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Our Story

CHAWAR is a small batch agave spirit from the Andean highlands of Ecuador.

Made by Ecuador's first all-women's agave harvesting co-op, MISHKITA, who maintain the ancestral tradition of 

agave sap harvesting.

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The agave sap is called chawarmishki in the native Quechua language, meaning "raw" and "sweet".

The agave americana variety  grows up to 15 years, and when the plant reaches maturity, the sap is harvested by tapping into the base of the plant.

Once harvested, the agave sap (or chawarmishki in the native Quechua language) is left to ferment naturally with wild yeast and then double distilled, creating a floral, sweet, and all natural raw agave spirit with a smoother palette than Tequila or Mezcal.

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CHAWAR is distilled in Yaruqui, a small pueblo just outside Ecuador's capital, Quito.

Our master distiller is Elizabeth Guaguilla.

 

Learn more about our spirit profile here: 

Founder Story:

 

Eliot started his professional life deeply immersed in the world of conservation and the question of  how humans can improve their relationship with the earth. That path led Eliot into the world of agriculture and forestry. He has lived and worked along side coffee farmers in Central America and indigenous communities in the Amazon learning about how these people work with the plants and the land that sustain them. In the past few years, Eliot has begun to learn and work with indigenous communities high in the Andes who maintain an amazing relationship with their arid landscape and one plant in particular, andean agave.

 

Eliot was born in Austin TX, and has a masters in environmental management from Yale University. He studied physics at UC Santa Barbara and environmental philosophy at Evergreen State. He and his husband are the fathers of alpaca and llama herds in North and South America. He spends his time between Quito, Austin, Taos, Boulder, and Tena (in the Ecuadorian Amazon)

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