I believe that for most people tequila leads to mezcal even though all tequilas are mezcals, but we will come back to that. Tequila leads to mezcal because for most of us, it started with tequila. We traveled down a path that likely started with bad tequila, bad experiences, and bad results the next morning.
And maybe we enjoyed the extra anejos that move tequila toward cognac. And then, what? What else is out there?
Ahhh mezcal…. The rise of the extra anejos coincided with the arrival of fine mezcals and then they started to appear on the shelves at your local liquor store and on the cocktails menus of your favorite gin joints.
So tequila brought us to this point and now mezcal joins the discussion…. This has been going on in Mexico since at least the Spanish conquest, potentially earlier. In most states in Mexico someone is making a spirit from the agave plant and most of them call it mezcal. Legally mezcal has a different definition. The geography of mezcal changes regularly so this is a highly elastic and recent definition. Everyone fully expects it to welcome in many new states in the coming years.
Tequila is a type of mezcal with an extremely well defined sense of itself. These trimmed agaves are often left in the field for a few days before being removed. The most common way to roast agave for mezcal is in an earthen pit oven. These pits are usually lined with rock and then fired by wood which is covered by more rocks, which heats to enable a slow roast. This is the most industrial type of roast and the predominant method used in the production of tequila.
The oven is called an autoclave. After the agave has been roasted, it is ready to be crushed in one of three ways, by hand using wood mallets; by a tahona, or stone wheel pulled by a horse, donkey or even a tractor; or by a wood chipper. The cooked agave is crushed in order to release juice and sugars.
The crushed fibers, or mosto, are then put into fermentation tanks made of wood, stone, steel or sometimes even animal hide. Water is added, though not all the time, and then the mosto is left in an open air environment so that wild yeasts in the air can kick start the fermentation process. This process takes anywhere from three days to a week depending once again on the climate. In areas outside of Oaxaca there can be variations on this fermentation process.
In places like San Luis Potosi and Durango for example, they commonly use only the agave juice from the crush for fermentation. Because of the temperature variations in those states, they also do not rely on wild yeast to kick start the fermentation process, instead using pulque as the starter.
Once the mosto, or juice, is fermented, it is transported to the stills. These stills can be made of copper, clay or stainless steel and are fired in most cases by wood, though some brands have been transitioning to natural gas for environmental reasons. In a nutshell, distillation is the process of separating components or substances from a liquid mixture by using a mix of boiling and condensation. In the case of spirits you are essentially separating the ethanol from whatever else is in the fermented must or mosto.
Consider this, if you want to make whiskey you get some grain, soak it, ferment, it, distill it. Mezcal was traditionally sipped alongside a slice of orange topped with worm salt. Back in , one mezcal distiller allegedly found that putting a gusano , the larvae that live on the agave plants, into the bottle gave his spirit a more desirable flavor. Today, you may still find that "worm"—a caterpillar—floating in some of the least expensive bottles. In recent years, bartenders have embraced mezcal, both in its own original cocktail recipes and in variations of classic concoctions like a Oaxaca Old Fashioned and a Mezcal Mary.
Tequila has long been known as the backbone of a margarita and the college student shot of choice. But lately the quality has improved so much that Distilled Spirits Council spokeswoman Kelley McDonough says it's "no longer only associated with celebrations such as Cinco de Mayo or enjoyed in pre-batched frozen margaritas at a beach bar.
0コメント