Schnapp Dragon Tequila

Terry Knight’s foray into the distilling world has led him to tequila.

Terry has been merrily experimenting with alcohol production for more than a decade, most recently as owner-operator of Schnapp Dragon Distillery in Takaka.

He started out turning honey into either mead, whisky or methode champenoise. When we visited him last, he was doing this and talking about transforming local surplus fruit into liqueurs, jams and savoury sauce. That has come to pass but now he wants to make tequila.

The idea goes back to the 1980s when Terry and a couple of local friends dreamed of making tequila. He spent hours researching the recipe and trying out various brews and produced the first batch of blue agave spirit or tequila, by steam cooking blue agave plants in his oven for three days before crushing them. He then brewed the mashed plants into a beer-like substance which was then distilled into pure blue agave spirit which is now tequila.

The original agave plants were grown from seed bought overseas (off a French collector because the Mexicans were very reluctant to part with their plants). Terry is busy propagating the blue agave plants for a 7000-plant plantation that will be harvested on rotation to produce at first stage 6000 bottles a year.

Blue agave plants take between 7 and 12 years to mature in Mexico, longer in the cooler, damper climate around Golden Bay. Terry’s crop has been growing for 16 years.

More than 300 varieties of agave grow around the world

To make tequila, the leaves are hacked off and only the heart of the plant is used. Juice from the heart of the plant is fermented and distilled twice to make tequila.

When the plants have reached their peak ripeness, the leaves are stripped off and only the core or “piña” is used in the making of tequila. These cores can weigh from 40 to 80 lbs, and some can weigh even more. The piñas are then taken to the distillery where they are cut up for roasting. The piñas are roasted in special furnaces and the starches in the cores turn to sugar. After baking, the piñas are shredded and put through a press. The press squeezes the juice from the shredded piña pulp. The juices are then pressed from the shredded pulp and placed in fermentation tanks. Each piña makes approximately 8 bottles of tequila.

Once the juices are in the fermentation tanks, yeast is added. Distillers have their own technique for the adding of the yeast. At this point, the yeast begins to act upon the sugars of the roasted pulp, turning it into alcohol.

The fermented juice is distilled two or even three times. Alcohol content may be between 70 and 110 proof.

This becomes your basic tequila blanco, or silver tequila. Oro, or gold tequila requires 2 months aging in oak barrels. Tequila añejo is premium tequila and needs to be aged in oak for at least one year. Many producers age añejo for many years. This is considered to be the best tequila available and will be very expensive.

The distillery is tucked behind the short row of shops that line the main street of Takaka.

The idea is a European one. In Europe, each village has a local distillery making products from what is grown near to them, for instance in Switzerland they use cherries for kirsch or in France, they make calvados from apples. They also process fruit into alcohol or pickles or jam.

So Terry took over an old engineering workshop, ordered a still from Portugal, bought stainless steel vats from a vintner and spread the word.

Blue agave plants take between 7 and 12 years to mature in Mexico, longer in the cooler, damper climate around Golden Bay. Terry’s crop has been growing for 16 years.

More than 300 varieties of agave grow around the world

In Tequila production, the leave are hacked off and only the heart of the plant is used.

It takes 4 – 6 kg of plant matter to produce a litre of tequila

Aztecs used the plant for food also to make shoes and sewing needles

While the liquid may taste like tequila, the name is banned outside Mexico in the same way champagne production is restricted to France. At the moment Terry is calling his brew TeKiwi.