¡Viva Tequila!
It’s still a hot shot and the coolest ingredient of a margarita. But in kitchens and bars across Texas, Mexico’s favorite drink has a newfound respectability.
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Considering the nationwide popularity of Southwestern and Mexican cooking, we figured the cuisine’s leading chefs and restaurateurs might know a thing or two about tequila. So we placed a call to the following people: Robert Del Grande of Cafe Annie and Arnaldo Richards of Pico’s, Houston; Dean Fearing of the Mansion on Turtle Creek and Stephan Pyles of Star Canyon, Dallas; Mark Miller of Coyote Cafe and Miguel Ravago of Fonda San Miguel, Austin; Jay McCarthy of Cascabel and Rick Gonzalez of El Mirador, San Antonio; Mick Lynch of Cafe Central in El Paso; and Grady Spears of Reata, Alpine. (We also asked Bruce Auden of San Antonio’s Biga, who confessed that he doesn’t drink tequila.) Most of those polled specified the mellower añejo or reposado in their favorite brands.
The winners in the tequila sweepstakes were (drum roll, please): First place, Herradura, with seven votes. Second, Patròn, with six. Third, El Tesoro, with five. Chinaco—once the hardest tequila to find, because production was unpredictable, but soon to be available again—got three votes, and Centinela and Sauza Tres Generaciones got two each. After that, the scoring evened out with Jose Cuervo gold, Dos Reales, Porfidio, and several other Sauza products (Conmemorativo and Hornitos) netting a vote apiece.
Making It
The long, spiky leaves of the blue agave plant look like a freeze-frame explosion; an entire field of agaves is a series of starbursts arranged in tidy rows from roadside to horizon. Despite their needlelike tips, the 250 to 300 species of agave are not cacti but rather members of the lily family, relatives of yucca, amaryllis, and sansevieria. A blue agave blooms just once, eight to ten years after it takes root, and then it dies. If it is harvested too soon, it will be unripe. If it is harvested too late, the heart will have formed its once-in-a-lifetime bloom stalk and will be no good for making tequila. Timing is everything. Moving gingerly among these plants, workers known as jimadores (“harvesters”) carry long-handled tools with spatulate chopping blades called coas. Spotting a suitable plant, the jimador shears off a few base leaves and uproots the plant with his foot. With rapid, precise strokes, he then slices off the remaining leaves. The end product is a fifty-to-one-hundred-pound green globe that strikingly resembles a pineapple and is, in fact, called a piña. After they are cut, the piñas are loaded onto donkeys or tossed into trucks and delivered to the distillery, where they begin their metamorphosis into tequila.
It used to be that all tequila distilling was a primitive, labor-intensive operation. And indeed, some distilleries, including the modern giants, Jose Cuervo and Sauza, still cook the piñas in traditional stone-walled ovens for as long as 36 hours, followed by more hours of cooling. Yet other larger distilleries are highly mechanized: They use autoclaves—essentially giant pressure cookers—that steam the piñas rapidly. Here, as in other aspects of tequila making, the traditional distilleries claim to make a superior product, drawing an analogy between a spaghetti sauce that takes thirty minutes to make and one that is slowly simmered for hours. Others say that either method can be effective in experienced hands.
Before piña is cooked, it has the smooth, firm texture of a turnip of jicama and a slightly bitter, herbal taste. Once it has been baked, it is surprisingly like a sweet potato in color, flavor, and consistency. All its starches have turned to sugar, transforming the vegetable into a strange, fibrous candy.
The next step is to extract the juice. Newer distilleries crush the piñas with modern machinery; a few older ones use a large circular stone called a tahona. Once crushed, the piñas are repeatedly washed with water to separate the juice from the fibers, and the resulting liquid is transferred to fermentation containers, either huge stainless steel vats (in the modern plants) or small wooden ones. Sugar syrups may be added at this stage if the tequila is to be a blend. The next ingredient is yeast, commercial or wild; the type influences the style or taste of the finished product. As fermentation proceeds, the brown beery liquid simmers and roils. At the end of the process, which can take a few hours to a few days, the sugars have been converted into a mild alcohol—not yet tequila, but getting closer.
The missing step is distillation, which can take place in traditional copper stills or stainless steel ones. The fermented brew is heated to boiling, and the resulting vapors are condensed to a clear liquid of about 40 proof. The “heads” and “tails”—alcohols produced during the first and last stages of the process—are discarded because they contain harsh, even toxic impurities. Then the “heart” of the distillate is piped into a second group of stills to be finished.
The crystal-clear alcohol that comes out of the still is, finally, tequila. At 110 proof or higher, it is strong stuff, which is why distilled water is added to dilute it to 80 proof. If it is to be aged, it is transferred to oak barrels; if not, it is bottled (in either Mexico or the United States) and ready to be sold.
Explaining It
Confusion reigns, at least among norteamericanos, over the differences among pulque, mescal, and tequila. Many people think that the first two are primitive or semi-finished stages of the third (tequila interruptus, so to speak). This rowdy, rotut image persists even though pulque and mescal are quite distinct and can be good, bad, or indifferent.
Pulque (pronounced “pool-keh”) has the most ancient lineage, having been consumed in Mexico for more than two thousand years. Rich in nutrients, it was prized by the Aztecs, who reserved it for the aged and infirm as well as for nobles, warriors, and nursing mothers. Anyone else caught sneaking a drink could be sentenced to death. Until the twentieth century, pulque occupied an honored place as the drink of revolutionaries, artists, and great landowners. Today it is regarded as the solace of poor folk. In the rest of society, Tecate and Coca-Cola have taken its place.
Like tequila, pulque is made from the juice of agave plants (but not Agave tequilana Weber, “blue” variety). Unlike tequila, it is extracted from living plants instead of those that have been harvested and cooked, and it is fermented but not distilled. To put it politely, pulque is an acquired taste. White, foamy, and thick, with an alcoholic content of between 4 and 6 percent, it has an herbaceous or a vegetable flavor that is simultaneously acrid, sweet, and salty. Because it doesn’t take well to bottling or storage, it must be consumed fresh and in the vicinity of where it is produced—primarily Mexico’s Central Plateau.
Compared with pulque, mescal (“mes-cahl“) is a youngster, a mere four centuries old at best. When the Spanish colonized Mexico in the sixteenth century, they brought with them the ancient art of distilling. They soon applied that art to the agave, a plant with proven potential for alcohol production.
The making of mescal is almost identical to the making of tequila; and, indeed, tequila was once called vino mescal or “mescal wine,” reflecting the fact that it is essentially a highly refined mescal. The main differences are that the two liquors use different species of agave plants and that mescal is distilled once rather than twice. The Mexican government does not regulate mescal production, so the quality varies. Some mescals are subtle and complex; most are not. To smooth the harsh, typically smoky flavor, fruits and spices such as lime, prickly pear, pineapple, almonds, and cinnamon are frequently added.
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