Agave spirits are expensive for reasons that sit almost entirely before distillation. The plant takes years to become usable, and its sugars are not fermentable until they have been cooked.
The plant is the bottleneck
Agave accumulates sugar slowly over many years, and it is harvested only when that accumulation is complete.
Depending on the species and the site, that point arrives somewhere between roughly six years and well over a decade after planting.
The plant is destroyed at harvest, so every bottle represents a plant that cannot be harvested again and a replanting decision made years earlier.
Planting decisions are made blind
A grower planting today is supplying a market that will exist a decade from now, with no way to observe it in advance.
Shortages and gluts therefore alternate, since a price rise prompts planting that arrives long after the shortage has passed.
The lag is longer than in almost any other drinks category, and it produces price swings that have nothing to do with the current year's demand.
The sugars have to be cooked before they can ferment
Agave stores its carbohydrate as fructans, long chains that yeast cannot ferment directly.
Cooking breaks those chains into simple sugars, which is why the harvested hearts are baked or steamed before anything else happens.
The cooking method contributes flavour as well: a slow bake in a pit produces smoke and roast character, while a steam oven produces a cleaner result.
Extraction is labour-intensive at the traditional end
Cooked agave is fibrous and the sugar has to be crushed out of it, historically with a stone wheel and now more often with a mechanical mill.
Some producers ferment with the fibre still present, which extracts more character and complicates every step afterwards.
Modern plants use a diffuser to wash sugar from raw or lightly cooked agave, which is faster and cheaper and produces a markedly lighter spirit.
Regulation ties the category to its region
Protected designations limit where agave spirits of particular names may be produced and which species may be used.
That confines supply to specific regions, so a shortage cannot be relieved by planting elsewhere and relabelling.
The combination of a decade-long crop, a protected origin and a labour-heavy process is why the price floor for a genuine agave spirit sits well above that of spirits made from annual crops.