Team spirit: the Australian agave farm aiming to quench a global thirst for tequila

Blue agave plants at Australia’s first commercial-sized agave farm in Bowen, Queensland. The first crop is due to be harvested in July, with the agave spirit – it can't be called tequila – due to hit the market in September or October. Photograph: TSI

The plants may look like pineapples but these fields in north Queensland are growing piña of another kind – Agave tequilana.

Outside Bowen in the Whitsunday region, Australia’s first commercial-sized agave farm has just broken ground for the construction of its own distillery and bottling plant.