What is mezcal? What's the difference between mezcal and tequila? Why is mezcal special? 

When I was younger I used to like the one with the Scorpion 🦂 tasted like shit but the scorpion was fun

Definitely, since they don't have to adhere to certain regulations such as capped acidity level. The limit is lower than a can of coca cola. But some of the best stuff I've had the pleasure I've having have been destilados de agave

Sounds like a woman.

Exactly, then woke up the next morning wondering, “what the fuck did we do last night?” Let’s do it again tonight!😀

That information is incorrect and well... not gonna get into the discussion of that myth. And when they would do that it wasn't cause of alcohol, it was natural herbs...

Your right takes away the spirit!

Viva?

@@georgefromtexas4631 correction done. ^~^

in Mexican Mezcal Distilling How 500 years and a 12,000 mile-trade route shaped modern mezcal. By Caroline Hatchett Published 04/27/23 Man pouring mezcal next to a Filipino-style still Pedro Jimenez Earlier this year, Tito Pin-Perez placed seven bottles of Mexican spirits on a bar-a line-up that showcased the country’s distillate diversity, including raicilla, pox, sotol, bacanora, artisanal Oaxacan mezcal, tequila, and tuxca. He poured a small glass of the tuxca first, then slid it across the bar. “Tuxca,” he said, “is actually the grandfather of all of these spirits.” A New York bartender by trade, Pin-Perez moved to Mexico City during the pandemic and now oversees the bar programs at Fónico and Rayo, where his spirits selection and cocktail lists reflect his ongoing education and experience with Mexican distillates. Those include widely popular spirits like tequila and mezcal, but also an array of other agave-based distillates like bacanora, raicilla, and agave-adjacent sotol. But it’s tuxca that unlocked mezcal’s history for him. “It helped me understand how it all connects,” says Pin-Perez. Insecto Tuxca, the bottle he shared, lists some clues to that history on its label: Molienda a mano (milled by hand), fermentación en pozo de piedra volcánica (fermented in a volcanic stone pit), destilado de agave del sur de Jalisco (agave distillate from southern Jalisco), and destilador Filipino (Filipino still). It’s the last of these descriptors that offers a deeper insight into the history of Mexican distilling. It’s a story that connects nearly five centuries of distilling in Mexico with a Pacific trade route that traversed 8,500 miles of ocean, and the Filipino sailors who brought unique stills and production techniques to the Central American region. It’s a story that stands in contrast to colonialism-a testament to ancient practices, Indigenous ingenuity, and mutual resistance. Spout pouring mezcal distillate into clay container. Pedro Jimenez The Trans-Pacific Origins of Mexican Distilling Native Mexicans cultivated agave for centuries before Spaniards showed up on their shores in 1519. They cooked and fermented piñas for sustenance. They drank mildly alcoholic pulque, made from fermenting the plants’ sap. But they did not distill its nectar into mezcal (or at least there is no definitive proof of pre-Columbian distillation, but more on that later). There’s nearly conclusive evidence, though, that Spaniards themselves did not introduce distillation to Mexico. Rather, they tried to squelch it. In 1565, a little more than four decades after the Aztec Empire fell to Hernán Cortés and his troops, the Spanish conquered the Philippines. The same year, Spain established the 12,000-mile Manila Galleon trade route across the Pacific Ocean, connecting Manila and Acapulco. For 250 years, ships transported spices, silk, porcelain, and other cargo from Asia before returning from Mexico bearing New World silver. “[Upon arrival,] sometimes whole crews would abandon ship and desert and then mix into the local population. It’s a testament to the cruelty of Spanish colonialism.” -Rudy Guevarra Jr., Associate Professor Of Asian Pacific American Studies, Arizona State University. By the early 1600s, skilled Filipino sailors made up the majority of these galleon crews of 100 to 350-plus men. Some were slaves and others underpaid navigators, and all endured tremendous hardship onboard. Crews suffered from scurvy, starvation, and dehydration. Adequate clothing was not provided, and making it to Mexico alive was not a given. In 1620 alone, two galleon crews lost 99 and 105 men, respectively, their bodies tossed overboard. “[Upon arrival,] sometimes whole crews would abandon ship and desert and then mix into the local population,” says Rudy Guevarra Jr., an associate professor of Asian Pacific American Studies at Arizona State University. “It’s a testament to the cruelty of Spanish colonialism.” Scholars estimate that 75,000 Filipinos settled in western Mexico during the Galleon era. According to Guevarra’s research, they married into Mexican families and blended into a community of similarly dark-skinned, mixed-race