You’re 14 years old, in the sixth year of primary school and your father, a worker in a mezcal distillery, falls ill. Your family’s economic situation becomes precarious, along with the opportunity to continue your studies.
What do you do if you’re an indigenous girl from San Dionisio Ocotepec, in the Central Valley of Oaxaca?
You make mezcal.
La Palenquerita is the result of the efforts of that 14-year-old girl, named Adela, who has created a product that has since won first prize in three regional competitions, and resulted in a meeting with state Gov. Gabino Cué.
The Mezcal Girl, as she is being called, began operating a rudimentary though artisanal distillery whose product was sold in plastic bottles bearing a simple paper label. What was missing was commercialization, and her meeting with the governor soon fixed that.
The state has anted up 825,000 pesos, or US $53,000, in funding to commercialize La Palenquerita. Economic Development and Tourism Secretary José Zorrilla said Adela’s mezcal will be included in a national catalogue of mezcal brands and sold in supermarkets.
Export opportunities will be explored as will the distillery’s inclusion on the state’s mezcal route.
SANTIAGO MATATLAN (MEXICO) - Once derided as a drink for destitute drunkards, Mexico's smoky-flavored mezcal liquor has come out of the shadows to become a trendy booze in fashionable bars from Mexico City to Sydney.
A glass for mezcal at the Mezcal Fair in Oaxaca, Mexico on July 26, 2014
The booming demand for tequila's less known ancestor may even be too good for the cactus-like plant that's used to make mezcal, maguey, which is now in high demand for a variety of products.
In the southern state of Oaxaca, mezcal's heartland, producers still use rustic tools to make the spirit in small distilleries known as palenques.
Maguey, which is also known as agave, is roasted and then crushed into pulp in a stone wheel pulled by a horse before being distilled into the drink with an alcohol content of at least 45 percent.
Founded in 1840, the Cortes family owns one of the oldest palenques in the town of Santiago Matatlan, the cradle of mezcal, where workers use axes to cut the tough, green leaves of maguey.
Times were tougher just 10 years ago, when many distilleries closed up shop. The Cortes family, however, persevered even when they practically were giving bottles away for free.
But distillers say the "drink of the poor and drunks" began to be seen as a boutique booze around 2010, attracting more and more consumers in bohemian bars of Mexico City and abroad.
Production soared by 143 percent to 2.5 million liters (660,000 gallons) in 2013 compared to the previous year, while exports jumped by 12 percent to nearly one million liters.
Some 105 brands are now sold in 31 countries. But mezcal still amounts to just 1.1 percent of Mexico's signature liquor, tequila.
The Cortes family exports 70 percent of its production to the United States, Europe and Australia, selling bottles at $100 apiece.
- Gateway to the gods -
Asis Cortes, a 27-year-old in charge of marketing and design, is proud of being part of the sixth generation of the family that produces mezcal.
"We are thankful because the people who have been interested in taking mezcal to other countries have been taking it as a drink that is part of our culture, not as a mere alcoholic drink," Cortes told AFP.
While the drink has become fashionable, it has medicinal purposes in villages in the valley and hills of Oaxaca, where it lives up to the saying, "For everything bad, mezcal; for everything good, the same."
In Oaxaca, which has a large indigenous community, mezcal is seen by many as a near magical gateway "with ancestors, with the land, with the gods and with oneself," Cortes said.
Making mezcal requires patience.
There are more than 30 species of maguey that can produce mezcal but only one type known as espadin is easy to grow, and it takes seven years to mature.
The other varieties grow in the wild in the hills and take 35 years to grow.
Producing 200 liters under the supervision of a "maestro mezcalero" can take one month.
While gourmet markets value such artisanal craft, 60 percent of mezcal is now made industrially in large distilleries as high demand has attracted large drink-makers like Coca-Cola.
But the big companies are also betting on the traditional ways of making mezcal.
"As a producer, you simply have to tell the big companies how much you can produce so you don't the artisanal aspect," said Joel Santiago, a maestro mezcalero who makes espadin mezcal for a company linked to tequila company Jose Cuervo.
"Thanks to them, however, mezcal reaches any location," Santiago said.
- Maguey threat -
Mezcal is the forefather of tequila, which used to be known "wine of tequila mezcal" until authorities renamed it simply tequila in the 1950s.
By law, tequila must contain at least 51 percent of sugars from blue agave, the maguey variety that sprouts all over the western state of Jalisco.
But tequila makers are grabbing maguey from Oaxaca to make their liquor, either to cut costs or because their cloned blue agave are often plagued by disease.
