Archivist. Noun. A person who has the job of collecting and storing materials in an archive. Keeper of records or documents.

Agaveist. Noun. A person with a deep love of agave spirits who has a compulsion to tell stories about Mexico’s indigenous spirits and record their history. Keeper of mad ideas and maddeningly tasty drinks.

Okay, agaveist isn’t an actual occupation.

But as John Koenig, author of The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows points out, “the dictionary evolves over time…new words are coined as needed, emerging one by one from a test lab of our conversations…words will never do us justice. But we have to try anyway. Luckily, the palette of language is infinitely expandable. If we wanted to, we could build a new linguistic framework to fill in the gaps, this time rooted in our common humanity, our shared vulnerability, and our complexity as individuals – a perspective that simply wasn’t there when most of our dictionaries were written.”

Based on this perspective, I’m going to stand my ground and say agaveist is an actual word. One that contains a myriad of emotions in the vein of what Koenig was aiming for when he wrote his own dictionary of feelings we all feel but don’t have the language to express.

From this idea comes a kernel of how The Agaveist came to be. In my own subjective opinion, agave spirits have their own language. And when you drink them, it’s not always easy to put into words. It’s a sensation as unique as the journey an individual took to falling down the rabbit hole of tequila, mezcal and other Mexican spirits.

My own journey was accidental. In 2025, I was asked by my publisher Pen and Sword books to write about agave spirits as a follow up to my previous book A History Of Alcoholic Spirits: How Our Favourite Tipples Changed The World. Over the course of that project and all the research I did, it became clear to me that my interest in agave spirits was only beginning.

Now, here I am, The Agaveist blooming out of curiosity and creativity.

What can you expect to read through The Agaveist?

• Tequila and mezcal reviews.
• Think pieces on various Mexican spirits that include sotol, bacanora and raicilla.
• Deep dive stories on historical figures involved within the agave spirits industry and on the periphery.
• Opinions on emerging trends from other categories like Mexican rum and whisky.
• Interviews with leading agave spirits professionals, including distillery owners, brand ambassadors, producers, fellow writers and more.

So, stick around a while. Pour out your favourite tequila or mezcal. Browse the pages of The Agaveist with an open mind, exactly as I did when I first started this journey.

For as the legendary founder of Del Maguey Ron Cooper famously said “you don’t find mezcal, mezcal finds you.”

Jamie Ryder, Editor of The Agaveist