Waikulu Distillery owner Paul Turner stands in a Makawao field of blue agave plants Wednesday morning while describing the process of farming and distilling his premium agave spirit on Maui. Nearly a decade after Turner first put 200 keiki plants in the ground, there are 3,000 healthy plants growing on the property that was once covered in overgrown cane grass. This year the distillery produced its very first bottles of the Maui-grown product. — The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
MAKAWAO — It was a rewarding experience for Waikulu Distillery owner Paul Turner when he held his first-ever branded bottle of Blue Agave Spirits back in April.
“It was really exciting,” Turner said Wednesday morning in the distillery room in Makawao, which will soon be open to the public for tours and tastings. “It was really rewarding, honestly. You go from planting the plant about eight years ago, nine years ago, to finally having it come here and put it in a bottle, finally having the real product.”
What started as a 5- to 6-acre property overgrown with cane grass in 2008 is now a thriving Maui-based farm of agave tequilana (blue agave) plants, which have the appearance of aloe vera succulents.
Turner planted 200 keiki in 2013, and now there are 3,000 healthy plants growing from the original shoots, which can be seen from Baldwin Avenue just below the Makawao Cemetery.
Today, Blue Agave Spirits is currently found at 13 Upcountry restaurants and a few stores, including Hali’imaile General Store, Milagros in Paia, Colleen’s in Haiku, Pukalani Superette and Rodeo General Store. The alcoholic beverage may soon be available at Foodland.
Distillery staffers Derek Cantero (foreground) and Albert Lobez help blend crushed agave and water turning in a custom-made rotating tub Wednesday. The tub utilizes a 300-pound forklift wheel to crush steamed chunks of agave to claim its sugars and juice for fermentation. — The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
Waikulu is also open for those interested in purchasing a bottle on-site at 3275 Baldwin Ave., but the team of six hopes to open the property for public tours and tastings in the near future, as well as offer a bigger variety of spirits.
Turner said that they are “all ready to go,” but are waiting on the final green light from the Maui County Liquor Control Commission. Though no estimated timeline was provided, he’s hoping sooner than later.
At first, Turner tried growing citrus on the property, but had no luck. After coming across mail-ordered, clean agave starters from Florida, he said, “I’ll try that and see what happens.”
“They just freaking took off,” he said. “They were so happy and instantly just started growing, so I looked more into it and there’s actually quite a bit of scientific papers written about these since it’s just a big industry in Mexico.”
A pair of Waikulu Blue Agave Sprits products are displayed in the distillery’s tasting room on Wednesday. — The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo
The vision of opening a distillery blossomed.
The company’s name “waikulu” is a Hawaiian word for “dripping water.” It was historically used to describe alcohol spirits, which drip slowly from the still.
While walking the quaint property, Turner said they must classify and market the product as “spirits,” rather than tequila, because Mexico owns the origin rights of tequila and mezcal, even though harvesting and some of the processing is the same.
Harvesting about an acre per year, it takes about five years for blue agave to mature in Makawao. They average about 400 pounds in size, with the heaviest weighing in at 600 pounds, and grow upwards to about 6 to 8 feet in height. The planting, growing and harvesting of agave is all manual labor.
“They are absolutely enormous,” Turner said.
Three times a week, a special tool with sharp blades is used to harvest the heart of the plant while the shoots are cut and planted to start new rows of keiki agave.
Irrigation is not necessary as these plants thrive in drier climates, needing water about once a month from rain, which makes them “resilient during droughts,” a common obstacle for Upcountry farmers and ranchers, he said. The temperature in Makawao also makes for “a much better growing environment” and produces bigger blue agave plants than in Mexico, Turner said.
“There’s a certain temperature range that they are happy at and that’s Makawao’s range all year-round,” said Turner. “In Mexico, it only hits that range early in the morning or late in the day, so they don’t have all day to go through photosynthesis.”
This also means that Waikulu’s blue agave is “much sweeter” due to having nearly double the sugar content as varieties found in Mexico.
Between eight to 10 pounds can produce one bottle of Waikulu Blue Agave Spirits; one plant equals 30 to 50 bottles, Turner said. Processing takes about 12 or so days, unless the spirits are aged in barrels.
With Turner’s background in engineering and passion for tinkering, including through his startup bike equipment company RockShox, a lot of the distillery’s machinery to process the agave is built in-house.
Once the massive agave roots are chopped and washed, Turner showed how they are slow cooked and steamed for nearly two days in a home-engineered outdoor oven to extract “the honey.”
Heading inside the distillery, the smell of sweet agave fills the air. Using a rotating crusher that Turner developed from a 300-pound forklift wheel, the caramelized sugars are extracted from the plant fibers.
Nothing is wasted, too, as the leftover fibers are taken back out to the fields and composted to regenerate the soil.
From there, the liquid is fermented in large tanks for a week with natural yeast developed from the blue agave plants themselves.
The distiller is also fabricated by the Waikulu team, Turner said, and is designed to bring out more agave flavor.
After the spirits are twice distilled, Turner said that the alcohol, which is “smooth” with “a lot of character,” is bottled in glass by hand for retail or poured into oak barrels for aging, a process that takes up to three months.
“I think it’s really good,” Turner said. “I like to think that it’s all technique, but I really think it’s all in the plants because they’re so happy and healthy, you know, they grow so well here. There’s flavors in this that you just don’t find in Mexican tequila, and likewise, there’s flavors in Mexico that you won’t find here depending on the process, the yeast, the distillation. … It’s really different.”
On bottling days, Office Manager Viviana Amezola said Wednesday that it’s “so satisfying” because she knows how much labor and love goes into producing a bottle of Waikulu Blue Agave Spirits.
“A lot of blood, sweat and tears,” Amezola said with a laugh. “It’s pretty amazing. There’s a lot of hard work that goes in and a fresh margarita is just so different from anything else.”
Maintaining “Maui’s essence,” Turner said he’s excited about keeping Waikulu spirits 100 percent grown and operated Upcountry to give local customers and visitors a unique cultural and wholesome experience.
“It’s just a small group of people that make everything happen,” he said in their soon-to-be tasting room. “You’re seeing it. It all happens right here.”
* Dakota Grossman can be reached at dgrossman@mauinews.com.
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