The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

His majesty the mezcal

2021-01-17T01:40:43.909Z


From cursed concoction for poor devils to cult drink in the best tables and shops. From elixir for excommunicated to an industry that moves 7.4 million liters around the world and supports 125,000 Mexican families


The capital of the beverage that wants to conquer the world is a town of less than 5,000 inhabitants in one of the poorest regions of Mexico.

Santiago Matatlán, in the State of Oaxaca, is the heaven for mezcal lovers.

And also a mandatory stop for those who want to take a small slice of a business that moves 7.4 million liters of alcohol in 68 countries every year.

If someone had imagined it 20 years ago, everyone would have told them it was crazy.

But the unimaginable happened.

Where before there were rancherías and patron saint festivals, today there is talk of

terroir

and exclusive tastings.

Where before there were horse mills, today there are Italian and Japanese investors.

What used to be sold on the roadside in a recycled Coca-Cola container, was encrusted with glass, platinum-plated and sold for 55,000 euros at auction in France.

The elixir of the screwed up became a cult product.

View of the espadín agave fields in the vicinity of Santiago Matatlán, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Hector Guerrero

In 2015, at the height of the beverage boom, the Government of Oaxaca created the Mezcal Route with an investment of more than 17.5 million euros.

Dozens of distilleries in Matatlán, located in the Central Valleys area, offer their product next to the road: the big ones and the small ones, the crystalline ones and the old ones, the old ones and the new ones.

Mezcal is unlike anything you have ever tried before.

When Mexico's oldest distillate runs down your throat for the first time, your mouth will feel on fire.

Drink again.

At the second sip you will notice herbs, fruits or smoky notes.

Regulars will tell you that it has more nuances than whiskey or cognac.

Perhaps it came from a plant that was allowed to mature for up to 35 years.

Perhaps it was fermented with a more aromatic must.

Perhaps it came from an arid or rainy region.

It is a mystery, like its origin: at the crossroads of the Arab alembic, of the European spirit tradition, of the complexity of the indigenous traditions of America.

Workers of the Tres Danzantes palenque mezcalero work baking mescal leaves in the community of Santiago Matatlán, in March 2020. Héctor Guerrero

In the fields of Santiago Matatlán, the sun's rays fall like needles and agaves grow like swords.

Sprat (

agave angustifolia

) is the most common botanical variety in the production of this drink.

Anastasio Santiago, 80, has thousands of plants - magueys, agaves or mezcals, depending on who you ask - on his vast grounds.

The Spanish priest José de Acosta called the maguey "the tree of wonders" in 1590 and described it as a "miraculous" plant.

The latest miracle attributed to the maguey is the resurrection of mezcal, a silent revolution that supports more than 125,000 families.

These are lands that Don Tacho, as everyone knows him, began to work daily since 1956. In a market in which men in long trousers are increasingly proliferating, he clings to the fields.

"The maguey has given us a lot, I can't leave it," he admits in a slow tone.

Despite everything, he understands the business like few others.

Without studies and an orphan since he was seven years old, today he has six brands of mezcal and produces more than 10,000 liters per month for the 400 Conejos brand, which belongs to the Casa Cuervo tequila company, one of the most consumed in Mexico.

An operator from the Macurichos mezcalero palenque, in the middle of baking the leaves.

Hector Guerrero

Investing a lifetime in mezcal today sounds like a millionaire idea and a fairy tale.

In the nineties it was not.

Agaves that took years to mature were paid to producers at 20 cents per kilo, the equivalent of less than a euro cent.

The intermediaries took advantage of the desperation of the peasants and the mezcaleros to offer them leonine deals: they bought all their production at ridiculous prices, but they agreed out of necessity or fear that the harvest would spoil.

"Those people screwed us a lot," Santiago sums up.

In the land where everything was agave, the difficulties in the mezcal business translated into massive migrations to the United States during those dark years.

Joel Santiago, Don Tacho's son, tried his luck in Los Angeles and then in Las Vegas.

Family legend tells that he brought some mezcal in the mid-1990s and saw the potential of a gold mine.

It was then that he returned to Mexico to start the business.

It was also around those years, in 1994, when the Mexican government promoted the granting of a designation of origin to mezcal, following, again, in the footsteps of tequila, the first Mexican product.

Workers from the Mezcal Real Matlatl palenque grind agave stalks into horse-drawn stone tahonas.

Hector Guerrero

The creation of the appellation of origin occurred almost a decade before the rise of mezcal, but it was a defining moment.

A drink that was once punishable by excommunication;

that it was prohibited and condemned to secrecy in some areas until the late eighties, and that it endured black legends such as that it was "hallucinogenic" and "dangerous", or directly "harmful", it was put at the culinary level of La Rioja wines. or camembert cheese.

The appellation of origin involves a profound dilemma.

Until 1994, mezcal production was a no man's land, a fertile field to feed the black legend with products that were adulterated or that were sold as replicas of others.

It was also a vulnerable market, threatened by the sudden appearance of Japanese or Chinese mezcals.

But the rule that triggered the phenomenon left out of the game a vast majority of humble producers, who complain that they cannot meet the requirements.

“We compete with global empires and we know that we are never going to win,” says Gonzalo Martínez, the mezcal master from Macurichos, a brand with a high local reputation but that only produces 200 liters per month.

A client, in a mezcalería in Oaxaca, the place where more mezcal is produced in the world.

Hector Guerrero

More than two-thirds of total mezcal production ends up outside the country.

Almost everything goes to the United States, where 7 out of 10 bottles are exported.

Spain occupies a distant second place, with 6% of exports.

Due to the maguey maturation process, an artisanal mezcal takes between 8 and 12 years to produce, and needs up to 30 kilos of agave per liter, 7 kilos of firewood for distillation and up to 20 liters of water before it reaches the bottle. .

And in Mexico, due to its ethyl content, it is subject to the same taxes as industrial liquors such as rum or vodka, which are much cheaper and easier to manufacture.

As the drink flows to Mexico City and to the great world metropolises, with an increase in production of 700% in the last 10 years, everything has changed in its wake.

The migrants have returned.

The cost of raw materials has skyrocketed to 15 pesos per kilo, 75 times more than in the 1990s.

Thefts and clandestine trade in plants are becoming more common.

And the competition has become fierce.

The Mexican Institute of Intellectual Property has more than 1,500 company records with the word "mezcal" in their trade name, from Jiménez to Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, stars of the

Breaking Bad

series

.

Palenque Macurichos warehouses.

Hector Guerrero

In March, when words like “mask” or “social distancing” still didn't mean anything, foreign visitors thronged the bars, specialized tours and tastings in the city of Oaxaca, which made mezcal a key and omnipresent piece of its promotion tour.

The pioneers of mezcal, who ventured into remote communities to bring the drink to large cities, today have a strange sense of responsibility for the possibility that fashion erodes culture.

There is, on the other hand, a bonanza that has not been seen before.

Farmers who have won all the international awards.

A fame that has claimed the producers.

The hope that you can live off a drink that had been cursed for centuries.

In the midst of the debate between the global and the local, the industrial and the artisanal, mezcal lives a dream from which it does not want to wake up.

The answer may be in a saying that has become popular in Mexico: “For all bad, mezcal;

for everything good, too, and if there is no remedy, liter and a half ”. 

Cava maturing in the Tres Danzantes mezcal palenque.

Hector Guerrero

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-01-17

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-05T18:32:41.990Z

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z
News/Politics 2024-03-28T05:25:00.011Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.