Standing on a slope of their farm, Adam and Laurie Goldberg look down the mountain and across the Valley of the Moon. They’re glancing at a rugged quilt work of ranches, pastures, and oak thickets that spread over the floor of the countryside. This territory is about 30 miles from California’s most-famous wineries, and it’s long been a haven for homesteaders and creative renegades. Its best-known resident, Jack London, moved here in 1905 before writing some of his enduring novels about the West. Sixty years later, Hunter S. Thompson was living here when he started his wild experiments in political journalism. When it comes to this valley’s effect on risk-takers, it’s a rural crater-scape that seems to strike them with “full moon fever.”
The Goldbergs may be the latest example.
The sun is still strong as they walk past some cover crop, but when it finally sinks under the spectacular vista they’re peering down, a lunar glow will cover the entire mountainside — including 10,000 agave plants spiking up across 125 of its brushy, rock-studded acres.
London and Thompson were both authors who spent time writing — and drinking — in Mexico, but neither would have imagined seeing agave crops growing like this above the Valley of the Moon. The farming history in this part of Sonoma County is one of plums, oat hay, orchards, and most notably, wine grapes. But for the last four years, the Goldbergs have been making a big bet on the new California agave spirit movement. Adam, a student of local history, admires the can-do determination of the planters who took chances on vineyards in this valley back in London’s day.
Now, he and Laurie are on a similar mission.
Not only have they created the only self-sustaining agave nursery in California’s North Bay, they’re cultivating more species and subspecies of the plant than probably anyone connected to the spirits industry in the state. The Goldbergs have green-thumbed more than 35 different agave types in spots around the mountain. Most are species originally from Mexico. A couple have roots in California. There’s even a rare agave in their greenhouse — Agave palmeri — that made its way here from Arizona.
“It was sent to us by a friend and follower on Instagram,” Adam says of the palmeri. “They wild-collected the seeds from their property in Arizona. It’s a plant that was farmed by Native Americans a long, long time ago for food. There’ve been very cool academic studies where they use lidar to look at the parts of Arizona where they grew these agaves, and they’ve found massive plantations and roasting pits. It has a long tradition in the country, from before Columbus arrived, of being grown for sugar.”
He adds, “As far as we know, it’s never been distilled before.”
The whole purpose of Adam and Laurie’s farm, Stargazer Spirits, is to see what happens when lesser-known types of the plant do get used for juice by talented distillers.
The couple plans to sell different species to Golden State distilleries, offering an array of options beyond tequilanas. They’ll also be sharing their specialized knowledge as California agave farmers with other potential growers who might be getting involved. In order for the state’s budding agave spirits industry to expand and thrive, there needs to be orders of magnitude more plants being grown from Sonoma to San Diego. Property owners who have arid, water-restricted parcels — an increasing reality for many Californians — can now consider looking to the resilient agave as a land use option. But, as the Goldbergs’ colleagues on the California Agave Council have observed, most of these would-be planters will have zero farming or agriculture experience. They’ll need tips. They’ll need testimonials. They’ll need contacts. They’ll need game plans.
Most of all, they’ll need warnings about bad ideas.
Resources are now being brought to bear, thanks to the California Agave Council and its academic partners landing a major grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Adam stresses that resulting guidance could be critical for anyone getting into the game.
“We were super naive about what it would mean to grow agave,” Adam recalls of his first year. “There’s never been commercially grown agaves in the state before. The animating spirit of this project is that it’s a blank slate. But it’s such a complicated plant. Yes, there is a lot of freedom right now; but we have a lot of learning to do as well. There’s a general sense, and we had it when we started, that these plants are easy to grow — and they’re not easy to grow.”
The California agave spirits movement may be the latest example of how agriculture grants are affecting the spirits industry, but from Illinois to Wisconsin, craft distillers are finding them helpful in a multitude of ways.
If You Grow It, They Will Distill
The federal money that just went into California agave came from the USDA’s Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, which, in this case, was administered by state officials in California.
Staff with the California Department of Food and Agriculture had a total of $23.1 million in funds from Washington D.C. to distribute between different food-growing enterprises. In May, CDFA Secretary Karen Ross announced that $500,000 was going directly to the California Agave Council and that another $500,000 was slated for agave research at the University of California, Davis.
Craig Reynolds, President of the California Agave Council, said the money going to his organization will spur an array of education initiatives for potential growers.
“We had tried to get this grant when we first started the council and weren’t successful; but we did it again this year and improved our application,” Reynolds recalls. “The workshops we’ll be hosting now will cover the whole gamut on how to better grow agave in California and deal with the various issues, like weed management, pest control, and sustainable practices, including cover-cropping. And there’ll be information on organic farming for those who want to do that.”
These regional workshops will feature agave experts from California and Mexico and be augmented by instructional videos. The council is also using some of the grant to create a bilingual website and written materials about California’s agave boom. Reynolds’s own roofing contractor, Carlos Rodriguez — who grew up in Mexico — has put 2,000 agave plants into the ground on some dry property he owns that only has well water. So far, the agaves are looking great. Reynolds thinks there could be a lot of Californians with similar backgrounds or family ties to Mexico that might be interested in trying what Rodriguez is doing.
UC Davis, considered one of the top schools for agriculture in the nation, will use its allotment of the grant to further research what soil, climate, and farming conditions might help agave plants to mature faster. Crops that have their pinas reaching maturation in five to six years, rather than eight to nine, will be more profitable for growers and craft distillers alike.
