The DRUNKEN BOTANIST

THE PLANTS THAT CREATE THE WORLD'S GREAT DRINKS

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

Contents

CHAPTER 1

AGAVE

Agave tequilanaAGAVACEAE (AGAVE FAMILY)

The agave is better known for what it is notthan for what it is. Some people think it isa kind of cactus; in fact, it is a memberof the botanical order Asparagales, makingit more similar to asparagus and a few otherunlikely relatives: the shade-loving gardenornamental hosta, the blue hyacinth bulb, andthe spiky desert yucca.

Another misconception arises when agaves arecalled century plants, suggesting that they bloomonce in a hundred years. In fact, many bloom after eightto ten years but "decade plant" doesn't sound nearly as romantic.The much-anticipated bloom is vitally important, however: it yieldsthe raw ingredients for tequila, mezcal, and dozens of other drinksdistilled or fermented from this strange, heat-loving succulent.

pulque

The first drink to be made from agave was pulque, a mildly fermentedbeverage derived from the sap, or aguamiel. We know fromremnants found at archeological digs that agave—called maguey inMexico—was cultivated, roasted, and eaten eight thousand yearsago; the sweet sap surely would have been drunk as well. Muralsdating to 200 AD at the pyramid in Cholula, Mexico, depict peopledrinking pulque. The Aztec Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, one of thefew pre-Columbian books not destroyed by the Spanish, portrayMayahuel, goddess of the agave, breast-feeding her drunken rabbitchildren, presumably offering them pulque instead of milk. She hadfour hundred children in all—the "Centzon Totochtin"—and theyare known as the rabbit gods of pulque and intoxication.

The strangest bit of evidence for pulque's ancient origins comesfrom a botanist named Eric Callen who, in the 1950s, pioneeredcoprolite analysis, or the study of human feces found at archeologicalsites. He was ridiculed by his colleagues for his bizarre specialty,but he did make some astonishing finds concerning the diet of ancientpeople. He claimed that he could confirm the presence of "magueybeer" in two-thousand-year-old feces just from the odor of therehydrated samples in his laboratory—which is either a testamentto his sensitive nose or to the powerful bouquet of very old pulque.

To make pulque, the flowering stalk of the agave is cut just as itstarts to form. The plant waits its entire life for this moment, stockpilingsugars for a decade or more in anticipation of the emergenceof this single appendage. Cutting it forces the base to swell withoutgrowing taller; at that point, the wound is covered and allowed torest for several months while the sap builds. Then it is puncturedagain, causing the heart to rot. This rotten interior is scooped outand the inside of the cavity is repeatedly scraped, which irritates theplant so much that sap begins to flow profusely. Once it begins flowing,the sap is extracted every day by means of a rubber tube or, inthe old days, a pipette made from a gourd called acocote. (The acocote,in case you are inclined to grow your own, is often made fromthe long, skinny segment of Lagenaria vulgaris, a common bottlegourd also used to make bowls and musical instruments.)

A single agave can produce a gallon a day for months at a stretch,yielding over 250 gallons in all, far more than the plant wouldcontain at any given time. Eventually the sap runs dry and the agavecrumples and dies. (Agaves are monocarpic, meaning that theybloom only once and then expire, so this is not as much of a tragedyas it may seem.)

The sap needs less than a day to ferment—historically, this tookplace in wooden barrels, pigskins, or goatskins—and then it isready to drink. A bit of the previous batch, the "mother," is usuallyadded to start the process. It ferments quickly thanks in part to thenaturally occurring bacteria Zymomonas mobilis that live on theagave and on other tropical plants that are made into alcohol, suchas sugarcane, palms, and cacao. (These bacteria do such an efficientjob of producing ethanol that they are used to make biofuels today.)However, this microbe is entirely unwelcome in other brewing processes.It is the cause of "cider sickness," a secondary fermentationthat can ruin a batch of hard cider. It can spoil beer as well, releasinga nasty, sulfuric smell in a tainted batch. Still, it is the perfectcatalyst for turning agave sap to pulque. Saccharomyces cerevisiae,the common brewing yeast, helps with fermentation, as does thebacterium Leuconostoc mesenteroides, which grows on vegetablesand also ferments pickles and sauerkraut.

These and other microorganisms bring about a quick, frothy fermentation.Pulque is low in alcohol—only 4–6 percent alcohol byvolume (ABV)—and has a slightly sour flavor, like pears or bananaspast their prime. It is something of an acquired taste. Spanish historianFrancisco López de Gómara, writing in the sixteenth century,said: "There are no dead dogs, nor a bomb, that can clear a path aswell as the smell of [pulque]." Gómara might have preferred pulquecurado, which is pulque flavored with coconut, strawberry, tamarind,pistachio, or other fruits.

