Mezcal
Mezcal, sometimes spelled mescal, is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from any type of agave.
Agaves or magueys are endemic to the Americas and found globally as ornamental plants. The Agave genus is a member of the Agavoideae subfamily of the Asparagaceae plant family which has almost 200 species. Mezcal is made from over 30 Agave species, varieties, and subvarieties.
Native fermented drinks from agave plants, such as pulque, existed before the arrival of the Spanish, but the origin of mezcal is tied to the introduction of Filipino-type stills to New Spain by Filipino migrants via the Manila galleons in the late 1500s and early 1600s. These stills were initially used to make vino de coco, but they were quickly adopted by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific coastal regions of Mexico and applied to the distillation of agave to make mezcal. Mezcal is made from the heart of the agave plant, called the piña.
The most widely consumed form of mezcal is tequila, which is made only with blue agave.
Some 90% of Mexican mezcal comes from Oaxaca. In Mexico, mezcal is generally consumed straight and has a strong smoky flavor. Mexico increasingly exports the product, mostly to Japan and the United States.
Despite the similar name, mezcal does not contain mescaline or other psychedelic substances.
Etymology
The word mezcal comes from Nahuatl mexcalli, which means "baked agave", from metl "agave" and ixca "to bake". It is sometimes spelled mescal.History
is pre-colonial, but the distillation of agave heart juice into mezcal was only introduced in the colonial era when Filipino sailors and migrants brought the technology of Filipino-type stills with them during the galleon trade between Mexico and the Philippines. This is supported by ethnohistoric, botanical, archaeological, and toponymic evidence. Mezcal is the product of the merging of pre-Columbian indigenous fermentation traditions and Asian distillation techniques brought over from the Philippines.Filipino-type stills, derived from Mongolian and East Asian stills, are very distinct from the more complex European-type alembic stills. They were cheap and easy to manufacture, though less efficient than alembic-type stills. They were made of a mixture of different easy-to-acquire materials. They usually consist of a hollowed-out log with two copper or iron pans. These were often substituted with larger capacity earthenware jars and bowls, bound wooden staves, or even metal cylinders. The upper pan is continually filled with cold water and functions as the condenser; while the bottom pan holds the fermented juice over the furnace, functioning as the boiler. The distillate is collected either by an internal container placed in between the two pans on a platform; or a spoon-shaped collector and gutter made from wood, rolled agave leaf, or carrizo cane that exits from the hollow log in between the pans to an external clay container. A modified version of this, usually called "olla de barro", use a specially-shaped clay vessel built into a furnace as the boiler chamber. It only uses one pan, but otherwise operates on the same principle. There are also many other modified variants, usually named after the indigenous peoples that use them, including the "Tarascan still", "Zapoteco still", "Nahua still", "Bolaños still", and "Huichol still". Filipino-type stills are also still referred to by mezcal and tequila manufacturers as the "Filipino still".
File:Huichol distillery.jpg|thumb|A "Huichol still", a modified Filipino-type still with a suspended internal distillate collector. It was used by the Huichol people for making sotol.
These stills were initially used by Filipino settlers who established coconut plantations on the coastal regions of Guerrero and Colima of New Spain to make vino de coco. Over the centuries that the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade was active, an estimated 75,000 Filipinos settled western Mexico and intermarried with indigenous and mixed-race families. They passed the knowledge of these stills to local communities who applied it to distill fermented agave. The first historical record of mezcal production is from southern Jalisco, using techniques derived from coconut liquor production from Colima.
By the early 1600s, the Spanish colonial government and the Real Audiencia in Spain banned vino de coco and issued an order for the destruction of coconut plantations in Colima because it competed with the sales of imported spirits from Spain. This was also the reason they did not initially introduce distillation to Mexico. Although this wasn't complied with completely, the prohibition of vino de coco led to the expansion and commercialization of the production of mezcal to fill the local demand for cheap liquor. The first mention of distilled agave spirits in colonial records is from 1619, by the Spanish cleric Domingo Lázaro de Arregui. He mentions that the indigenous peoples in the coastal regions of the Sierra de Nayarit were distilling "mexcales", which he describes as being obtained by distilling fermented juice from roasted agave leaf bases. By 1638, the governor of Nueva Galicia also started to regulate the sale of mezcal. Mezcal became banned shortly after, though its illicit trade continued. By 1643, there are records of mezcal and vino de coco being sold in Guadalajara.
File:MezcalCantaroDRSBC.JPG|thumb|upright|left|A cantaro jar, made from barro negro pottery, used for serving mezcal
The production of mezcal moved from the coastal river basins of the Río Grande de Santiago to the inland ravines by the early 1700s to evade the prohibition on indigenous spirits production, as well as to take advantage of the larger numbers of wild agave plants in the interiors. The plants used expanded to highland cultivars of Agave angustifolia, as well as Agave rhodacantha in Jalisco, and Agave hookeri in Michoacán.
By the mid-1700s, the production of vino de coco had ceased completely due to the prohibition and the loss of coconut plantations. But mezcal liquor survived because they were sourced from abundant wild agaves which the Spanish could not eradicate. The production sites moved to even more remote and difficult-to-access areas in the foothills of the Volcán de Colima, the ravines of the Colima Valley, and in the Chamila Valley. During this period, the first clandestine distilleries in the highlands of Jalisco were also established in the valleys of Amatitán, Tequila, Magdalena, and El Arenal, whose mezcal variant made specifically from blue agave later became tequila.
