Mezcal

Para todo mal, mezcal. Para todo bien, tambien.

— Oaxacan proverb

Street art in the city of Oaxaca.

For many of us, thinking back on our high school or college years brings with it a host of memories about those particular alcoholic beverages to which we turned when determined to put a good buzz on. Usually these beverages were selected for consumption on the basis of their accessibility, firepower, and above all, low cost.

Growing up on the East Coast, the intoxicant of choice for those of us not partial to cheap beer was cheap wine, which represented, both figuratively and literally, the low-hanging fruit of dissolution. (I remember spending many a sodden evening gazing at the picturesque apple trees on the Boone’s Farm label, pondering a career as an orchardist). 

For those of a more daring nature there were the forbidden spirits lurking behind the locked doors of the liquor cabinet, to be jimmied open on the rare occasion of an unsupervised evening home. These elixirs delivered strange, sometimes noxious tastes which, when experimentally mixed together, could be relied upon to produce the desired result, followed predictably by passing out on the front lawn. Youthful hijinks! 

And then there was tequila—an exotic name from an exotic place, implanted in the American popular consciousness by The Champs’ hit song of 1958. Tequila came from Mexico—that much we knew—and was made from some kind of strange cactus grown in the desert by sombrero-sporting pistoleros. If you could get your hands on a bottle, tequila was as surefire a way to get blasted as a lengthy game of Russian roulette—and yet was said to be magically free from hangovers. 

But there was one intoxicant that stood at the apex of daredevil drinking sport: mezcal. Unpredictable as a scorpion, lethal as a rattlesnake, mezcal held the potential of producing a death spiral from which there was no escape, especially if you ate el gusano—the worm—that invariably rested at the bottom of the bottle (which, paradoxically, was also said to bestow aphrodisiacal powers). 

Oily as sin, cheap as rotgut, brewed in gas cans in corrugated metal sheds in the dead of night, mezcal was the Devil’s own brew. Or so we thought.

It turns out that the Legend of Mezcal has as much to do with reality as a puppet’s shadow thrown against a bedroom wall by a flickering candle. It also turns out that tequila, which over the decades has become a big-money player in the global spirits industry, is mezcal—or rather, one type of mezcal. To understand this conundrum, you have to understand The Agave.

Agave is a genus of plants found in Mexico, the Southwestern U.S. and parts of Central America. In Mesoamerica it has been used for millennia for a wide range of purposes, including thatching, needles and thread, fibers for making cords and rope (until recently a thriving industry in the Yucatan), clothing, sweetener, even food and drink. Its extraordinary utility made it a sacred plant in the eyes of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Sometimes called a century plant (given its extremely long growth and reproductive cycle), the agave is known as maguey (mah-gay) In Oaxaca, a word derived from the ancient Nahuatl language.

The agave isn’t a cactus, as we once imagined—it’s a succulent similar to the potted aloe plants that we keep on hand in case of pesky superficial burns in the kitchen. At last count, there were more than 200 different species of agave spread throughout its range, a huge diversity of speciation which plays strongly into the story of mezcal.

One aspect of the agave plant that turned out to be of particular interest to ancestral humans was its ability to produce an abundant quantity of natural sugars, especially during the period leading up to and including its final flowering phase. In fact, early peoples discovered that if one were to cut the stalk produced by the plant before it could flower, the plant kept up its prodigious production of sweet sap (called aguamiel, or honey water) which could be collected and fermented naturally into a pleasantly intoxicating beverage, similar to beer or mead, called pulque (pull-kay). Pulque remains a hugely popular beverage among indigenous (and non-indigenous) peoples in Mexico.

Equally important to our story, though, was the arrival of the Spanish, who brought with them a knowledge of the distillation process. Some contend that this knowledge actually pre-dates the Conquest in the New World, having been either introduced earlier by Filipino mariners or discovered independently by the Mesoamericans of antiquity. We do know, though, that once the brandy that the Spanish brought with them became scarce, they began resorting to the distillation of a sweet mash made from the bulbous, carbohydrate-rich base of the agave plant, called the piña (or “pineapple”)—thus producing a spirit that was clear, clean and far higher in alcohol content than pulque. Thus, mezcal was born.

