JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa and Driftwood-based Desert Door Texas Sotol have partnered to serve a signature cocktail exclusive to the resort using Desert Door Texas Sotol’s Pollinator spirit.

A news release said the cocktail, Paloma Preserve, is now available on the menu across all of the North San Antonio resort’s restaurant and bar outlets: 18 Oaks, Cibolo Moon, Crooked Branch, High Velocity, Rivertop and Replenish.

According to the release, Desert Door Texas Sotol’s Pollinator is a sotol spirit made from the West Texas-grown evergreen sotol plant and is similar in profile to agave-based spirits, tequila and mezcal.

Pollinator was created with mesquite, persimmon and honeysuckle, which are native plants that are pollinated by Texas bee species, the release said.

The Paloma Preserve cocktail features the Pollinator Sotol, grapefruit juice, lime juice and simple syrup topped with soda, garnished with a lime wedge and served in signature blue porcelain tumblers.

The partnership between JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort and Spa and Desert Door Texas Sotol was established from the organizations’ common mission of the preservation of Texas bees, the release said.

According to Texas Master Gardeners within Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Services, development and pesticides have ravaged Texas bees, putting not only honey prices at stake, but the pollination of native Texas plants since bees play a key role in pollinating and the pollination of around $587 million of crops every year in Texas, the release said.

Desert Door’s nonprofit foundation Wild Spirit Wild Places is dedicated restoring and preserving wild lands across Texas and the United States through research, education and conservation practices, and it spearheaded the planting of pollinator gardens across Central Texas as part of the release of Pollinator.

Desert Door regularly releases limited editions of its Texas Sotol with a portion of its proceeds directly funding the foundation’s future land conservation projects. Pollinator is the third spirit variation in the resort’s Conservation Series of drinks, and it highlights bees as being crucial to ecological stability.

According to WSWP, bees are experiencing a decline that threatens global food production. In Texas, 40% of the honeybee population is being lost every year. Reasons for the decline vary from pesticides, drought, habitat destruction and disease, the release said.

Resort food and beverage director Adam Tyler said Desert Door’s nonprofit foundation and third Conservation Series spirit directly align with the resort’s missions to protect bees in Texas and to establish local community partnerships.

“We are proud to have them as a partner and are confident our guests will enjoy the exclusive Paloma Preserve cocktail using Desert Door Texas Sotol’s new Pollinator spirit,” Tyler said in a statement.

The release said the resort’s food and beverage team and culinary gardener are responsible for providing regional bees with the home they need to thrive by maintaining beehives on the resort’s property and harvesting honey from them.

In 2022, honey harvested at the resort was used in the brewing process of a new beer, Hill Country Honey Blonde, in partnership with Shavano Park-area Freetail Brewing Co., a company that actively builds awareness for wildlife conservation through the development of their products, the release said.