Penca Ancha
A descriptive folk name (Spanish for "wide leaf") that travels across producer and regional contexts without a single fixed species behind it. Most often attached to Agave cupreata in Guerrero and Michoacán labeling, but the mapping is not guaranteed; verify the species the producer lists.
Regions: Guerrero, Michoacán
Penca Ancha is Spanish for "wide leaf" or "wide blade." A penca is a single leaf of the agave rosette, the thick, fibrous, water-storing blade that fans out from the plant's central core; ancha is the feminine adjective for "wide." Read literally, the name simply describes any agave whose individual leaves are visibly broader than the regional norm. That is exactly the problem: a descriptive folk name like this travels easily from village to village and from producer to producer, attaching to whatever local agave happens to fit the description, without ever locking onto a single species.
This is the category of local name that the botany chapter flags as ambiguous by default. It differs from a name like tobalá, which producers across Oaxaca consistently use for Agave potatorum, or espadín, which is almost universally A. angustifolia. Penca Ancha has no such anchor. It is a shape word, not a species word.
What it usually points to. In Guerrero and Michoacán, where the name appears most often on mezcal labels, Penca Ancha most commonly maps to Agave cupreata, the broad-leafed, copper-tinged wild and semi-wild agave that defines Guerrero mezcal. Mature cupreata rosettes do carry notably wide pencas, which is the visual cue behind the regional usage. A secondary attachment to A. inaequidens shows up in some Michoacán producer contexts; inaequidens is the other broad-leafed mezcal agave of the same general territory, and producers occasionally use Penca Ancha for it as well. Other species attachments turn up in producer-specific labeling outside this corridor.
Editorial guidance. When a bottle is labeled "Penca Ancha" with no species printed, treat the name as a regional descriptor and look for the species line on the back label or producer site. In Guerrero contexts default to cupreata with medium confidence; in Michoacán contexts allow for inaequidens as a real alternative. The safer reading order, repeated throughout this site, is: producer label first, species listed second, local name last. Flavor-wise, the bottles that fall into the cupreata range tend to show green herbs, lemongrass, lime leaf, a slightly tea-like bitterness, and a fresh, structured backbone; the inaequidens range tends toward a heavier, fattier, fruit-forward profile. For the species-level treatment see the Agave cupreata page; for a parallel ambiguous-name case study see cenizo.