{"id":103770,"date":"2025-07-30T03:33:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T03:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/103770\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T03:33:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T03:33:24","slug":"food-wine-names-five-must-try-foods-from-san-antonios-heb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/103770\/","title":{"rendered":"Food & Wine names five must-try foods from San Antonio’s HEB"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time for Americans to get familiar with sotol. Desert Door Texas Sotol<\/a>, a Driftwood, Texas-based distillery and a leader in the sotol market, is taking on a new national distribution plan to 46 states and Washington, D.C. by the end of 2025. This more than doubles its current 20-state reach.<\/p>\n

The brand offers three core products: an “original” flagship, a two-year oak-aged variety, and Pollinator, which is infused with botanicals native to Texas and falls under Desert Door’s Conservation Series, raising funds for the brand’s nonprofit, Wild Spirit Wild Places (WSWP).<\/p>\n

This expansion is significant not just for the brand, but for anyone interested in spirits. Desert Door was the first sotol distillery in the U.S. in just 2017<\/a>, so its distribution could be an important metric for the viability of similar enterprises and for how well people across the country know sotol.<\/p>\n

Even Mexican makers have had a complicated head start, since the spirit was banned from 1944-1994. This and the Mexican government’s subsequent move to grant it an official Denominaci\u00f3n de Origen (D.O.) in 2002 \u2014 essentially a geographic stamp of quality \u2014 have made U.S. production controversial<\/a> in both a legal sense and in public opinion regarding cultural appropriation. On the legal side, at least, there’s an answer: the U.S. does not recognize the D.O.<\/p>\n

On a more personal level, many drinkers love sotol as an alternative to both the more widespread tequila and the more challenging mezcal; sotol, made with the Dasylirion texanum plant, is sometimes smoky, but much smoother than mezcal. It is most commonly described as “grassy.” For Desert Door in particular, citrus notes as well as vanilla and oak (for its oak-aged product) dominate the narrative among reviewers.<\/p>\n

Desert Door also frames its production methods, which include wild harvesting, as more sustainable than those used to make tequila.<\/p>\n

“We only harvest areas of high concentration, and we only take 20 percent of the plants per acre at any given time,” Desert Door co-founder Ryan Campbell told The Land Report<\/a>, a U.S.-based magazine about private landownership and conservation. The Land Report went on to explain that “Only the oldest plants get harvested. Afterwards, they don\u2019t go near the same area for another 12 years, which is roughly the maturation cycle of the plant.”<\/p>\n

Desert Door’s distribution expansion will be executed in tiers, starting with three states in July \u2013 Illinois, Indiana, and Louisiana \u2013 and a total of 11 new markets by September. New markets to be added by the end of September include Washington, D.C., Maryland, Kentucky, Washington, Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. A comprehensive list of locations can be found as they roll out at desertdoor.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The distribution will happen in partnership with Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC), a large wholesale beverage alcohol distributor based in Atlanta, Texas.<\/p>\n

“Their expansive network and deep industry expertise are key to reaching new audiences nationwide,” said Desert Door co-founder and CEO Brent Looby in a press release. “I genuinely believe that sotol will surpass mezcal in the market in the next five years, and I think we\u2019re one step closer to that today.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s time for Americans to get familiar with sotol. Desert Door Texas Sotol, a Driftwood, Texas-based distillery and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":103771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,67059,49313,42033,40282,980,12437,7202,7203,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-103770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-food-wine","10":"tag-grocery-stores","11":"tag-heb","12":"tag-honors","13":"tag-lists","14":"tag-rankings","15":"tag-san-antonio","16":"tag-sanantonio","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-tx","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114940084464622298","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}