Bats, Seeds, and Spirits
Last fall we gathered at The Agave Lab — friends, neighbors, new faces — for an evening that mixed mezcal, seeds, bats, and story.
We started with handmade cocktails from Bozal and Parch, drinks in hand as conversations sparked and warming connections began to flow. Two stations invited everyone in: one for making bat-print shirts, the other for planting native seeds. It was a way of opening the night with our hands, grounding the gathering in creativity and care.
After a delicious meal, we circled back to the spirits. We tasted through three unique mezcal expressions from Bozal, including their rare Cempasúchil mezcal — distilled in clay pots with marigolds, the flower of Día de los Muertos. That sip landed like a story in itself.
Then, we nestled in by the fire for story time with Keith Lombardo, Coastal Ecologist and Director of the Southern California Research Learning Center. Keith shared the fragile history of Agave shawii — once abundant along the California coast, now reduced to just two small U.S. populations, one with only a single genetic individual. South in Baja, the plant still thrives, pollinated by nectar-feeding bats. But north of the border, its pollinator remains a mystery.
Keith reminded us that bats, agaves, and people are bound together. Pollination is reciprocity. Conservation is connection. And stories like these help us remember that survival isn’t just science — it’s community and ritual, too.
We ended the evening with seeds in our hands. Some planted, some saved. A small gesture, maybe, but one that carries forward.