The small size of the Filipino-type stills made it easy to disassemble and move while evading colonial authorities. The numerous well-like ancient graves cut into the rocks in the region were also coopted as fermentation basins for agave juice. The small size of the still also allowed distillers to produce agave liquor from a very small number of agave plants or even a single plant. These conditions led to the constant selection and vegetative propagation of wild agave plants with the best characteristics for agave liquor production, eventually resulting in the development of domesticated cultivars of agave.
In Colima, the fermented agave to be distilled into mezcal is still called tuba, the term adopted from the tubâ used to ferment vino de coco. The term tuba is also used for fermented sotol plant core juice, before its distillation into sotol liquor by the Huichol people, also indicative of its origins as an adaptation of vino de coco production.
The oldest agave spirits distilleries use Filipino-type stills, many of which are still operational. The technology was also transported through trade routes into Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Sonora, and the rest of Mexico, as well as parts of the southern United States, where modified Filipino-type stills have been reported. The alembic-type still, finally introduced by the Spanish for distilling sugarcane, was later also adopted for mezcal production. Most modern mass-produced mezcals are made using alembic-type stills, but the highest category of certification, the "ancestral mezcal" must be distilled using only Filipino-type stills.
Possible pre-colonial distillation
Some authors have also proposed the existence of a separate pre-colonial distillation of small quantities of agave for elites, based on an interpretation of the peculiarly-shaped double or triple-chambered Capacha Culture clay vessels as small stills. These vessels are known in Spanish as bules, and dates to c.1500 to 1000 BCE. They were hypothesized to have been capped with a condensing cold water-filled bowl, with a very small cup placed inside to collect the distillate. Modern replicas using this method have been successful in producing small quantities of spirits with an alcohol content as high as 35%. If the distillation of mezcal was indeed present in pre-Columbian Mexico, it would mean the introduction of Filipino-type stills merely expanded the production by using new techniques. However, the archaeological evidence for this remains inconclusive, as examination and molecular testing of ancient Capacha bules in 2019 have not detected any of the expected macroscopic botanical remains or chemical biomarkers for agave or any other high-sugar agricultural products that could be distilled into spirits. Furthermore, all of the vessels are exclusively only found in association with tombs and burial sites ; they show completely no evidence of ever having been placed over a fire; and no cups or bowls have been recovered in situ in association with them.Regulation
Internationally, mezcal has been recognized as an Appellation of Origin since 1994. There is also a Geographical Indication, originally limited to the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, Durango, San Luis Potosí, Puebla and Zacatecas. Similar products are made in Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacán, and Tamaulipas, but these have not been included in the mezcal DO.Traditionally the word "mezcal" has been used generally in Mexico for all agave spirits and it continues to be used for many agave spirits whether these spirits have been legally certified as "mezcal" or not. Within Mexico, mezcal is regulated under Norma Oficial Mexicana regulations, originally NOM-070-SCFI-1994, by the industry body Consejo Mexicano Regulador de la Calidad del Mezcal A.C.. This regulation became law in 2003, and certification began in 2005.
Modern mezcal is divided into three categories certified by the Norma Oficial Mexicana:
- Mezcal – For mezcal produced with high-efficiency modern production methods and modern equipment like autoclaves, diffusers, and stainless steel or copper column stills. It is sometimes derisively referred to as "industrial mezcal".
- Artisanal mezcal – For mezcal produced using artisanal stills. Autoclaves, diffusers, and column stills are prohibited. The agave hearts must be cooked in pit hearths or clay/brick ovens. Milling must be done with mallets, stone mills, or mechanical mills. The juice must be fermented in animal skins or pits or tanks made with stone, clay, or wood. The most common types of stills used are the copper or stainless steel alembic-type stills, the modified refrescador alembic-type stills with a refrescadera, and the Filipino-type stills. Mezcal produced in this way are distilled once, twice, or thrice, depending on the regional tradition, but the most common number of distillations is twice. The vast majority of certified mezcal belong to this category.
- Ancestral mezcal – For mezcal produced completely by traditional methods. Stainless steel and modern equipment are prohibited. This requires the agave hearts to be pit-cooked and crushed by mallets or stone mills. The juice must be fermented in animal skins or pits or tanks made with stone, clay, or wood. It must only be distilled using Filipino-type stills made of clay or wood.
The three categories are further subdivided into six additional classes:
- Blanco or Joven – refers unaged and unadulterated mezcal. Most mezcal belong to this class.
- Madurado en vidrio – refers to mezcal stored in glass for a year or more buried underground or in a location with minimal variation in temperature, light, and humidity. Burying is a traditional method for softening mezcal without reducing alcohol content.
- Reposado – refers to mezcal stored in a wooden vessel of any type or size for between 2 months to a year.
- Añejo – refers to mezcal stored in a wooden vessel of less than for more than a year.
- Abocado – refers to mezcal that is flavored or infused with other ingredients. NOM specifically permits maguey "worms", damiana, lime, orange, mango, and honey; but other fruits, herbs, and caramel are also commonly added.
- Destilado con or Mezcales de pechuga – refers to mezcal where the second or third distillation includes other ingredients like fruit, meat, or herbs. This process is traditional.
In Canada, products that are labelled, packaged, sold or advertised as Mezcal must be manufactured in Mexico as mezcal under the stipulated guidelines. However, Canadian laws also allow for local bottling and resale of imported mezcal, after its alcohol percentage has been adjusted with the addition of distilled or purified water.
Currently uncertified agave spirits labeled as "destilados de agave" or "agave spirits" can also be bottled in the United States.