One farm that UC Davis researchers will be collecting data from is Stargazer Spirits. The whole enterprise was born during a moment on a plane flight. Adam Goldberg was en route between Hong Kong and China when he focused on a magazine piece about mezcal in Oaxaca. Adam noticed the aerial photos of the land there looked just like his mountainous property in Sonoma County. At that point, he didn’t realize there were a handful of growers and distillers planting the seeds of a new spirit category. Adam just loved mezcal and was curious about seeing what his land could do with agaves.
“On our property, there’s dolomitic limestone, there’s a number of volcanic minerals and soils that are really rich,” Adams points out. “It seemed interesting. We didn’t have connections yet. There were literally only a few other people doing it… Lots of people told us we were crazy.”
The Goldbergs first put agaves in the ground in 2020. They started with about 30 varieties on an acre and a half. What followed was an unusually mild winter in the Golden State’s wine country. Most of the agaves flourished.
“We thought, ‘Oh, perfect,’ and we doubled down and started planting more varieties on different parts of our property,” Adam remembers. “The second winter, it snowed up here and the snow stayed on the ground for a while and it did a lot of damage… But it’s still clear there’s real potential here for agave. Even after the snowstorms, things recovered really well.”
The Goldbergs have since been having encouraging crop results with Agave americana, Agave marmorata, and especially Agave salmiana. Up until now, all of their energy has been focused on crop health. In the coming months, they plan to start Brix-testing for the first time.
“The salmiana is really promising,” Adam says. “It’s a big green agave used for both pulque and mezcal, traditionally in Mexico, and it has the beautiful bell pepper, jalapeno, and floral aromas. It’s incredible.”
That’s the type of observation the Goldbergs will be sharing at the California Agave Council’s grant-funded seminars. The couple will join in on conversations about how some state growers plowing their fields while others are opting for regenerative approaches and cover crops. There will also be discussion about the differences between irrigating with drip lines and entirely dry-farming.
“We’ve been trying different things on the farm, and I think we’ve been taking one for the team in terms of experimentation,” Laurie notes with a smile. “And we’ve lost money on our mistakes, so hopefully other people can learn from them.”
Hold the Land, Hold the Line
Adam Stumpf has seen a number of century-old farms in his corner of southern Illinois get taken out of production and swallowed up by housing developments. But Stumpf has made sure that his own eighth-generation homestead hasn’t been lost that way — and he’s done that partly by opening an estate craft distillery.
Stumpf’s bloodline has been growing corn in fields outside Columbia since the early 1800s. He still grows corn there, though when asked what the overall state of agriculture is in this area 25 miles south of St. Louis, Stumpf reluctantly uses the word “turbulent.” Not all children want to contend with the farming challenges that their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents confronted. Some would rather just sell the land to builders and housing speculators. But Stumpf saw a novel way his 500-acre-plus spread could be competitive in the current environment: Not only does it have great soil for growing corn, it’s also ideal for cultivating soft red winter wheat. The land can even handle a crop that is not traditionally associated with southern Illinois: rye.
In 2015, Stumpf and his wife, Laura, used all those advantages to open a farm-fueled whiskey, rye, gin, and vodka operation.
Stumpy’s Spirits is now getting popular in the Prairie State and has additional distribution in Missouri and Indiana. But the business got a real boom in 2020 when it was awarded the USDA’s Value-Added Producer Grant. Similar to the funds the California Agave Council received, these were federal dollars being awarded through state ag officials. Stumpf first heard about this grant around 2016 through another young farmer. He and Laura opted not to hire a grant writer but to try writing the application themselves.
“It was challenging and a lot of late nights — just a lot of hours for someone who’s never written a grant before,” Stumpf acknowledges. “But, at the end of the day, there’s no one who knew our business better than my wife and me.”
Stumpy’s Spirits ultimately received $250,000 from the program, which was used to expand and strengthen its whiskey making and barreling operations.
“It’s been huge and, honestly, today, we’re still feeling the impact of that grant,” Stumpf says. “Farming already has a very long cash-conversion cycle, by the time you purchase inputs, plant, and harvest. But whenever you add whiskey on top of that, you’ve added onto the fact that you already had a year on the farming side, and now you’re going to age that whiskey a minimum of four years, which means it’s a five-year cash-conversion cycle.”
He adds, “For a small business, cash flow is everything. My wife and I had already boot-strapped the distillery.”
Last year, Ledgerock Distillery in Northeast Wisconsin also received the USDA’s Value-Added Producer Grant. A family farm and distillery that sits on the geological limestone colossus known as the Niagara Escarpment, Ledgerock Distillery is owned by Jay and Heidi Retzer, who work there alongside their son, Bryce. The Retzers are using the $250,000 in funds they landed to strengthen their corn and wheat processing. The grant will give them more ability to enhance the experience that people have when arriving at the farm’s tasting room for gin, vodka, moonshine, and bourbon.
Meanwhile, at Stumpy’s Spirits, things are going well enough that the Stumpfs are expanding their tours and tasting room offerings into a full events center.
“Without this grant, we would not have been able to barrel the amount of whiskey we did for ourselves, which in turn would have dampened our future sales and growth,” Stumpf reflects. “It really was the catalyst that allowed us to build this base of future revenue.”