Because no preservatives are added, pulque is always served fresh.The yeasts and bacteria remain active and the taste changes withina few days. Canned, pasteurized versions are available, but themicrobes die off and the flavor suffers. It is, after all, the lively microbialmix that wins pulque comparisons to yogurt as well as beer.With its healthy dose of B vitamins, iron, and ascorbic acid, pulqueis practically considered a health food. While beer has been the beverageof choice in Mexico for decades, pulque is making a comebacknot only in Mexico but in border cities like San Diego as well.

mezcal and tequila

Any number of popular books on tequila and mezcal claim thatwhen the Spanish arrived in Mexico, they needed a stronger drink tofortify themselves against the long and bloody struggle to come andintroduced distillation as a way to turn pulque into a higher-proofspirit. In fact, tequila and mezcal are made from entirely differentspecies of agave than pulque. The method for harvesting the plantand making the spirit is completely different, too.

It turns out to be very difficult to put pulque in a still and get strongliquor from it. The complex sugar molecules in agave nectar don'tbreak down readily during fermentation, and heat from distillationcauses unpleasant chemical reactions that create nasty flavors likesulfur and burning rubber. Extracting agave sugars for distillationrequires a different technique—one that had already been perfectedbefore the Spanish arrived.

Archeological evidence—including the aforementioned coproliteanalysis carried out by Eric Callen and others—proves that peopleliving in Mexico prior to the Spanish invasion enjoyed a long traditionof roasting the heart of the agave for food. Pottery fragments,early tools, paintings, and actual remnants of digested agave allconfirm this beyond a doubt. Roasted agave is a gourmet experience;imagine a richer, meatier version of grilled artichoke hearts.It would have made a fine meal by itself.

But a high-proof spirit can also be made from the roasted hearts.The roasting process breaks down the sugars in a different way,yielding lovely caramelized flavors that make for a rich, smokyliquor. When the Spaniards arrived, they observed the locals tendingto agave fields, monitoring the plants closely, and harvestingthem at a precise point in their development, right before the budemerged from the base to form a flowering stalk. Instead of scrapingout the center to force the flow of sap, as was the practice formaking pulque, the agave leaves were hacked away, revealing a densemass called a piña, which resembled a pineapple or an artichokeheart. Those were harvested and roasted in brick or stone-linedovens set in the ground, then covered so that they could smolder forseveral days.

Native people had clearly worked out a method for cultivating androasting the agave. Pre-Columbian stone pits built for this purposecan still be found in Mexico and the southwestern United States.Now some archeologists point to remnants of crude stills to suggestthat people might not have simply roasted the agave for food—theymight have already been working on distillation methods prior toEuropean contact.

This is a controversial idea hotly debated among academics. Whatwe know for certain is that the Spaniards introduced new technology.Many of the earliest stills in Mexico are a derivation of theFilipino still, a wonderfully simple bit of equipment made entirelyfrom local materials—mostly plants themselves. The reason theSpaniards get credit for this is that they are the ones who broughtthe Filipinos to Mexico, courtesy of the Manila-Acapulco galleons.These trading ships took advantage of favorable breezes that madeit possible to journey directly from the Philippines to Acapulco injust four months' time. For 250 years, from 1565 to 1815, the shipsbrought spices, silk, and other luxuries from Asia to the New World,and they carried back Mexican silver for use as currency. The crosspollinationof cultures between Mexico and the Philippines surviveseven today, with the Filipino still being just one example of the connectionbetween the two regions.

This simple still consisted of a hollowed-out tree trunk (often Enterolobiumcyclocarpum, a tree in the pea family called guanacaste,or elephant ear) perched above an inground oven lined with bricks.The fermented mixture would be placed inside the tree trunk andbrought to a boil. A shallow copper basin sat atop the tree trunkso that the liquid could boil and rise to the copper basin, much likesteam collecting in the lid of a pot. This distilled liquid would thendrip onto a wooden chute placed below the basin and run out of thestill by way of a bamboo tube or a rolled agave leaf. More traditionalcopper Spanish stills, called Arabic stills, were also introducedearly on.

Whenever distillation started in Latin America, the practice waswell established by 1621, when a priest in Jalisco, Domingo Lázarode Arregui, wrote that the roasted agave hearts yielded "a wine bydistillation clearer than water and stronger than cane alcohol, andto their liking."

* * *

Over the last few centuries—and until the last decade or so—agavebasedspirits were considered to be rough products that in no waycompared to a good Scotch or Cognac. In 1897, a Scientific Americanreporter wrote that "mezcal is described as tasting like a mixtureof gasoline, gin and electricity. Tequila is even worse, and is said toincite murder, riot and revolution."

While gin and electricity sound like excellent ingredients for a cocktail,this wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement. But today, artisanaldistilleries in Jalisco and Oaxaca are making extraordinary smoothand fine spirits, using a mixture of ancient and modern technology.

Mezcal at its best is a fine, handcrafted spirit, made in very smallbatches in Mexican villages using ancient techniques and a wide varietyof wild agaves. The piñas are still chopped and roasted slowlyin belowground ovens, where they are infused with the smoke fromlocal oak, mesquite, or other wood for several days. They are thencrushed by a stone wheel called a tahona. The wheel rolls arounda circular pit, propelled in the old days by a donkey, although moresophisticated machinery is sometimes used today. (This wheel, bythe way, is strikingly similar to apple-grinding stones once used tomake cider in Europe. Whether the Spanish introduced the tahonato Mexico is a subject of hot debate among archeologists andhistorians.)

