Frank Flannery - Enjoying Tequila: A Tasting Guide and Journal

PAUL KAHAN

Welcome to Enjoying Tequila: A Tasting Guide and Journal. In the following pages you will discover the secrets to fully appreciating Mexicos complex and enigmatic national drink. Born from the collision of ancient Aztec religious practice and European distillation technology, tequila has been embraced, but often misunderstood, by the rest of the world. In the centuries since Spanish settlers established Mexicos first distilleries, traditional methods of growing, harvesting, and processing the blue agave plant have merged with cutting-edge technology to supply a growing thirst for tequila. This book chronicles tequilas history, breaking down myths and demonstrating the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Find out how blue agaves are transformed into tequila and get answers to questions like, Whats the deal with worms in tequila bottles? and Is it true that tequila can be turned into diamonds?

By reading this book, you will also learn how to interpret a tequila bottles label like a pro, so you can properly identify brands and styles. More importantly, you will come to appreciate the myriad of flavors and aromas that tequila has to offer; youll discover what to focus on when sipping tequila so you enjoy it like a connoisseur. Finally, you will visit some of Mexicos oldest and best-known tequila distilleries and producers to grasp what makes them so popular and respected. If you sip as you read this book, youll really get a baseline for appreciating tequila that will help you develop your own taste for this unique liquor. I hope you enjoy your journey into the world of Mexicos national spirit!

Tequilas origins stretch back more than three millennia. Around 1000 BCE, more than two centuries before the founding of Rome, Aztecs living in what is today southern Mexico began fermenting sap from maguey (a grass-like flowering plant that generally grows in high-altitude regions that are hot and arid, such as Mexico and the southwestern United States) to create a drink called pulque, a milky white drink with a sour taste. Pulque was initially closely associated with the Aztec goddess Mayahuel, whose name is reminiscent of maguey. According to Aztec tradition, Mayahuel was the goddess of fertility and had four hundred breasts to feed each of her four hundred children. This was far from the Aztecs only use for maguey; they also used the plant for food, clothing, and musical instruments.

Though initially considered to be a sacred drink, by the time the Spanish arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century, consumption of pulque was widespread among all classes of Aztecs. The Spanish conquistadors did not like pulque and, when they ran out of their stores of brandy, set about experimenting with alternatives. Using their copper stills, the Spanish began distilling maguey. They called the result vino de mezcal (oven-cooked agave). These distillation operations were often quite primitive. For instance, Tecuane Canyon, which is about three miles outside Amatitn, is home to the ruins of an old taberna, or shop, where tequila was distilled on-site. Built sometime during the 1600s, the site has a large round pit in which the agave hearts were cooked on the embers of a wood fire. Later in the process, the mezcal was fermented in pits carved into the tepetate rock large enough for a person to climb into! According to American ethnographer Edward S. Curtis, who observed Mescalero Apache Indians distilling mezcal in the early twentieth century, The Indians say its taste is sharp, like whiskey. A small quantity readily produces intoxication. Initially, mezcal production was a small-scale, local affair, with the agaves pias (the heart of the plants) being fermented in simple clay pots.

VINO MEZCAL DE TEQUILA

One variety of mezcal, made from the blue maguey plant, came to be called tequila after the town in which it was produced. Tequila, in the present-day Mexican state of Jalisco, means volcanic rock or rock that cuts in an Aztec dialect known as Nahuatl. The regions volcanic soil was silicate rich, which helped blue maguey thrive while the vino de mezcal produced there soon earned a reputation for being especially high quality. The first mention of vino de mezcal production in Tequila dates to 1608. Not surprisingly, Tequila became the sight of the first large-scale distillery in Mexico. In the 1600s, Mexican aristocrat Pedro Snchez de Tagle, 2nd Marquis of Altamira, built a distillery at his Hacienda Cuisillos to create vino de mezcal. Don Pedro was born in Spain in 1661 and migrated to Mexico, where he created vino de mezcal from the locally abundant blue maguey. The size of Don Pedros distillery made tequila ubiquitous in Mexico and earned for him the title father of tequila.

However, success attracts imitators, and by the eighteenth century, several families had entered the vino de mezcal de tequila business. The most prominent of these was Don Jos Antonio de Cuervo, of whom little is known. Apparently, he operated a tavern called La Chorrera (a term that means stream and may have denoted waterfall) around 1740 that produced mezcal and sold it to travelers and the locals. In 1758, Don Jos received a grant of land near Tequila from Spains King Ferdinand VI (17131759) to grow blue maguey (by now called agave, based on the Greek word agau, which means illustrious or brilliant). Don Jos purchased the property from Vicente de Saldivar, who had already constructed a tequila distillery on the site. Unfortunately for the Cuervo family, the following year King Ferdinand VI died and his successor, King Carlos III (17591788), issued a ban in 1788 on the production of several dozen alcoholic beverages, including mezcal. This curtailed, but did not exactly end, the Cuervo familys mezcal production for a decade (they simply moved production underground). In 1795, Carlos IIIs successor, King Carlos IV, issued to Don Joss son, Jos Mara Guadalupe de Cuervo, a permit to manufacture vino de mezcal de tequila, and production soared.