people who had Spanish surnames and practiced Catholicism. In turn, a great cultural exchange took shape, one that’s visible still in places like Acapulco and Colima. Among other foodstuffs, Filipinos introduced tamarind, rice, mango de Manila, and coconuts to Mexico. Coconuts, brought over in 1569, would be the most consequential of them all. Jimador in the agave fields. Pedro Jimenez Mexico’s First Distillate Filipinos had a similar relationship with the coconut palm as Mexicans did with their native agave. Filipinos used the fronds for clothing, shelter, and tools. They ate coconut meat and milk, drank the water, and used various parts of the tree for medicinal purposes. Filipinos fermented palm sap into the low-alcohol beverage tuba, similar to Mexican pulque, which you can still buy on the streets of Colima. In the morning hours, freshly made tuba is sweet and often enjoyed plain; by the afternoon tuba has a more prominent fermented tang and gets topped with peanuts, syrup, and fruit. Filipinos also transformed tuba into vinegar. To make tatemado, essentially a spicy Mexican adobo, cooks in Colima braise pork, chiles, and aromatics in coconut vinegar. Filipino sailors also brought with them the technology to distill tuba into lambanog, known in Mexico as vino de coco. Newly arrived Filipinos established coconut palm farms, and vino de coco soon became the most important business in Colima. By 1631, the town produced 262,000 liters of the stuff, and as mining activity picked up in northern Mexico, vino de coco helped to fuel its workers’ labor. It’s from this colonial soup of circumstances that mezcal, as we know it today, is thought to have emerged. “All the identified evidence suggests that agave distillation originated through adaptation of the coconut distillation process in Colima,” write Zizumbo-Villarreal and Patricia Colunga-GarcíaMarín in a 2008 landmark study. Compared with the Arabic-style alembic stills used by Spaniards, the Filipino still is a rustic apparatus. There’s a hollow tree trunk-in Mexico, most often from the parota tree-that’s appended on either side with a copper bowl. Vino de coco distillers added tuba to the bottom bowl and heated it over a fire. The liquid turned to vapor, rose in the still, and hit the copper bowl on top, through which cold water circulated. The vapors condensed and fell in droplets onto a wooden gutter and through a spout into a clay vessel. Distillers repeated the process several times to achieve the ideal proof and composition. Zizumbo-Villarreal and Colunga-GarcíaMarín’s study, as well as that of Paulina Machuca in 2018’s El Vino de Cocos en la Nueva España, stack evidence that Filipinos shared this technology with their new Indigenous and mixed-race neighbors and families. If this distillation process worked for tuba, why fermented agave? Original Filipino-style still build into a perota tree trunk, and brick oven at Balancan distillery. Ismael Gomez Modern Mezcal Is Born Of the 38 tabernas, or distilleries, Zizumbo-Villareal and Colunga-GarcíaMarín documented in southern Jalisco, 24 had coconut palm groves nearby. The research team also found greater agave diversity in southern Jalisco than in Tequila to the north, describing the region near the Colima volcano as “the nucleus of agave genetic diversity.” For millennia, Indigenous Mexicans in the area had selected specific agave varieties suited to making pulque. They cooked agave in stone pits, smashed the piñas with mallets, and fermented pulque in wells carved into volcanic rock. Then this centuries-old beverage met the adaptable Filipino-style stills that had landed on nearby shores. The first known documented reference to agave distillation comes from a Spanish cleric in 1619, who speaks of “mexcale” as an Indigenous drink produced on the coast and in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains of Nayarit. Mezcal distillation was traveling north and south through ancient and mining-related trade routes, and, along with vino de coco, becoming an economic threat to imported Spanish brandy. “The Spanish didn’t intend for the kind of interracial convergences that occurred between Indigenous and mixed-race Filipinos and Mexicans,” says Gueverra. “When this community started selling their own spirits and competing with the Spanish, it had this unforeseen impact on the culture.” Starting in 1603, colonial powers declared a series of prohibitions on vino de coco and mezcal, and by the 18th century, Colima’s vino de coco industry had effectively vanished. Agave distillation, on the other hand, went clandestine in the foothills of the Colima volcano and continued to spread, according to Zizumbo-Villarreal and Colunga-GarcíaMarín. Underground fermentation in volcanic wells was easily concealed, and the lightweight Filipino stills could be easily disassembled and moved. And agave-sacred, wild, and abundant-had far more cultural import in Mexico than the newly introduced coconut palms.