Agave being cultivated for mezcal in Santa Catarina Minas, Oaxaca.

Mezcal vs. Tequila. Not long after, in the town of Tequila (in modern-day Jalisco state) the newly-resident Spanish got to work producing mezcal on an industrial scale, having been granted licenses by the Spanish Crown to make and sell these spirits. Among these was José Antonio Cuervo (ring a bell?). A couple of centuries later Don Cenobio Sauza (ring another bell?) became the first to export this product to the U.S., marketed as “Tequila” after its place of origin. Since then, the Mexican government (encouraged in no small part by the established tequila companies) has enacted laws adopted by international governing bodies intended to restrict the use of the name “Tequila” to refer specifically to a spirit that meets the following two main criteria:

• It must be produced in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, along with other limited areas within the states of Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit, and Tamaulipas.

• It can only be made using at least 51% blue agave (agave tequilana Weber), although some non-premium tequilas may include small amounts of alcohol made from other types of agave, or be mixed with alcohol sourced from grains. 

Thus we have a key distinction between mezcal and tequila: tequila must be made using the blue agave; mezcal may be created using any of the two dozen suitable varieties of the agave plant—both farmed and foraged—found throughout its range, at the discretion of the maker. 

The bottom line: all tequila is mezcal, but not all mezcal is tequila.

Because of its long growth cycle, agave is sometimes grown alongside other crops, such as corn and squash.

Piñas cut from the agave tobalá await roasting.

Agave piñas are baked in underground pits to convert starches to sugars.

A great way to think about the relationship between mezcal and tequila is this: mezcal is to wine as tequila is to Champagne. To be properly (and legally) sold as “Champagne,” a sparkling wine must be sourced from grapes growing in the Champagne region of France, undergo a secondary fermentation in the bottle, and meet many other stringent requirements pertaining to the fermentation process. 

But not all wine is Champagne, and a fortunate thing that is for lovers of the thousands of other fruits of the vintner’s art. So it is with the fruit of the agave, with all its different species, sub-species, soils, growing conditions, microclimates, resident wild yeasts, flavoring inputs, aging and so on. The result today is a universe of mezcal, marked by striking differences in flavor profiles, aromas, potency, color, subtlety and intensity. And the center of that universe is Oaxaca.

Mash from the cooked piñas is fermented openly in wooden vats before distillation.

The Mezcal Boom. To be fair, much of the mezcal that made it into the U.S. during the 20th century (and before) may indeed have been awful stuff, as there were virtually no controls over the inputs, alcohol content, purity or production environment that went into them. But that started to change in the early 1990s, when an American named Ron Cooper began to explore the more remote areas near the city of Oaxaca and the distinctive varieties of mezcal made there. The company he founded, Del Maguey, was among the first to bring to market mezcals produced at individual palenques (or distilleries) in these rural communities, while also attempting to ensure a consistent quality of product for the export market. This was the only way, he argued, not only to fully appreciate the wondrous character of these artisanal spirits, but to honor the ancestral knowledge and traditional techniques of the palenqueros that produce them.

Following on the success of Del Maguey, other middlemen possessing varying degrees of integrity and altruism have since jumped in to supply the palenqueros with the skills they lack in packaging, branding, certification and export—often buying up the mezcal they produce for two or three dollars a liter and transforming it into a broad array of premium spirits now being sold in trendy bars and restaurants across the U.S. for as much as $35 a shot.

While this boom of interest in quality mezcal may have marginally helped improve the livelihood of the average palenquero, it hasn’t been so good for the lowly agave, which can take anywhere from 5 - 10 years or more to mature. 

As mentioned before, mezcal can be made using any of about 2 dozen different varieties of agave, including espadín, arroqueño, tobalá, tepestate, tobasiche, cuishe and many more, but only a few of these are cultivated domestically—the rest are found in mountain forests and rocky hillsides scattered across Oaxaca. These latter, “wild” varieties can sometimes take much longer to mature, can be harder to find and harvest, and are often smaller—resulting in lower carbohydrate content and thus requiring more plants needed to produce a given quantity of mezcal—all of which drive up the price of the final product. 

