth platform, regularly working with Austin City Limits and South by Southwest Festivals, Google, Apple, and a host of other companies around the country.

Why did you want to start with a sotol, and not a spirit that is more widely known?

We chose sotol because of its regional appropriateness in Far West Texas, as the plant grows wild in abundance in every direction from Marfa. There is a long-standing tradition in the Chihuahuan Desert on both sides of the river, of partaking in sotol-making, though until recently, those bottles have historically been produced solely in Northern Mexico.

Photo credit Brooke Schwab

What do you think is special about Chihuahuan Desert Sotol compared to other sotols on the market?

Throughout our collaboration with sixth-generation master sotolero, Jacobo Jacquez of Sotol Don Celso in Janos, Mexico, our mutual curiosity led us to question everything in the process of making the spirit. Our Chihuahuan Desert Sotol is the result of that. This was not to change the spirit, but to understand it more deeply.

Until the mid-1990s, sotol was illegal to make in Mexico due to decades of lobby and special interest groups that, for a number of reasons, kept it from being produced. Sotol production never went away, it was just forced underground. Much pride is taken by Mexican sotoleros in the product they make, but because they couldn’t make it out in the open, it hasn’t been truly studied to the degree that tequila and mezcal have.

Since sotol plants are almost all starch, versus the available fermentable sugars naturally found in agave, we sought to understand how to maximize yields during the cooking process and at what temperatures those starches optimally break down. There are an almost infinite number of variables in how one chooses to make sotol, and that tradition is what we are exploring with Jacobo. It also guides how our 100% Texas Sotol is made at the Marfa distillery.

"Common Sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri - Desert Spoon)" by Lon&Queta is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

So your desert spoon plants are harvested locally?

We have four massive ranches loaded with wild plants around Marfa, and three in the Texas Hill Country. The collaboration with Jacobo and his team at Don Celso was a fantastic happenstance that we never actually anticipated but could not be more excited about. We regularly visit each other’s distilleries to bounce ideas off one another, and Jacobo has been invaluable in helping us figure out our processes in Marfa, from identifying the proper plants to harvest, and what time of year is most appropriate to harvest them in, to harvest techniques and processing before the plants are cooked, fermented and subsequently distilled. We can honestly say, without Jacobo’s desire to help and make sure we understand how to do right by the centuries-old sotol traditions in Mexico, we would have been truly lost at sea.

Do you plan to release other sotols and any other spirits/liqueurs in the future?

Yes. We are currently in the process of releasing a line of liqueurs, beginning with a beautifully-bright orange liqueur and bitter grapefruit liqueur - an ode to the citrus growing region of the Rio Grande Valley. We are also soon releasing an interesting rum sourced from the last Texas sugar cane processing plant in the state, a London dry-style gin, a vodka, and a bitter aperitif. More liqueurs in the Rio Grande line will be released over the coming year.