I'd like to try Mescal. Just wondering if you went to Southside HS (Cardinals)?

@@jonathand.terrell3419 No, I went to Jeff, Mustang country. My fav cousin lived on the SS. Not sure what school she went to but I had so much fun with her!

Cynthia, I went to Cambridge Elementary (4th Grade), Alamo Heights 1971-72, then went back to Gonzales until I graduated. Interesting talking to anyone about how San Antonio was back in the old days. Spent many hours watching horror movies in Aztec, Majestic and Longhorn theaters. Don't forget Joske's Department Store!!

@@jonathand.terrell3419 I use to go to the Majestic. My god that was a beautiful theater. As a teen I would go to the midnight movies there and would sneak alcohol in to get my drink on. Aztec was amazing too. I only went once bc there was too many cons all over downtown. That said I would eat at Los Apaches cafe after midnight. Didn't know about or go to the Longhorn but I did go to the Longhorn Museum and sit at the bar to get small glasses of rootbeer. That was during Baskin elementary school field trips! My fam didn't go to Joske's, it was too rich for their blood, for shame! My friend would shop there and get cute clothes from there. I was stuck wearing clothes from Woolco until I figured out the 2nd hand market. Best clothes ever! I loved growing up in SA. So full of a different culture from the rest of the US. Loved the festivals, food, radio stations, bars... I live on the OH border now, nothing to see here, lol!

I ĺike the newer MOnte Alban white and resipsido under 30$ a half gallon no worm no hang ovèr

I agree. That’s why I don’t drink it much anymore.

So that why you start doing naked back flips.

shop local, buy local, drink MEZCAL!!

Mr rabbit is here with the shit

Sounds like what happened last week, I sure was crawling around the floor like a rabbit...lol...I like mezcal over tequila

Maybe that’s why they call hard liquors “spirits”

That's precisely what I came here to come in about.

It is very helpful if you have worms.

Just like most bourbons. Watered down to 80 so that bars/consumers have more consistent flavour profiles. I prefer barrel proof myself

I'm allergic too, I break out in handcuffs.

I had the same prob. It made me walk sideway, fall down, and speak some foreign dialect. I also would wake up with women I didn t know or how they got there and my head felt like someone was hitting me with the round end of a ball peen hammer. I guess I just wasn t cut out for the top drawer stuff.

That's a LOT!

Hehe, Good times indeed!

Wow, I must be allergic to it as well. >~< Juuuust minus the running around naked... I think... ^~^

Bullshit. Like McDonald's?

@@larrysmith2638 you dont have to get as big as McDonalds to create standards and have consistency in a product....but if you prefer to take risks buying moonshine you are welcome to it. No thanks.

@@jtf2dan You missed my point entirely. McDonald's has terrible food, yet it is a chain that has extremely consistent food. I'll take a greasy spoon with a C rating any day over McDonald's. And the same is true for wine and spirits. That's why discerning drinkers go for the small batch businesses.

@@larrysmith2638 You missed my point entirely as well, you can have a large chain that makes great food as well. you assuming if a farmer went into mass production his product would become terrible is just plain wrong. Any small batch this is really good will become big batch....its called supply and demand.

and anyone that sells billions of burgers is selling something people like...otherwise people wouldnt buy it and they would go out of business..

