The Mexican spirit distilled from the Desert Spoon plant is sotol.
Sotol is made from Dasylirion plants, especially Dasylirion wheeleri, whose common name is Desert Spoon. Although the plant resembles agave, it has thinner, more flexible leaves and belongs to the asparagus family, Asparagaceae—not the agave family.
To make sotol, producers remove the outer leaves and harvest the plant’s central core, or piña. The core is cooked or steamed, shredded, fermented, and distilled. The plant commonly takes about 8–12 years to mature, and each plant may yield roughly one bottle.
Sotol has deep Indigenous roots in the Chihuahuan Desert. Mexico granted it a Denomination of Origin in 2002, restricting protected production to Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Durango. Its flavor may be smoky and earthy like mezcal, but it can also have bright, grassy, peppery, or minty notes. Mezcal and tequila are common mix-ups, but both are made from agave, while sotol comes from Dasylirion.