The Mezcal Rush. Granville Greene
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had been for hundreds of years.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Ron cautioned. “Some of the distillers around here are amazing artists.”
We hit the road again. Turning north, we aimed toward Mitla, a Zapotec settlement featuring a ceremonial site whose oldest buildings dated from 450 to 700 CE. If Monte Albán had been the political center of the ancient Zapotec, Mitla was their religious one. Its ruins are noted for their uniquely detailed mosaics and fretwork, a Mixtec style. After we passed Mitla, the valley narrowed, and we turned and headed north on a tinier road that switchbacked down into a deep green expanse. As we entered a village at the bottom, Ron spotted a semi, its license plate from the Mexican state of Jalisco, loaded with small, prematurely harvested piñas.
“They’re taking away our goddamn babies!” he growled.
AT THAT TIME in Jalisco, the state where tequila is predominantly produced, there was a major agave shortage, which was partly a cyclical occurrence. When prices for agaves drop, farmers become unenthusiastic about planting them, with the result that the supply of harvestable magueys ceases to match the enormous international demand for tequila. This time the scarcity was largely due to a severe blight attributed to the fungus Fusarium oxysporum and the bacteria erwinia carotovora, which collectively caused TMA: tristeza y muerte de agave (wilting and death of maguey). As many as 40 percent of the country’s two hundred million A. tequilana plants had been affected, causing a massive crisis for one of Mexico’s biggest exports. Unable to compete, many small-scale tequila distilleries shut their doors.
Magueys may appear formidable, but despite their spiky defense systems, there exists a tiny David to the plant’s Goliath: the agave snout weevil. The black, inch-long beetle is considered the most destructive vector of blight. First, it uses its needlelike proboscis to burrow a hole into the center of the rosette. There, it both lays eggs and infects its host with fungi and bacteria damaging enough to kill the maguey. As the plant sickens, the beetle larvae chew through its weakened tissues—now made soft and munchable for a hungry grub—and the once-mighty agave loses its color and wilts to the ground like a forlorn gabacho doubled over with a bad case of turista (diarrhea).
In the wild, the most disease-resistant magueys propagate and secure the continued survival of their species via an arsenal of methods—through seeds, through small plants growing from their flowers, and through shoots sent out from their bases that develop into baby agaves, which are clones. But when non-resistant plants are cloned and grown in a corporate-scale monoculture, as they are by the tequila industry, they become particularly vulnerable to weevil-borne infections—and disaster can strike.
Ron said the situation was so dire that Jaliscan trucks were coming to Oaxaca from hundreds of miles away to haul off the local maguey crop. According to the legal requirements of tequila’s DO, if a spirit is labeled TEQUILA 100% AGAVE, it should have been distilled only from A. tequilana. But the Jaliscan semi we saw was filled with piñas of espadín, the maguey species most commonly grown for mezcal. This particular agave is normally harvested within eight to ten years, but much younger plants were now being uprooted to address the needs of the tequila industry. Ron said it was very likely that other regional maguey species were also being ransacked. Furthermore, local agave prices had risen significantly—a turn of events that put Oaxacan mezcaleros in the position of not being able to afford the local maguey, while witnessing the sell-off of their future materia prima.
“Who keeps an eye on all of this?” I asked Ron.
“No one,” he replied, shaking his head.
Oaxaca was beginning to feel like the Wild West.
WE WOUND OUR way up to, then through, the village of Santa María Albarradas, which clings to a steep slope at around fifty-five hundred feet. From there, Ron steered us onto a muddy track that continued upward into the hills. We were now surrounded by dense forests of pine and oak trees hung with Spanish moss the color of seafoam and dangling bromeliads still dripping with the previous night’s rain. The route grew rough with potholes as we made our way up and down hills and around bends, then sloshed through streams rushing faster as it began raining yet again.
After several bumpy miles, I began feeling hungry and unwrapped one of the empanadas we had brought along for breakfast. It was still warm and delicious. But soon after wolfing it down, I felt strange chest pains and an alarming tingling sensation in my left arm. Given my family history of heart ailments, I began to panic.
“Ron,” I said, “we need to go back. I’m having a heart attack.”
“No way, compadre. We’re hours away from the closest hospital. If you’re going to die, you’re going to die.”
“Come on! I’m not kidding!”
“It’s just that greasy empanada you ate.”
“Empanadas don’t make your arm tingle!”
“We just need to get some mezcal in you, and you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t believe this!”
“Look, if you die, I promise I’ll bring your parents out here so they can see where it happened.”
Just then, we rounded a corner and saw Santo Domingo Albarradas tumbling down the steep mountainside beneath us. A thick white mist, which almost completely concealed the deep valley below, was fingering up into the towering peaks above us, and it seemed as if we must have been significantly higher than we actually were. Indeed, Ron’s bottle label said the “pueblo elevation is 8,500 ft.” However, according to Google Earth it sits at around five thousand feet. He downshifted as we descended the muddy track into the community, slowly passing a whitewashed mission church decorated with flowers and streamers. A brass band was playing in front, and noisy fireworks were being set off in all directions. Ron had perfectly timed our arrival to coincide with the start of the Zapotec village’s annual fiesta. It was an impressive sleight of hand, but all I could think of was death.
“This is straight out of Under the Volcano,” I moaned. “I’m gonna die here!”
“Then maybe I can have you buried by the church,” he joked.
Ron navigated the truck down a steep, winding street and through the village, past fluttering chickens and tethered burros, finally pulling up next to a nondescript one-story adobe. It belonged to Espiridion Morales Luis, who, with his son, Juan, made the mezcal I had tasted in Santa Fe. Espiridion was away performing one of his civic duties for the Zapotec municipio. But Juan came out to greet us, cheerfully ushering us into the family kitchen—a cozy, rustic room with chicks sprinting across its hard-packed dirt floor. His mother was cooking tortillas on a comal, a basic wood-fired griddle. She served us each a bowl of hot chocolate, while Ron explained to our hosts that I thought I was having a heart attack. Juan quickly produced an unmarked bottle of mezcal that he and his father had distilled in their fábrica.
“¡Sólo necesitas un poco de medicina!” (You just need a little medicine!) Juan poured me a glass.
I took a sip, Juan’s eyes carefully measuring my reaction as the family mezcal calmed my nerves and delivered the familiar clearheaded high I had discovered when I first drank it in Santa Fe. After a few more sips, my chest pains vanished and the tingling in my left arm began to recede. I was cured!
Meanwhile, Ron presented the maestro mezcalero with an official certificate from the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, an annual tasting event where the Luis mezcal had been awarded the platinum prize—the highest honor presented. But the realm of First World arbiters seemed distant. Juan politely accepted the framed document, then set it aside and poured us another round.
A visit to their fábrica—reachable by a treacherous, muddy path down the mountainside—was out of the question because too much rain had fallen. But we could hear music and cheering from the village plaza nearby, so we wandered over to see what was happening. On a basketball