Sun, Aug 03, 2014 page14

• Mexico’s alcohol of drunks, poor becomes top shelf

  • By Carola Soli / AFP, SANTIAGO MATATLAN, Mexico
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  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.

  However, the rising demand for tequila’s less-known ancestor may be too much of a good thing for the cactus-like plant that is used to make it, maguey, which is in such high demand for a variety of products that some are warning of potential deforestation.

  In the southern state of Oaxaca — mezcal’s heartland — producers still use rustic tools to make the spirit in small distilleries known as palenques.

  

  Clouds gather over a field of espadin maguey being grow to produce mezcal in Santiago Matatlan in Mexico’s Oaxaca State on Sunday last week.

  Photo: AFP

  Maguey, which is of the Agave genus, is roasted and then crushed into pulp in a stone wheel pulled by a horse before being distilled into a drink with an alcohol content of at least 45 percent.

  Founded in 1840, the Cortes family owns one of the oldest palenques in the cradle of mezcal: the town of Santiago Matatlan in Oaxaca State, where workers use axes to cut the tough, green leaves of maguey plants.

  Times were tougher just 10 years ago, when many distilleries closed up shop. However, the Cortes family persevered even when they practically were giving bottles away for free.

  

  A worker at the Don Tacho palenque in Santiago Matatlan, Mexico, on Tuesday grists maguey that will be fermented and distilled into mezcal.

  Photo: AFP

  Yet distillers say the “drink of the poor and drunks” began to be seen as a boutique booze in about 2010, attracting more and more consumers in the bohemian bars of Mexico City and abroad.

  Production soared by 143 percent last year compared with the previous year, hitting 2.5 million liters, while exports jumped by 12 percent to nearly 1 million liters over the same period.

  About 105 brands of the drink are now sold across 31 countries, but mezcal still amounts to just 1.1 percent of Mexico’s signature liquor, tequila.

  

  A producer serves mezcal at the Mezcal Fair in Oaxaca State, Mexico, on July 26. Warning: excessive consumption of alcohol can damage your health

  Photo: AFP

  The Cortes family exports 70 percent of its production to the US, Europe and Australia, selling bottles at US$100 apiece.

  Asis Cortes, a 27-year-old in charge of marketing and design for the distillery, is proud of being part of the sixth generation of a 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 said.

  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: Para todo mal, mezcal; y para todo bien, tambien (“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 to connecting “with ancestors, with the land, with the gods and with oneself,” Cortes said.

  Making the traditional liquor requires patience: There are more than 30 species of maguey that can produce mezcal. Only one type, known as espadin, is easy to grow, but it takes seven years to mature. However, the other varieties that grow in the wild in the hills 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 Co.

  Still, the big companies are also betting on the traditional ways of making the alcoholic drink.

  “As a producer, you simply have to tell the big companies how much you can produce so you don’t lose 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 added.

  Mezcal is the forefather of tequila, which used to be known as “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.

  Yet 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 mass buying the plant needed for mezcal production.

  However, Mezcal Maestros Association president Abel Alcantara warns that the overwhelming demand for the plant risks “an environmental catastrophe.”

  Authorities deny that the maguey faces a deforestation crisis, but they acknowledge that the soaring demand requires them to make better plans for the upkeep of the popular plant.
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