Once the roasted piñas are crushed, the juice can be siphoned offand fermented with water and wild yeast for a lighter-tasting mezcal,or the whole mash, including the crushed bits of agave, can befermented, yielding a rich and smoky mezcal that would please anyScotch drinker. In some villages, the distillation takes place in atraditional clay and bamboo still. Other distillers use a slightly moremodern copper pot still that is very similar to those used to makefine whiskies and brandies. Many mezcals are double- or triple-distilledto perfect the flavor.

Some distillers are so particular about their process that they won'tlet visitors near the still if they've used any perfumed soaps, fearingthat even a few fragrance molecules will taint their product.The better mezcals are labeled by the species of agave and village,the way a good French wine would be. Today, according to Mexico'slaws, a spirit carrying the name mezcal can only be made in Oaxacaand the adjacent state of Guerrero, and in three states to the north,Durango, San Luis Potosí, and Zacatecas.

There is one ingredient that can make mezcal different from whiskeyor brandy: a dead chicken. Pechuga is a particularly rare andwonderful version of mezcal that includes wild local fruit added tothe distillation for just a hint of sweetness, and a whole raw chickenbreast, skinned and washed, hung in the still as the vapors pass overit. The chicken is supposed to balance the sweetness of the fruit.Whatever its purpose, it works: do not pass up an opportunity totaste pechuga mezcal.

What makes tequila different? For centuries, the term mezcal appliedgenerally to all Mexican spirits made from the roasted heartof the agave. In the nineteenth century, tequila simply applied tomezcal made in or around the city of Tequila, in the state of Jalisco.It might have been made with a different species of agave, but themethod was generally the same.

During the twentieth century, tequila settled into the drink it istoday: a spirit made only in a designated area around Jalisco, froma cultivar of Agave tequilana called 'Weber Blue', often farmed inlarge fields rather than wild-harvested, and heated and steamed inan oven rather than slowly roasted in an underground pit. (Twenty-tonautoclaves are not an uncommon sight at tequila distilleriestoday.) Unfortunately, the definition of tequila also expanded toinclude mixtos, tequilas distilled from a mixture of agave and othersugars, with as much as 49 percent of the fermentation comingfrom non-agave sugar. Most tequilas Americans slurp down in theform of margaritas are mixtos; it still takes a little extra effort toorder a 100% agave tequila. When you do, they are well worth sampling.Some are as sweet as an aged rum or as smoky and woodsyas a good whiskey, and some have unexpected floral notes, like aFrench liqueur. They are perfect on their own; there's no need topollute a fine, handcrafted tequila with lime juice and salt.

Now that mezcal and tequila have their own appellation (called aDO, or Denominación de Origen in Mexico), other agave-basedspirits are claiming their territory. Raicilla comes from the areaaround Puerto Vallarta, bacanora from Sonora, and sotol, madefrom the related desert spoon or sotol plant Dasylirion wheeleri,from Chihuahua.

protecting the plants

As these spirits become more popular, a new problem arises forMexican distillers: protection of the plants and the land. Many ofthe non-tequila spirits are made from wild agaves. Some distillersof these spirits see the population of wild plants as being nearlyunlimited and impossible to decimate; unfortunately, this is thesame belief system that led to the destruction of the coast redwoodsand other wild plant populations. Although some agaves reproducevegetatively, producing "pups," offshoots that can regrow afterharvest, the harvest process prevents them from blooming. By notallowing the plants to flower, reproduce, and set seed, the geneticdiversity is seriously impacted. Even the population of wild bats thatpollinate agaves are diminished because the agaves are not allowedto bloom naturally.

The situation is worse for tequila, which generally comes fromplants that have been farmed rather than harvested in the wild.Since only one species, A. tequilana, can be used to make the spirit,it has become a monoculture just as grapes have in northern California.David Suro-Piñera, owner of Siembra Azul tequila and anadvocate for the preservation of tequila's history and the sustainabilityof the industry, said, "We've been abusing the species. Wehave not allowed the plant to reproduce in the wild. Genetically, it isexhausted and very vulnerable to disease. I'm very concerned." Heattributes an increased use of pesticides, fungicides, and herbicidesto the weakness of the plants themselves. Also, water is an importantingredient in tequila and other spirits; increased chemical useand degradation of the soil can pollute water supplies as well.

Already plagues of disease have devastated the domesticated agavecrop, not unlike the catastrophic Irish potato famine or the waveof phylloxera that destroyed European vineyards. In the case ofthe agave, the agave snout weevil (Scyphophorus acupunctatus)introduces bacteria and deposits eggs that hatch into tiny larvae thateat the plant, rotting it from the inside out. Because the weevil boresinside, insecticides are largely ineffective.

Strengthening the crops and preserving wild agaves will require acombination of intercropping—the practice of interspersing agaveswith other plants—protecting wild areas to increase genetic diversity,reducing chemical use, and taking steps to restore the health ofthe soil.
(Continues...)Excerpted from The DRUNKEN BOTANIST by Amy Stewart. Copyright © 2013 Amy Stewart. Excerpted by permission of ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL.
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