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Talking About Tequila and Mezcals with Nicholas Gilman and Juan Pablo - Ep. 41

This is my third conversation with Nicholas and Juan Pablo. In this episode we focused on Tequila and Mezcal.

Many folks know that Tequila is a made from the Blue Agave plant; Mezcal is made from the Agave but not just the blue ones, any mature Agave plant can be used to produce Mezcal; Tequila is a form of Mezcal. Today it's a very commercial process while many Mezcals are still made with traditional methods.



Juan Pablo Ballesteros discusses about how in the commercial tequila production process they cut the plant way before it's mature, so they may need to add sugar or other flavors missing from the immature plants.

Nicholas Gilman mentions a few things about Tequila's origin. It's original name is "mezcal de tequila" and it was made in the town of Tequila; Mezcal is identified by the area where it is produced.

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Transcript:


(00:00:00)Juan Pablo

All of the energy, everything that was going to be used to keep the plant going on and reproduce, it's absorbed from the ground, and it’s collected in the heart of the agave, and that's when you cut it, and that's when you make mescal.

(0:13)Nicholas Gilman

You can come here and do a mescal tasting, and try three, four, five different mescals, and they're wildly different.


(0:20)Harry Hawk

Hello, this is Harry Hawk, and this is Talking about Everything. This is a little extra, little sidebar so to speak, but we're at Limosneros restaurant here in the central historical district of Mexico City. I’m here with Juan Pablo and Nicholas Gilman. 


(0:35)Harry Hawk

One of the things that Nicholas and Juan Pablo both have talked to me about is how special the alcohol menu is here, that there's all kinds of local craft beers, local wines, regional wines meaning all within Mexico, but also specially the tequilas and the mescals, which I know very little about. So I'm going to let you guys speak, but tell me again what sorts of things you have and why I might want to have particular ones.


(1:00)Nicholas Gilman

Well let me say first that tequila is mescal. Tequila is a form of mescal, and mescal is made all over Mexico and has become very fashionable in the last few years. There was always artisanal mescal but really it fell out of favor and the only mescal that was available was really a rot-gut kind of tourist-oriented product from Oaxaca. 


(1:24)Nicholas Gilman

But in the last twenty years, since I've been in Mexico, it's come back as a fashionable drink, and they're making incredible artisanal mescals all over Mexico. There are now bars called Mescalerias, which is not really a traditional phenomenon but is artificially created, and it's wonderful because you can go into these bars and sample mescals from all over the country. And Juan Pablo's bar here is really a refined venue for tasting mescals that he has personally curated. Isn't that right, that you have gone all over Mexico finding these amazing mescals?


(2:03)Juan Pablo

Definitely. We focused on mescal long before it became fashionable. Like you said, we've always had amazing mescal, and it's always been artisanal. The brands that were distributed and the brands that everybody knew, they didn't have quality. So you could start by the hangover, the taste of it, the aromas, they weren't actually representing this traditional sacred drink that we've been distilling for five centuries. 


(2:29)Juan Pablo

And it was sacred because coming from our most precious plant, which is agave. The agave gave us clothing, with its textiles, everything coming out of the Pancas, which were treated in the first haciendas of the country, las haciendas en canarias. They made _____ 

(2:45) 

with agave. Then we have pulque, or aguamiel, we made a spirit called mescal, and then everything else of the plant served us food or even wood. So, even the houses were made out of them. So it is a plant that was described as the tree of wonders. That's how some people _____


(3:06) 

describe it. 


(3:07)

Recently, we turned around to see everything that's indigenous to us, and native to Mexico, and we've come to appreciate much more of it, and to look for ingredients that belong to us and came out of this place. Last the traditions that all these families have to make amazing craft mescals.