Many Jalisco companies that make sweet products like agave honey are also massively buying maguey needed for mezcal production.
Abel Alcantara, president of the Mezcal Maestros Association, said the overwhelming demand for the plant threatens to trigger "an environmental catastrophe."
Authorities deny that maguey faces a deforestation crisis but they acknowledge that the booming demand requires them to make better plans for the upkeep of the popular plant.
Smoky, unique, and anachronistically artisan, Mezcal is rapidly becoming a go-to spirit for connoisseurs interested in connecting with Mexico’s rustic roots. Although mezcal is typically made from the same espadin agave that is used to produce tequila, mezcaleros (mezcal producers) also use a wide selection of other wild and domesticated varieties of agave. In particular, the tobala agave has found favor with consumers at high-end establishments in Mexico City and even farther abroad. As demand for the spirit grows, however, some local producers in the hills of Oaxaca on Mexico’s southern Pacific coast are starting to worry that the supply of wild tobala agave may soon be exhausted. While the corn, wheat, grapes and potatoes used to produce wine, grappa, pisco, vodka, and whisky and bourbon take a single season to grow, the agave plants used to produce mezcal can take up to two decades to mature. Standing in one of the fields that produces agave for his distillery, Jorge Rodriguez-Cano, a 25-year-old co-owner of the Amores Mezcal brand, peered out a long row of five-foot-tall dark green agave plants. Wispy clouds rolled over the jagged peaks around the valley and the hot summer sun beat down on the green agave plants, which look like gargantuan aloe vera plants, but with tougher leaves and sharp spines. “These are about ten years old,” Rodriguez-Cano explained. A few yards away Cristobal Martinez, a 53-year old farmhand chopped at an agave plant with a long, sharp machete, hacking off the leaves and leaving behind the plants one-foot-tall core, which is called a piña because it looks like a giant pineapple. “Don’t touch the piña, it’s really corrosive,” Rodriguez-Cano warned. “Once I picked up a piece of raw agave and licked it to taste the flavor. I had to spit it out and I couldn’t taste right for six months. The juice is really caustic,” he added. Martinez hacked off the leaves of another plant, one of several dozen he would harvest over the course of the morning. His hands were calloused and scarred after years of working with the agave plants. “I always use long sleeves when I work,” he explained.
Jorge Rodriguez-Cano (right) stands in front of a ten-year-old agave espadin plant at his farm in Oaxaca,
Mexico. Photo by N. Parish Flannery @LatAmLENS
Later in the afternoon, inside the distillery that produces his Mezcal Amores brand, Rodriguez-Cano surveyed the operation, watching a worker guide a horse-pulled, stone, grinding wheel over clumps of roasted, gooey agave. Using similar techniques as a New England clambake or New Zealand hāngi-style seaside barbecue, mezcal producers use a wood-fire pit and stones to create a rustic sort of oven. They place the raw agave on a pile of scalding rocks and smoldering charcoal and then cover the fire pit with leaves and dirt. As is the case with Argentine style coal-roasted onions, during the cooking process the agave goes through a chemical change, caramelizing and transforming into a molten, fibrous pulp that oozes with sweet nectar. Rodriguez-Cano picked up a chunk of roasted agave and sliced off a bite-sized piece. It was sweet and rich, similar in flavor to a candied pumpkin. At small, family-owned distilleries throughout Oaxaca, the cooked agave is fermented in giant open-topped wooden barrels and then distilled in wood-fire copper stills, a process that hasn’t changed since the Spanish introduced it during the colonial era. Rodriguez-Cano looked over a massive pile of raw agave, ready to be fed into the ovens, part of an operation that produces thousands of bottles of clear, smoky mezcal every year. “We also plant our own agave,” Rodriguez-Cano explained. “The idea is reforestation. We want to give back to the community too,” he added.
Higher up in the steep peaks outside of Oaxaca City, a colonial enclave known for its richly preserved architecture and utterly fantastic cuisine, Rodriguez-Cano strained his neck and pointed up towards the hilltop. “That’s a tobala,” he explained gesturing towards a squat plant with wide leaves. Tobala is the wild cousin of the domesticated espadin agave that Mezcal Amores and most other producers use. More complex in flavor and much harder to find, bottles of tobala mezcal can sell for hundreds of pesos in boutique stores in Oaxaca and Mexico City. At a small distillery high up in the mountains, Santos Martinez Cruz, a second-generation mezcalero explained that he and his family produce tobala mezcal. “You have to find them in the hills,” he said. “Each batch takes about 200 piñas,” he added. As iridescent mezcal dripped slowly from his still and the agave pulp steamed in the five foot tall wooden fermentation barrels, Martinez Cruz poured out a glass of tobala mezcal for his visitors to sample. It was dry, smoky, and earthy. As Martinez Cruz explained his family’s history producing mezcal, Beto Adame, a photographer visiting Oaxaca from Mexico City climbed up the hillside and snapped a photo of a small tobala plant. “It’s rugged, bulky… wider than the espadin,” he said.
