Desert Door Texas Sotol is set to launch an oak-aged version of their Sotol spirit across select Dallas/Fort Worth restaurants, bars and liquor stores today. Known for being the only Sotol distilled in America, Desert Door’s newest spirit is a 100-proof oak-aged Sotol.
Based on historical artifacts and other findings, sotol was first fermented by the Native Americans living in Texas more than 7,000 years ago. Over the last 250 years, West Texans have been moonshining sotol in makeshift homemade stills…until now with Desert Door.
Desert Door was founded only 1 ½ years ago by Judson Kauffman, Ryan Campbell, and Brent Looby, all three of which are U.S. military veterans. The trio met while taking a New Venture Creation course at the University of Texas at Austin. They then decided to use the Texas sotol plant to bring a popular international spirit to The States. The spirit has become wildly popular in Austin in a very short period of time.
“Outside of Austin, Dallas is the best place for sotol,” said Judson Kauffman, Founder, Desert Door Distillery. “The city is filled with food and drink lovers who embrace uniqueness and respect history – it’s a perfect expansion for Desert Door Texas Sotol.”
Desert Door’s Sotol is completely plant-based. It is made with Texas-grown sotol and has tasting notes of vanilla, cedar and cinnamon, with touches of dusty cherry, beeswax, allspice, and pine nuts. It is finished with a rich balance of oak, eucalyptus, a touch of caramel.
With its ingredients grown across over 200,000 acres in the western Texas Trans-Pecos area, Desert Door is an environmentally sustainable spirit. Crews wild-harvest mature sotol plants of varying sizes each week, allowing for efficiency in the production process.
“Unlike agave which is farmed, sotol is not,” Kauffman says. “We harvest 100% of our plants from the wild. Because the sotol plant grows like a weed versus a crop, it’s quite frankly everywhere. It’s invasive and every stalk sprouts thousands of seeds more than once per year. Animals don’t generally eat it, ranchers don’t like it, and it grows in very high densities with quantities into the tens of billions in Texas.”
Desert Door also practices sustainability by only harvesting a small percentage of the plants on each ranch. They leave the root systems intact in the ground so the plant can regenerate. The organic and compostable waste is then returned to the ranch.
Additionally, Desert Door also uses sustainability practices in their distillery (located just outside of Austin in Driftwood, TX) by using rainwater as cooling water in the distillation process, as well as other many manual processes.
Desert Door will launch their 100-proof Oak aged Sotol on Thursday, September 19. Additionally, both Desert Door spirits will be available for purchase at Lakewood Medallion and Pogo Wine & Spirits.
