This Mezcal Tour Will Blow Your Mind
We turned left onto a dirt road about ninety minutes outside of Oaxaca City, still grinning ear-to-ear from our first visit to a real palenque.
As we barreled down unpaved roads surrounded by mountains and fields of agave, we passed around a jícara of private-stock Mezcal that magically appeared from our guide’s trunk. It was an unexpected treat. One of many that we would have throughout the day.
Our guide roughly explained to us that we would be visiting a variety of palenques. Our next stop; however, would be to someone’s house. Maybe they were home, maybe they weren’t. In Mexico, timelines are fluid and appointments are rare.
Normally, a lack of structure on a trip would bother me. As an American in Mexico, it felt dangerous. But as I sat in the front seat of the car, carefully balancing a gourd full of mezcal as the potholes sloshed it around -- I decided to surrender.
To book a proper mezcal tour and have a transformative experience, you have to respect that the culture of mezcal is hundreds of years old. The families who produce it today are the same ones who have been making it for over five centuries when the Spanish introduced distillation post-conquest.
So to book any old tour and approach it as simply an excursion to sample mezcal or learn how it’s made would be a huge miss. Further more, if your mezcal experience is limited to a 15 minute stop on the way back from Monte Albán, it’s an even bigger miss. And if your only exposure to mezcal while in Mexico involves slamming shots of it on a booze cruise, then you've missed the point entirely.
If you want to have a life-changing experience, you need to open your mind and step out of your comfort zone. You have to do your research and book a real tour that allows you to talk to the mezcaleros and their staff. No matter how bad your Spanish might be, you have to try. Ask them about their lineage. Ask them about their process. Ask them about what mezcal means to them. And what they think the future holds.
When you do this, your focal point changes. You’ll learn that the mezcal industry has reached an inflection point where a time-honored tradition is colliding with the lure of commercial opportunity.
Investment in mezcal operations is at an all time high. There are over 400 brands being sold around the world right now. Consolidation under big brands is imminent. And while there are certainly horticultural challenges and traditional Mexican red tape, entrepreneurs are trickling in every week asking questions, running numbers and plotting business plans.
But for now, most mezcal operations are still untouched representations of pure, artisanal craft-making at its best. It’s a story that the big liquor companies pay millions of dollars to fabricate for their mass-produced bourbons and whiskeys.
The difference is, the story of mezcal is real.
Most mezcals are still physically made by hand, in small batches, by a guy with a real name, in a little town in Mexico, with a family recipe passed down for hundreds of years.
No fabrication necessary. And you can taste the difference.
I digress...
A cloud of dust swirled around the car as we came to a stop. To our left was what appeared to be a deserted community of half-built homes. More like a third world compound of vacant cinder block houses with rebar splaying out from every corner of the flat roof. Extra rebar is a sign of hope in Mexico that someday, someway, the owner will have enough money to add a second floor.
In between the unpainted block buildings were stick huts, outhouses, broken down cars, chickens, pigs and kids toys. While it looked like the poorest neighborhood I had ever seen, in this part of rural Mexico, these were signs that someone was doing pretty well for themselves.
We made our way down a grass path and crawled through a leaning fence. Our guide explained again that he tried to call the owner, but he didn’t answer. Regardless, he felt strongly that we should stop by the house. This was a mezcalero’s house and he had some of the best mezcal in Oaxaca. The kind you won’t find on any retail shelves.
As we made our way past a make-shift outdoor kitchen we came upon a doorway where, just inside, an older lady was sitting silently at a small simple table in a two room concrete house.
Our guide exchanged pleasantries and inquired about the whereabouts of her husband. He was in the mountains harvesting agaves, she said. But without saying another word, she motioned us into her home. We respectfully entered.
There were no lights, no tv and no radio. It was silent. The only sound was our feet shuffling across the cool concrete floor. From the doorway to our destination in the back room, it was probably 5 or 6 paces but I managed to take a quick glance to my left and then to my right as we passed through.
To my left, the kitchen table was covered with 1 liter bottles of flavored soft drinks and a variety of salty snacks. On either side of the room were two bed sheets suspended in the air by a thin rope. They served as partitions that separated the rectangular space from what appeared to be two small bedrooms. I use the word “bedrooms” loosely. Underneath one sheet I could see a mattress on the floor and about six to eight pairs of athletic shoes of all sizes. Most belonging to kids.
There were two large steps from this dining area up to the back room. As we entered, natural light dimly lit the room from a single window but it was enough for us to see a variety of green-tinted glass jugs filled with mezcal. The rest of the room was packed with odds and ends. Things you would find in a storage closet.
It was still quiet as we each took a seat in a row of chairs against the wall. I could tell we weren’t the first people to sit in those chairs but it sure felt that way. As our guide explained a little bit about the family who produced the mezcal and the different varieties that they had to offer, I zoned out again.
Here we were, three friends from a small Pennsylvania town who shared a love for street food and artisanal Mezcal sitting in a dark room in someone’s house, in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, about to sample hand-made mezcal from bulk containers.
It felt religious. It felt illegal. It felt surreal.
By this point I had a good soft buzz going so that may have contributed to my thoughts, but either way this trip was special.
As we left the house and traveled to three or four other palenques, our grins got bigger and bigger. Not because we had too much to drink - which was certainly the case -- but because we knew that what we were experiencing was rare. Once in a lifetime rare.
On one hand this felt incredible. But on the other, I couldn’t help but feel bad knowing that mass commercialization is coming. I was happy that the families we met would have new-found wealth from this boon. Maybe the lady from the concrete house would get a more modern home closer to the city. Maybe she didn’t want one.
But I also worried that she and the other Mezcaleros might be exploited by capitalists and not get their fair share of the profits. And worst of all, that their process might be compromised for the sake of rapid expansion. Or that the concept of wild-grown agave mezcals would soon be extinct.
I didn’t expect to have any of these feelings on a mezcal tour. But I did.
As our day was coming to an end, our guide drove us to a great spot for a late lunch. On our way, we drove past a strip of retail stores that stretched for about a mile on either side of the highway. They were mezcal shops. One after another. Side-by-side.
I asked our guide what those shops were and he said, “That’s where the tour buses stop.”
If I didn’t ask, he wouldn’t have said anything. To him, it was as if they weren't even there.
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If you want to taste mezcal and learn how it’s made, there are hundreds of tour operators and retail stores in Oaxaca who will provide you with this experience. I’m also certain that if you have the right connections with a large mezcal brand you can have an amazing one-of-a-kind experience (and probably have it paid for). But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention our tour guide, Mr. Alvin Starkman from Mezcal Educational Tours. He has been doing this for many years and can speak to the agriculture, the politics, the economics and anything else that you want to know about mezcal, Oaxaca and beyond. He didn't pay us to write this article, nor do we have any special arrangement for cross promotion. It was just a truly a mind-altering experience for us and we highly recommend that you experience real mezcal production and flavor before family-owned palenques are replaced by corporate-owned production facilities.