While espandin agave can be cultivated and produced sustainably, tobala mezcal is more complicated. It is perhaps the most traditional variety of mezcal and the spirit that provides consumers with the most direct connection to the rustic traditions of Oaxaca’s high sierra. Mezcaleros hike up through the steep hills search out and harvesting the wild plant, bring back dozens of piñas to their distilleries. Collectively, each batch of piñas represents an entire epoch of time in the hillside. To put it in perspective, to grow 200 tobala plants to maturation one after another would take 4,000 years. With such a massive gap between the yearly harvest schedule and the decades necessary for the plants to grow, wild agave may be threatened by the recent boom in the mezcal industry. “Tobala is special, but cutting it down to make mezcal is kind of like wearing a panda-fur coat,” Rodriguez-Cano explained.
Although the agave plants feature corrosive juices and razor sharp spines that often break off inside the wound of any unlucky interloper unfortunate enough to step on one, their natural defenses are not likely to provide sufficient protection from mezcaleros keen on profiting from growing interest in tobala mezcal.
While the mezcal boom will provide a much-needed economic stimulus to many families and communities, the industry needs to engage in long-term planning to protect its own future.
“We have to think about sustainability,” Rodriguez-Cano explained.
Terroir. Wild yeasts. Elevation. Who knew these terms could apply to mezcal as easily as to wine. In fact, “the vocabulary of mezcal is more like the vocabulary of wine than spirits,” explains Ron Cooper, the California artist who founded Del Maguey single-village mezcals 20 years ago when the beverage wasn’t on anybody’s radar.
“We’re talking about terroir, about mouth feel,” he says. “We’re talking about aroma, nose.”
He can go on for hours, recounting the long history of mezcal made in remote villages hours off dirt roads.
For Cooper and a growing number of aficionados, mezcal is the very definition of artisanal spirit. Each maker has his signature style and recipe passed down for generations. Unlike tequila, mezcal doesn’t come from a gleaming factory but is made in small batches in primitive copper alembic and sometimes clay pot stills.
“Mezcal is the moonshine of Mexico,” says Raul Yrastorza of the dedicated downtown L.A. mezcal and tequila bar Las Perlas. “From glass to glass, it’s amazing.”
To make his point, Yrastorza offers a flight of four Del Maguey mezcals from four villages at four elevations, from 5,000 feet to 9,000 feet. “For every 300 feet you go in elevation, the more arid the soil, the more stressed the plant gets,” Yrastorza explains. “The wild microbes and yeasts in the air change, so the flavor profile is automatically going to be different. As the plant becomes more stressed, it develops more sugar and the distilled spirit has more complexity.”
The differences between the village mezcals are not subtle, and I stretch to find a vocabulary to describe their flamboyant flavors. I’m drawn to the complex warmth of the Chichicapa and the spice and smoke of San Luis del Rio. Yrastorza’s favorite is the last, from Santo Domingo Albarradas at 9,000 feet. It reminds him of a fine grappa.
Unlike tequila, which is always made from blue agave, mezcal can be made from 28 varieties of the plant, only four of which can be domesticated, though espedin agave is the one that can be cultivated most consistently.
Mezcal gets its characteristic smokiness from the pina, or heart of the plant, which is roasted for three to five days over hot stones in a pit covered with earth. According to Cooper, depending on the village, it’s either mashed in horse-turned stone mills or by men wielding heavy mallets. After fermenting with wild yeasts in wooden vats, the liquid is distilled in wood-fired clay or copper stills.
Tequila makers often steam-cook the agave to speed up the process. When it comes time to distill, that’s like starting with a boiled onion compared to a roasted caramelized onion, Cooper says. “It’s incredible how all the different little ancient technologies can change the flavor.”
Yrastorza pours a second flight of mezcals: Mezcal Vago Elote, Mezcal Tosba, Mezcales de Leyenda “Cupreata” and Mezcalero Release #7 from San Juan del Rio. The first is smooth as silk, infused with roasted corn after the second distillation and before an extra third. The Tosba is more assertive, with a long finish. And the Leyenda presents a wonderful complexity that can be untangled only over the course of an evening. The Mezcalero is sweet and alluring, a blend of three agaves, two of them wild.
