Get to know David Yan Gonzalez, learn about how 818 Tequila is made, and find cocktail inspiration.

The capon’d agave — the agave that is harvested after it’s begun reproduction, after its quiote has been cut, after it’s been left to develop and change in the field, healing its wound — is considered a special, beautiful, romantic source for making an especially delicious agave spirit. But not...

There’s a lot of moral outrage around the harvesting of agave that hasn’t yet reached maturity. But … when exactly is agave mature? By whose standards? And if the agave is getting harvested before it can produce seeds — which is always the case when you’re using the agave to...

In this interview, Christine Sykes Lowe catches up with her friend Jorge Garcia, founder of Curra's Grill and the owner of Carbonero Tequila. They discuss the avocado margarita that's been his claim to fame, and how Carbonero's branding is a tribute to his family's coal-mining heritage. Are you a business...

When I first started learning about heritage agave spirits, I misunderstood the labels that noted “puntas and colas.” I thought that meant that what was in the bottle was a blend of the heads and tails of a distillation — but in fact the heart of the distillation had been...

We argue a lot about which element in the production of agave spirits contributes most to the flavor of that spirit: the agave itself; where that agave was grown and what grew around it; the cooking process; the yeast that converts the sugar to alcohol, or the mezcalero who oversees...

Today Zarela and Aarón are joined by their friend Yira Vallejo. Yira spent ten years as a brand incubator in the wine and spirits industry of New York City, before returning to Oaxaca in 2014. Now she works to preserve the cultural and biological diversity of Oaxaca through a number...

Tequila collectors the world over hate the diffuser, the industrial machine that is used to turn blue weber agave into tequila. So Chava and I attempt in this episode to show that the diffuser can be nature's way to make a better, more accurate tequila. Maybe because we're contrarians. Or...

Today's episode is wall-to-wall listener questions, bookended by Catastrophic Connection Issues. Fun! Dave, Nastassia and The Rest go through so many topics: coffee clarification; salt absorption over time; instructions for sous-vide tenderloin; what Dave means when he writes about "dilution"; the rules for re-using fry oil; and more! Plus, Dave...

Most people think that when you distill a spirit, what comes out of that still goes directly into the bottle. But, in fact, different distillers make different decisions about which parts of the distillation they keep and which parts they leave out — and those decisions have a profound effect...