They're gonna ruin it now, just like they did fajitas and molejas

@@johndowe7003 Right? I can hardly remember a party between the ages of 17-25 where a worm in the bottle was not present!

@@pfdrtom yup back in the 70s butchers used to throw away that fajitas and all the good stuff, now theyre charging almost 9$ a lb . You can hardly find a bottle with the worm in it nowadays

Believe it or not, there is an entire WORLD outside of Texas.

@@rudysaldivar4228 I've heard rumors but thought they were just fairy tales like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny!

Fact

It’s the liquid version of peyote.

Depends on which Cuervo. If it's the Especial, than you are correct. However, Cuervo also does 1800 and that's pure 100% Blue Agave. And their family reserves (very special and expensive bottles) are some of the best tequila in the world (yes I have bought some).

@@kamlando3089 Worth the money, in my opinion.

Any suggestions?

@@puzzledobserver7644 , Give Espadin a try! I don't know whether you have much choices?

Xicaru reposado 👌🏻

How about my birthday in August ? 👊🏼🙏🏻

No shit.

Guess not. Everyone else was drinking it in the 70s. :P

What are some of the brands so I can try them out ?

Actually, bacteria plays a role in the fermentation process, particularly lactic acid bacteria. So the video is correct.

@@larrysmith2638 Interesting.

ahole ignoramus

@@jennablerose2168 remember that's your opinion and opinions are like assholes

Scorpions and worms are for the gringo tourists....this gringo goes for the good stuff...Mezcal has more complex flavors. -veteran '66-68

@@rogeranderson8763 I dig what you say, but the price of the stuff deters me.

@@chrisduffy2737 I guess it depends on your location....I've found Mezcal is a good bit cheaper here in the states than Tequila from Jalisco.....perhaps because every state in Mexico can make Mescal...and only Jalisco can make tequila

@@rogeranderson8763 There is four other municipalities outside of Jalisco that can also produce and call their product tequila, they are in Guanajuato, Michoacan, Nayarit and Tamaulipas.

My Mexican grandfather told me it was the punishment for taking the last swallow of the bottle.

There's some really good 'shine in Alabama too.

That GA moonshine with the cinnamon stick FTWWW

Agree. Good educational vid, but sometimes it is hard to follow.

@@iuriikoboziev7263 educational vid ?? My arse !! pure promo video for the purveyors of an addictive and harmful substance. script was written by a marketing graduate with one thing in mind - emptying your pockets!! she failed to mention in england last year 3,700 people died from alcohol, and she said nothing about broken families etc etc etc, not to mention the additional strain on an already over-sretched health service. wise up you muppets

@@raymondo162 OK. Alcohol abuse is bad. This is still another story about how big corporate and big government work together to squeeze out the little guys. The sheeple think they're sticking it to the corporations, while the corporations know they're the only outfits big enough to comply with all the red tape. When you're churning out a million gallons of the stuff, you can afford a full-time person who does nothing but shuffle papers all day and ensure compliance. Big corporate loved the covid rules, because in a store with 100 employees, 1 employee to check people at the door and go around with spray sanitizer is just one more body. But a mom & pop can't afford a whole extra full-time position just for their compliance measures, let alone 3 or 4.

@@raymondo162 Lmao, somebody get this guy a drink 😆😆😆

Using PVC pipes and PE based containers is indeed not a good idea with ethanol production. Also, the all copper distillation is a health hazard. But "artisanship" is a glorified way of "Do not know and cannot reproduce". Food belief systems are prevalent in food and are at least partly if not all superstition. I find it disturbing that medieval or even older "knowledge" is better than what we can achieve today. Think of all the things they got wrong back then. But with food they knew better?

It was cheap too!

I bought a bottle of that to bring back as a gift for my father, when I was 13 yrs old in 1989 while on a trip to Mexico. I had no idea what it was, but thought it was cool, that a worm was in it and it came with a red pack of spice around the neck. That bottle was almost opened many times by my peers, but remains unopened on my fathers liquor shelf to this day.

It is !

Went to a Mezcal production operation in Oaxaca; hot damn....!!

Lol, catching those alcoholic fish...🐡🐠🐟

lmaooo