At Las Perlas, shelves hold a collection of over 120 bottles. That’s more than twice as many as last year.
New bottles are coming into the market all the time. Open four years now, this gem of a bar used to be one of the few places to stock more than a handful of labels. That’s beginning to change.
“None of this would have happened without Ron Cooper,” Yrastorza says. He says Cooper was the first to commercialize great artisanal mezcals. “There’s a saying: ‘You don’t find mezcal; mezcal finds you.’”
• While tequila has been touted as Mexico’s
premiere distilled beverage for decades, mezcal has recently been
gaining an international reputation as the new spirit of choice for
maguey cactus beverage aficionados.
• While tequila can only be produced from pure blue agave, primarily
in the area surrounding the city of Tequila, just northwest of
Guadalajara, Jalisco, and in the highland region of that western state,
mezcal can come from other types of agave and can have a range of fruit
and vegetal flavors, plus a distinctively smoky taste springing from a
special roasting process.
• Mezcal can legally be made from 28 recognized varieties of agave,
including the blue agave, as long as it is grown in the proper region.
• Mezcal is believed to be the oldest distilled spirit in North America.
• Like tequila, mezcal is classified into three categories: silver or
joven, which is freshly distilled and usually has a clear color;
reposado, which has been subjected to a mild aging process for less than
12 months and has a light golden color; and añejo, which has been aged
for one year or longer in oak barrels and generally has a deep amber
hue.
• Mezcal has a smokier taste than tequila, because it is produced in
small batches, roasting the agave in an earth oven. Tequila, on the
other hand, is typically made in large industrial batches and steamed,
not roasted.
• Most mezcals today do not have the trademark wiggly red worm at the
bottom of the bottle because a couple years ago the Mexican government,
in order to guarantee stricter standards for certification, banned the
non-arthropod invertebrate for sanitation reasons. However, a few
diehard holdout mezcal producers insist on wiggling their way around the
new law by adding pre-pickled worms to their spirits.
Two cocktails at Hecho en Dumbo: from left, the Margarita de Mezcal and La Canadiense.
By FLORENCE FABRICANT
Published: September 26, 2013
nytimes.com
Mezcal, tequila’s brash, more rustic cousin, is crashing the cocktail party, showing up in the kind of mixed drinks normally made with more-refined spirits.
Until fairly recently, mezcal was an esoteric choice, but it is becoming more mainstream as drinkers come to appreciate how it gives smoke and swagger to a drink, never retreating to the background no matter how much fruit juice and sugar are piled into the mix.
Even in a margarita, like the one they make at Hecho en Dumbo in NoHo, it adds the kind of complexity and intrigue that is often lacking when the cocktail is made with many of today’s overrefined tequilas.
For those who are new to the spirit, a margarita is a sensible place to start. “Everyone is familiar with a margarita, and it’s a good way to showcase mezcal,” said Ethan Smith, an owner and the mixologist at the restaurant Hecho en Dumbo.
Brian Van Flandern of Creative Cocktail Consultants has come up with a drink that suggests a margarita, and could serve as a set of training wheels. It’s called the Smoking Jacket, and includes both mezcal and tequila. You can adjust the proportions of either spirit depending on how much mezcal personality you want.
“Mezcal has real flavor, and it’s much more terroir-driven,” Mr. Van Flandern said.
Both mezcal and tequila are made from agave, a succulent plant. But unlike tequila, the best of which is made with 100 percent blue agave, mezcal can be made from any of nearly 30 types of agave. The piñas, or cores, are usually smoked in open pits, not steamed as for tequila.
In his new book, “Craft Cocktails,” Mr. Van Flandern offers several mezcal concoctions, including the Rum and Smoke, in which he ramps up the smokiness with a splash of Lagavulin Scotch. Mezcal partners well with whiskey, especially Scotch and blended spirits. And certain fruits, notably orange and pineapple, seem tailor-made for it. A whiff of heat, from either pepper or chile, is not a mistake, either.
And don’t think of these drinks as just a pairing for a plate of tacos, tamales or queso fundido. At Fresh Hamptons — a Bridgehampton, N.Y., restaurant that emphasizes local food and nods toward Asia, not Mexico — the mixologist, Douglas Sheehan, combines reposado mezcal with fresh pineapple juice, honey, chile and lime. His finishing touch is a dusting of crushed pink peppercorns that add fruit and fire to the well-balanced cocktail. He calls it They Didn’t Burn Rome in a Day.
