Mezcal Is The Fastest-Growing Liquor In The US. Why Aren't Mexican Producers Cashing In?

The inner core of an agave plant also called apina is what makes miscal, it is a

liquor

-like tequila, but the distillers cook the pinias for five days underground in artisanal ovens like this one. The people who make

mezcal

in Mexico have been making it the same way for centuries and now more people than ever want to drink it. The value of

mezcal

increased by 50 percent in 2021, making it the

fastest

-

growing

spirit in the United States. Now the U.S. market for mezcal is larger than Mexico's, but even as international popularity grows, some

producers

are being shut out.

Getting a certification can take up to a year and cost thousands of dollars and

producers

say it is hindering long-held traditions, so some like Graciela Ángeles Careno now label their bottles. Distilled agave is cooked abroad and the agave is fermented and distilled, while mascal and tequila are made from agave plants. Mezcal actually predates tequila and has a distinctive smoky flavor. Mezcal gets its name from the Aztec word Mexicali which means oven-roasted agave, but it is nicknamed the elixir of the gods. Because according to legend, in pre-Columbian Mexico, lightning struck an agave plant, creating the skull. During most of the history of mezcal, it was a drink of the lower class.

The ES family has made mezcal in the town of Santa Catarina Minas since 1898. But unlike their ancestors they grow their agave or magay, as it is known locally because of the seeds, while other companies may prefer root cuttings to speed up the process. Graciela uses this slower method so that the agave can better resist disease after 7 to 35 years. The agave is ready to be harvested all by hand. Some Aki first remove the leaves then cut the thorns at the tip inside each leaf because if those thorns accidentally get under the skin Graciela's brother says they can migrate which hurts a lot it's saponins The chemicals excreted by agave leaves can also be dangerous, but Edgar says the saponins don't bother him.

What remains is the agave heart called La Pina and it takes a lot of effort to dig it up, it can weigh hundreds of pounds, so workers break them up. to make it easier to transport, then carry them to the bed of a waiting truck. Foreign, but there are still weeks before it becomes mezcal. Remember that the clay oven, while the agave hearts have to be cooked first, building the oven is an art form passed down by Generations workers. Place stones. On top of the firewood, the rocks are exposed to a 2,000-degree fire for up to nine hours to yield Red Hots.

If they carry the agave hearts on top, the big ones first and the small ones next, they kick and push each piña into place. They throw more fiber waste on top, then two men throw a tarp over everything and finally a layer of dirt finishes the oven, trapping the heat inside. The strange thing inside the oven slowly burns giving the Mezcal its distinctive smoky flavor for the next step we move on to. to another distillery called Tres Mesquite an hour east in San Baltazar Guadavilla foreigner has been making mezcal for 40 years today his business pumps 6,000 liters a year he and his team move the agave hearts cooks to this mill or grinder to crush the agave A horse throws this stone weighing a whopping thousand pounds of foreign agave fibers into fermentation tanks at Graciela's house, they add water to dissolve the sugar, the natural yeast gets to work, eats the sugar and turns it into alcohol after it ferments for almost a week.

Edgar arrives. Friends, first listen to make sure there isn't any sound of CO2 bubbles escaping from the vat, which might sound something like this fermentation, then submerge your overseas test tube services when it's ready to be distilled , the workers rake the fibers in the Destila and add more water from each barrel they obtain around 100 liters of mezcal. The healing area is known as the Palenque since the agave fibers heat the alcohol. The vapor rises, travels through this tube, condenses and falls into a waiting jar, they will distill it. the second time four jugs come out the first is called the head and its alcohol content is very high the next jug is known as the body and has a little less alcohol the third is the tail with even less and finally the last jug is a residue acid called inguiche used to clean floors graciela's team fills 8,000 bottles a year she sells her real miner brand within mexico and exports it to the united states and europe, but it wasn't until the 2010s that mascal began to see interest outside of Oaxaca. tournament bars in the US and beyond In response, Mexico's missed call output increased by 400 in the six years to 2020.

By then, the US overtook Mexico as the largest market for the Mezcal or was once a poor man's drink and had achieved worldwide fame, yes to standardize. and regulate the

growing

industry, the Mexican government became involved. It began in 1994 when the government established a designation of origin for mezcal, something like how champagne can only come from a specific region of France, it was to protect the traditional process of making mezcal and the place where it is made in 1997 the government appointed an organization now called comarcom to oversee and enforce certification rules, such as that mezcal had to be made from 100 agaves and only from these nine states and had to have a certain amount of alcohol by volume and Making methanol seems like a great idea to guarantee quality standards throughout Mexico and key production within the country and at first even mezcal producers advocated for it.

Those new regulations finally came with a problem today in obtaining certification. Producers now have to have a lot of time. of money Mexican lawyer Blanca Salvador says that certification can cost between 375 and 2500, which is a lot for a small mescaletto like Don Goyo and the cost does not end there. Producers have to pay to have their mezcal laboratory analyzed and purchase all the required equipment. and the entire certification process can take more than a year, for years going through Comercom was the only way to obtain a certification, in 2020 allegations of corruption came to light and the Mexican government fined the organization almost fifty thousand dollars for deceptive and abusive practices such as prioritizing.

Big companies missed calls on small ones, but now producers fear the rules are putting traditions at risk. For one, it is really difficult to obtain a constant alcohol and methanol content in traditional distillation, so some large-scale producers have turned to more modern equipment such as steel. Thresholds to guarantee alcohol and methanol are another concern for changing Agave naming standards despite generations of indigenous groups using native words for the plant when comarcom told Graciela to remove the cliché ancestral name from its labels For Mexicano, it was her last straw, so in 2021 she and her family decided to stop certifying their brand even though their distillation process did not change, preferring family tradition to regulation Graciela labeled everything distilled from agave and others.

Distilleries did the same, but there is another problem: that demand has attracted the interest of international companies and created more competition. Adding to an already difficult certification process for these popular brands, none are Mexican owned, a French company owns Del Maguey, a British company owns Casamigos, and a New York-based company finances El Silencio Mezcal. Celebrities such as George Clooney, Adam Levine and the stars of Breaking Bad have entered the market due to the protection of American companies cannot produce mezcal in the US, but are allowed to purchase large quantities for Mexican producers to make. repackage and resell for much more than they paid, leaving traditional producers even certified. some like Don Goyo with a diminishing share of the burgeoning global industry so he sells his mezcal in unlabeled plastic bottles to a middleman dongoyo earns between 15 and 40 dollars per bottle Casa Cortez one of the brands that ultimately buys the mezcal from Don Goyo a bottling company resells it for 38 to 100 but these ancestral Mescaleros have not lost hope in their Mexican crafts today the government has added more certifying agencies to lighten the burden of komarcom but Blanca thinks they should do more to help producers to bottle their own Mezcal and speed it up. the certification process is like that, she believes that the key is to respect the foreign agave plant itself