With every batch of La Pulga spirits, tequileros in a remote village in Jalisco play loud Mexican rock music around the clock for three to six days while the liquid bubbles and froths.
“If the yeast is having a good time, hopefully it makes better alcohol,” says whiskey scientist Ale Ochoa.
She laughs, as do the La Pulga business partners. Maybe the music makes a difference, maybe it doesn’t.
“I had to see it to believe it,” says Ochoa, head of spirits for the new La Pulga distillery in Fort Worth. “We’d start talking and all of a sudden, there were these little vibrations in the fermenter. If what we’re doing is causing frequency, the music is giving it a party.”
Though the La Pulga team members are jovial, they’re serious, too. Co-founders Sarah Castillo, Andrew de la Torre and Stephen Slaughter are opening Fort Worth’s first sotol distillery, a signal that this growing spirit has market potential in North Texas and beyond.
Their timing is good. In 2022, sotol volume consumption increased by nearly 30% in the United States, says Adam Rogers, research director for IWSR, a London-based company that analyzes the beverage market globally.
They expect double-digit increases for sotol until at least 2027.
But, in the words of Texas Monthly, who’s allowed to make sotol? The spirit is made from the desert spoon plant, which grows in Mexico but is also abundant in Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas. The founders of La Pulga will distill their sotol in Fort Worth, not Mexico. They’re one of only a few distilleries in Texas doing so, despite controversy.
Sotol has a shared heritage between Mexico and Texas, the co-founders of La Pulga say, so perhaps as a symbol, La Pulga’s head of spirits plans to make batches of sotol using plants from Mexico and the U.S.
Though La Pulga doesn’t yet have a distillery, the plan is to start construction in 2024 on North University Drive in Fort Worth. La Pulga will be neighbors with a flea market by the same name, which was formerly known as Pequeño Mexico.
De la Torre has managed the flea market for 12 years. Slaughter is a real estate developer. Castillo created Fort Worth restaurant/bars Tacoheads, Tinies Mexican Cuisine and Sidesaddle Saloon.
The three La Pulga founders bought nearly 12 acres of land in 2021, with plans to preserve the Mexican flea market and expand sotol’s presence in Texas.
Spirits that are ‘celebrity-free’
The company has three tequilas for sale, all of which were distilled in Mexico.
Tequila was a natural place to start, they say.
“There are a lot of people doing tequila right now,” Castillo says. She ticks off the celebrities involved in tequila brands: Casamigos from George Clooney, Teremana from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Flecha Azul from Mark Wahlberg, Casa Del Sol from Eva Longoria, Cabo Wabo from Sammy Hagar, and Santo, Hagar’s newer tequila part-owned by Guy Fieri.
“There’s a big business benefit to having a large celebrity attached to your brand,” Castillo says. But it isn’t the La Pulga way.
“For us, the guys in Mexico: Those are our celebrities,” de la Torre says.
La Pulga’s tequila will continue to be made in Mexico by small-town distillers. By definition, tequila is required to come from one of five authorized states in Mexico, and La Pulga follows that model. Similarly, they also plan to sell mezcal that, by definition, must be produced in one of nine Mexican states.
La Pulga’s bridge from Mexico to Texas starts with sotol.
“The biggest thing, for us, is educating people and getting them to see the sotol process here in Fort Worth,” says Ochoa, who is Mexican-American as are Castillo and de la Torre.
“We’re able to explore our heritage a little bit more, through the lens of the spirit.”
What is sotol?
Sotol has been made in Mexico for more than 300 years. According to a story in the Mexico News Daily, the Mexican government limited production in the 1900s, and sotol was eventually considered “a drink for peasants and drunks.” For decades, it was illegal to make sotol in Mexico.
Unsavory opinions about sotol have worn off since it was legalized in 1994. And, it’s become one of the buzzed-about spirits for drinkers in the know in the U.S. But tequila and mezcal still outsell sotol.
Controversy arrived in the early 2000s, when sotol received a Denominación de Origen, or DO, which limited production to parts of Mexico. The DO didn’t extend beyond Mexico, which is where a business idea was born: Sotol could be produced in the U.S. The first Texas companies to do so are Desert Door Distillery in Driftwood and the Marfa Spirit Co.
The taste of sotol depends on how it’s made, Ochoa says. Some sip like a tequila. Others take on smoky, earthy notes, like mezcal.
Asked if she has a preference, she says, “I love it all.”
They plan for the sotol distillery to double as a place for tours, education and tastings. It also might have live music. La Pulga’s founders want to preserve the culture of the flea market by hosting events aimed specifically at Mexican customers. Bachata night, maybe.
“La tierra es de quien la trabaja,” de la Torre says. It’s a Spanish saying that translates to “the land belongs to he/she who works it.” It’s true of the flea market and of the tequila, he says.
Tequila, today
For now, La Pulga sells tequila blanco, reposado and añejo, three spirits that start with the same agave base. The reposado is aged for 7 months in American oak barrels, which imparts notes of vanilla alongside caramelized sugar, anise, floral notes and black pepper. The añejo, which went on sale in July 2023, is aged at least 18 months in former bourbon barrels and has whiffs of whiskey and coffee. The youngest, the blanco, is briny with hints of grapefruit peel, Ochoa says.
All were distilled to be sipping tequilas, but de la Torre says there’s no wrong way to drink their spirits. (Ochoa loves the reposado mixed in a ranch water.)
The founders want customers to know that each bottle of La Pulga, which is sold at dozens of liquor stores in Dallas-Fort Worth, comes with hands-on stories from Fort Worth residents trying to bring some of their ancestors’ country home to Texas. Ochoa loves pairing their tequila with cheese made in the same small Jalisco village.
La Pulga’s spirits are additive-free, they say. But more importantly, de la Torre grins, “it’s also celebrity-free.”
