Driftwood – The landscape of west Texas can be pretty darn desolate. With the Chihuahuan Desert sprawling across this part of our state, it’s hard to imagine being able to harvest something out here. But if you learn about the natives that lived here thousands of years ago, you’d realize that there is substance all around you. “This plant has been here for 10,000 years,” said Brent Looby. “Think about all of the atmospherics that it has gone through in its life, and it is still here to this day.”
Brent has a vested interest in this little plant that some mistake for a cactus. “Once you see them, you can’t stop seeing them,” said Brent. “But it’s like, once your eyes get tuned to it, you’re like, ‘Oh, that hill is covered in it.’”
The sotol has been an integral part of native life for as long as man has traversed the desolate desert and at his ranch in Dryden, Texas there is plenty of it. “It was a source of sustenance,” said Brent. “They would eat it like an artichoke. They would make unleavened bread with it. They would dethorn the leaves, use it as a source of material for weaving baskets, hats, sandals, mats. There’s even evidence of caskets. They would use the stalks as a source for weapons or tools. And then right here we’ve got evidence of a pit hearth oven. You had to cook with what Mother Nature gave you. And out here, there’s an abundance of sotol plants.”
Brent isn’t making any kind of clothing with these crazy looking plants. Instead, he’s making one of the earliest spirits made by man. “We make our spirit specifically out of a sotol that grows in Texas,” explained Brent. “It’s the Dasylirion texanum, and what cooler than to make a spirit out of a plant that has Texas in its Latin name?”
Desert Door Sotol might start out here in the west Texas desert, but it’s created in a distillery down the road from Austin in Driftwood. “It’s a spirit that predates mescal, predates tequila,” said Brent. “It’s the first alcoholic beverage consumed in this part of the world.”
Long before he was a purveyor of this firewater from long ago, Brent served in the Marines for 21 years. “This country and the Marine Corps trusted me enough to fly gray jets all over the planet,” said Brent. “I flew Prowlers.”
After retiring in 2017, he decided to pursue a degree in business. “What if I go to business school and learn how to communicate with the private sector?” Brent asked himself. “Then I can translate those experiences that I’ve had into some format. And then I met my two partners. They’re also veterans. And we took this class called New Venture Creation. It’s an entrepreneurial class. And what would become Desert Door where we’re sitting today was our class project.”
The transition from idea to actual product was fast and furious. “So you pitch your idea to a panel of judges, and then one of our judges came up and asked us afterwards, ‘If you guys are serious about this, me and my husband want to talk to you about investing,’” said Brent. “And that’s when we looked at each other, and ‘I don’t know, is anybody serious about this?’ So we bought a still, and we started learning how to moonshine, and then we had to figure out how to cook, process, ferment, and distill this plant into what would become what you’re sitting in today.”
And Desert Door is committed to sotol. “We are the first commercial distillery in the United States that all we do is make sotol,” said Brent. “All of our sotol is 100% Texas. It’s ranch to glass. So the predominant sources for ours are either Terrell or Crockett County, sometimes out of Pecos, but mostly Terrell County is where all of our plants come from.”
This whole process all starts out in the desert. “All of our plants are wild harvested, meaning there is no water, there is no fertilizer, there is no herbicides, there’s no pesticides,” said Brent. “We go out and we take Mother Nature’s bounty. The plant is so abundant that we’ve got some arrangements with ranchers out here that allow us access to come and take the plant from them.”
The idea of using the natural environment to make booze is nothing new, and the techniques that Desert Door use have been around for centuries. “As early as 800 years ago, archeologists surmised that they had discovered that natives could take the cooked plants and add water and that it would ferment,” said Brent. “Archeologists believe that they were using that plant as an intoxicant during ceremonies 800 years ago.”
But Brent has the process running much more efficiently these days. “Five years ago, it took us approximately four plants to make one bottle of Desert Door,” said Brent. “And now to this day, I get about four bottles per plant. So I’ve completely inverted it.”
After realizing that there are plenty of sotol to go around, I was ready to take one down and pass it around. “What we’re going to start with is our original, what we call our original, 80 proof clear spirit, unaged, and it’s the foundation for everything we do here,” said Brent. “If tequila had a smoother, more flavorful, sustainable cousin from Texas, that’s what Desert Door is. So on the nose, it’s going to be very familiar, bright, grassy, herbaceous. But the finish on it takes you out to the ranch, which you’ll notice it’s got a nice, sweet, creamy, earthy finish.”
There’s even an aged sotol. “With our barrel aged here, you’ll notice first the color of it, which comes from the barrel,” said Brent. “Very interesting is that in both of our offerings, there’s no added sugars, artificial flavors, or colors. So everything you’re tasting is from the plant. And with this, where it goes in a virgin oak barrel, very similar to what you would a bourbon barrel, where it stays in there almost two years. And so on top of those earthy vegetal components that we just had, now you get the layers of the barrel. One, you get the color, you get the coffee, the caramel, the vanilla, cinnamon, all spice, those types of other nuances. Sips a little bit more like a cognac or a bourbon.”
Whether drinking it straight or in fancy cocktail, sotol is a unique way to pay tribute to Texas’ past and while enjoying a unique flavor you’ll only find in the Lone Star State. “It’s the backside where you realize that you’re not drinking grape or corn,” said Brent. “You’re drinking west Texas.”