KC ORIGINALS

KC ORIGINALS words by ANNE KNIGGENDORF | photos by CHASE CASTOR

Let There Be Gin.

Meg and Jeff Evans are a youngish Midwestern couple living in Kansas City. Meg taught high school English for a while, then she worked in higher ed. Jeff was a mechanical engineer who did machine design for full scale manufacturers like GM, Tesla, and Nissan – he made machines and integrated them into assembly lines. A story-lover and a machine guy. But throughout those now-gone workdays, the couple had a shared history causing an ancestral itch that demanded to be scratched – a history that spurred them to forge a product unique not only to Kansas City but to all of the United States: an award-winning gin crafted from agave rather than from the traditional distillates of barley, corn, and rye.

mule in rural Missouri warning away inspectors from the false floor hiding the bootleg, and stories on Jeff’s side about a man with a perfectly legal prescription pad ladling gin from his bathtub into pharmacy bottles for whoever “needed” it, fate tempted them away from their day jobs in 2016.

They’d set up a still and join their foremothers and forefathers but with their own personal touches involving Meg’s flare for storytelling and Jeff’s ability to build a machine.

However, Missouri is not light on distilleries. As recently as 2020, the Show Me State was number 16 in the country for most in operation. With 40 others already doing business across the state, the market wasn’t quite as saturated as in bigger states like California (220) or New York (145), but enough existed that the Evanses would need to find a way to distinguish their run at the market.

“We just wanted to do something that had never been done before. You know, every distillery in the nation is making a whiskey, a vodka, and a gin out of grain, right?” Jeff says.

The Evanses and Meg’s brother, Tyler Gloe, hit on the idea of distilling their own agave spirits. They started with Silver, Gold, and Heritage.

Jeff says, “Silver is equivalent to un-aged spirits made from agave, such as silver tequila. Gold would be equivalent to rested agave products, such as gold tequila or reposado tequila. Heritage would be equivalent to longer-aged agave spirits, such as añejo tequila.”

Mean Mule chose to adopt neutral names rather than appropriate the more traditional words, because tequila, Meg writes on the website, has “denomination of origin” and “geographic indication” status similar to the word Champagne.

So, though the Blue Weber agave, Mean Mule distill is from a single source in Jalisco, Mexico, in every other way, what they make is a product of Missouri. Silver, Gold, and Heritage it is.

But the gin is what’s really making news. Released on February 28, Mean Mule gin is, according to Jeff and a quick internet

search, one of only two agave gins in the world. The other is made by Gracias a Dios in Querétaro, Mexico.

“So,” Jeff says, “gin is a funny thing. Naturally, there are purists in the gin field, and there are many, many, many different styles of gins.”

He says that their style best fits in the new-wave category, which suggests that the juniper – the one nonnegotiable ingredient in gin – isn’t at the forefront of the flavor profile as it is with London dry, but, instead, takes a backseat to other, often local, botanicals.

“The major difference between us and the only other agave gin in the world is that we are vapor distilled, which means that there is a basket of botanicals in line with the hot vapor coming out of the still,” Jeff explains.

Gloe, Mean Mule’s master distiller, says he’s always soaking and fermenting something, experimenting with flavors to find a fresh taste everyone likes.

“I’m always playing to see if I can throw a dart at the board and it sticks and it’s a good product,” he says.

As they worked on their new gin, Gloe says they blended

botanicals in about 100 combinations before they found a recipe.

What they landed on does include juniper – for legal purposes – but also white peppercorn, cardamom, lemon zest, coriander, and, mostly strikingly, persimmon.

“We had an enormous persimmon tree on our property,” Meg says about her childhood home near Hermann, Missouri.

She says they wanted to bring in elements from their farm and heritage and even experimented with cornhusks and other things that grew all around them.

“Persimmon just really came out with something that we loved and have good memories around. Grandma used to

make persimmon jelly,” Meg says.

Moving forward, the Evanses plan to add another agricultural element to their business: growing their own agave. They’ve purchased 40 acres in Arizona and will plant this coming December, though, Jeff says, it’ll be nearly seven years before they’ll be able to harvest and distill their crop.

Meg says the goal is to be a single-estate manufacturer. “Every part of the process of being single estate is important. So, single estate means from dirt to bottle, it is all on us.”

If it takes off, theirs will be the first large-scale agave farm in the United States, which sounds not only like great bragging rights for Mean Mule, but for Kansas City.

MEAN MULE POMEGRANATE GIN FIZZ Makes 1 cocktail

2 oz Mean Mule Agave Gin 1 ½ oz POM 100% pomegranate juice ½ oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice ¾ oz simple syrup 1 egg white 1 oz soda water Garnish with rosemary sprig

Instructions: Combine gin, pomegranate juice, lemon juice, simple syrup, and an egg white in a cocktail shaker and shake like you mean it for 15 seconds (no ice). Then add ice and shake like you really, really mean it for 30 seconds until cold. Strain the drink into a glass and gently top with soda water as the egg white rises to the top. Then add the rosemary sprig garnish.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anne Kniggendorf is a staff writer/editor at the Kansas City Public Library. She's the author of Secret Kansas City and Kansas City Scavenger, and a freelance writer for various local and national publications. Visit her website: annekniggendorf.com.