As these less common “varietals” have become more sought-after by the mezcal marketers, there has been a scramble to harvest them, resulting in a scarcity of wild agave that is becoming more acute as I write this. The laws of economics being what they are, lower supply plus higher demand equals higher costs of raw materials, which is putting the squeeze on producers and will inevitably result in higher prices to end-users, which in turn may result in a downturn in the mezcal market—none of which is good news for the palenqueros. And although new agave crops, wild and domestic, are now being planted at a prodigious rate, it will take years before the supply-and-demand equation reaches equilibrium again.

As with any fashionable boutique commodity, there is always the perception that scarcity and price equates with quality. The more rarefied the origin, the more exquisite the result—justifying the high price that would-be connoisseurs are willing to pay. But the truth is that sometimes the best-tasting mezcal is made using the simplest methods and the most common types of agave, and is produced at an affordable price. The bottom line is, the best mezcal is the one that you like the most.

A dizzying array of mezcals await at a typical mezcaleria.

Oaxaca, the Mecca of Mezcal. Three years ago, when Martha and I made our first visit to Oaxaca, I was informed that there were but a handful of bars dedicated to the tasting of mezcal, along with a number of the finer restaurants. Today there are dozens of mezcalerias lining the streets of the Centro. You can walk down the Andador Turistico at 9:00 in the morning and taste mezcal for free at any of several storefronts. Bottles with fancy labels line the shelves of tiendas and convenience stores, and there is an entire concession devoted to mezcal at the Oaxaca International Airport. 

Much in the same way that the Islay region of Scotland has become a modern-day El Dorado for those seeking to immerse themselves in the world of single-malt scotch, mezcal now plays a role in the marketing of Oaxaca. And for good reason—the topic offers a near-endless opportunity to geek out on the art, science, culture, lore, taxonomy, and production methods of this fascinating beverage. You can book all-day or multi-day tours to the towns and villages where mezcal is being produced using traditional methods, meet the palenqueros who make it, and taste and purchase the finest mezcals for pennies on the dollar.*

A tasting of artisanal mezcals at Mezcaloteca in the city of Oaxaca.

A Taste of Agave. So what’s all the fuss about? Does the stuff taste good, or doesn’t it? As with most questions of beauty and taste, the answer is in the eye (or in this case, the palate) of the beholder. First of all, a good mezcal, like any fine spirit or wine, deserves to be sipped and savored, not guzzled and gulped. The flavor slowly evolves as you work your way through it. What hits you as hot and brazen in the first sip gives way to a softening and spreading array of flavors that linger for many moments after you’ve finished it.

Many drinkers find the typical mezcal to have a smokier quality than tequila (no doubt the result of the traditional method of cooking the piñas over wood in an underground pit prior to fermentation). But not all mezcals feature this flavor prominently, or at all. Having now tasted upwards of 70 different mezcals, I can say that the most interesting aspect of the tasting experience for me is the character that the various types of agave can impart to the smell, taste and aftertaste of the finished product—you really can taste the difference. That said, the tobalá of Felix Ángeles Arellanes of Santa Catarina Minas will not taste the same as the tobalá of Lencho García in San Pablo Güilá, any more than a Walla Walla, Washington malbec will taste the same as one from the Uco Valley of Mendoza, Argentina. There are simply too many other variables at work.

Like tequila, mezcal is available either as joven (young), reposado (aged at least 2 months in oak) or añejo (aged at least a year). Aging in oak imparts notes of caramel or vanilla to the mezcal, which some purists hold to be anathema because it masks the true character of the agave. While that may be true, in the final analysis it’s just another constellation to explore in the mezcal universe. 

So the next time you’re in a bar with friends, take a walk on the wild side and try sipping a mezcal from the pueblos of Oaxaca—with a wedge of lime and chili salt on the side if you like. It might just take you to a whole new world. Or, if you make it all the way down here to this one, the first round’s on me.

The finished product—or is it?

* We booked our mezcal tour through Mezcal Educational Excursions of Oaxaca (go ahead—Google it!). Special thanks to Alvin Starkman of M.E.E.O. for sharing with us his encyclopedic knowledge of the world of mezcal, and for reviewing this post for accuracy.