Haney is Negave’s active board member along with David Neiwood, David Polinsky, Amanda Parness, and William Kuluva.

Yitzhak Carmy is the only non-US citizen of the group. He owns Carmy Exports, and is one of Israel’s biggest produce growers, raising about 45 percent of all sweet potatoes in Israel and cultivating hundreds of hectares of land in the Gaza border region.

Humble beginnings

When Haney and his business partners first put together the pitch for Negave Estates, they were waiting “for someone to tell us that we were crazy.” Instead, they discovered that agave was actually blooming in the Negev in the 1950s and ’60s.

“David Ben-Gurion brought it to develop the Negev, and there was a thriving business here for agave-based textiles,” says Haney. “But when Israel opened up and brought in synthetics, it killed that industry.”

To this day, there are wild agave plants growing across the Negev. “Agave has a terroir, like grapes. It gets its taste from the land it’s planted in. Agave grown here has a different taste from the one grown in Mexico.”

‌The company’s long-term plans involve bringing blue agave DNA from Mexico and lab-growing the plants until they are strong enough to thrive in the desert.

“Operationally we have had some hiccups, like negotiating shipment logistics of plant material and dealing with understaffed regulatory bodies. We have been able to negotiate these challenges in no small part by the can-do attitude of our partners and supporters,” says Neiwood.

Tequila under shadow of war

The team’s efforts, including curing the DNA in Israeli labs, were expected to culminate in planting in March next year at Kibbutz Alumim, and a juice harvest sometime in the following five years.

When war broke out in Israel on October 7, however, everything changed.

Haney’s son Asher, a paratrooper in active service, was one of the first to engage the terrorists on October 7 near the kibbutz.

Carmy, whose farms have been hit badly by the attack in the south, was then called up to fight with a reserve group made up of veterans of various elite IDF units.

Everyone at Negave Estates volunteered to provide transportation to reservists to get to their bases, pack supplies on army bases, deliver supplies and food to soldiers on the frontlines and open their homes to displaced families directly impacted or subject to incessant rocket barrages.

Though the war will likely delay the initial rollout, founders say that the recent events have only made them more determined to cultivate agave-based spirits in Israel’s south, even though the crops will be grown in the fields and communities most impacted by October 7 attacks.

“Not only are we more committed to our goals than ever before, but our mission is now augmented by its crucial role of helping to rebuild and economically contribute to the resuscitation of the vital Negev economy and its populace,” says Neiwood, the company’s CEO.

“In the interim, we are contract-manufacturing an agave distillate out of Mexico with the taste profile evocative of what we think we’ll end up with here,” says Haney.

To develop the taste, Negave is working with maestra tequilera Ana Maria Romero Mena, one of Mexico’s most-trusted tequila authorities, as well as other experts.

Haney says even though the distillate will be shipped from Mexico, it will be “aged, bottled and stored” in Israel until “our agave locally is mature enough to harvest.”

The aging of tequila, which can take anywhere from three months to two years, in a certain geographical location contributes to the product’s “climatic influences.”