(3:28)Nicholas Gilman

What's wonderful is that the new generations in Mexico are not rejecting their culture, very much the opposite. They want to take it back. Young people are going to Pulquerias, which were bars that serve pulque that were just disappearing, and they're returning to things that are inherently Mexican. There's a phenomenon here called malinchismo, which means a rejection of things Mexican, and looking to Europe and America for culture. That's no longer true in younger generations of middle and upper-middle class people, so I think people are looking for all these traditional and wonderful things that we have here.


(4:09)Juan Pablo

Well some people don't know that in Mexico, we as a country produce mescal since a long time ago in more than twenty-one states and people think mescal is coming from Oaxaca only. But Michoacan has amazing mescals, Guerrero, Puebla, Durango, Tamaulipas, even the state of Mexico.


(4:27)Nicholas Gilman

What is the difference between mescal and tequila?


(4:30)Juan Pablo

If we were in utopian world, there would be no difference, but the main difference is that one was industrialized and the other one wasn't. The thing is that mescal has this traditional method of distilling it, it could be in clay, in copper, but it's always with these traditional methods and they should comply with the set of norms, like having this amount of alcohol by volume. It should be a hundred percent coming from the agave plant, with no sugar added whatsoever. So it should all come from mature plants. So you can only make mescal once a plant is expressing its ultimate beauty and expression of life with the only flower that it produces in its lifetime. At this point, where they cut it, and all of the energy, everything that was going to be used to keep the plant going on and reproduce, it's absorbed from the ground and it's collected in the heart of the agave, and that's when you cut it and that's when you make mescal. 

(5:31)

But the industrialized spirits, such as for example tequila, they cut it way before this point and they add what should have been natural. So they add the sugars needed, they add the oils, or the vanilla, or the color, or everything that wood may give you, too. Fundamentalists of mescal think that this should never be barrel aged. It should always be matured in glass, because that's the way that you respect and you get to taste the actual flavor of the plant without any addition of the pepperness of the wood, or the vanilla taste of it, or the wood itself. So it should be pure because one agave plant takes from six or eight years to be mature enough, to thirty. So to have these complexities of flavors of twenty summers and twenty rainy seasons, maybe families that were planting bananas or nuts on the side of the agave plantation, it's wrong to have it put in wood, because you are taking the essence of the plant. So it should be pure.

(6:36)Harry Hawk

We're talking anejo or reposado, no real aging that darkens it and stuff, just essentially something more similar to blanco?


(6:44)Juan Pablo

Exactly. None of that. No anejo, no reposado. It should be young, or if it's not young, it should be matured in glass so it becomes more round, more soft, more smooth.


(6:56)Harry Hawk

Thank you. And I really mean this, because I like to try things, I like to think that I can acquire a taste for things, and I think that I have done really well going through different countries and cultures, their liquors, and I love a lot of the European spirits that are aged in oak or other kinds of wood, but I never picked up a liking for tequila that was anything other than blanco. I love the fruitiness. I loved everything about it, but when I've had them aged in wood, I just felt I was just tasting the wood. Sounds like I would really like the mescals much better.


(7:27)Nicholas Gilman

And Juan Pablo goes and travels to the small producers who are not necessarily commercial to find the mescals that are in the bar here. Isn't that right?

(7:38)Juan Pablo

Exactly, we go get them and _____ 


(7:40)Nicholas Gilman

them, sort of like the filter of what's coming to your table. So every mescal that we like, we try to bring it to the restaurant.


(7:46)Nicholas Gilman

And they are hanging in these hand blown glass, sort of reformed jars over the bar, you can actually see them. They're absolutely beautiful. So you can come here and do a mescal tasting and try three, four, five different mescals, and they're wildly different. They have a common sort of set of aromas and flavors, the smokiness, but they really, they range from being a little bit sweet, from being mild to being kind of harsh. It's really interesting, everybody has their own favorite. Isn't that true?


(8:17)Juan Pablo

Exactly. And as you were saying, the difference is because there's 55 different types of agave plants that we can get mescal out of, that we can distill mescal from, and they all have different personalities. They all grow in different states of the country and plus they have the soils different, the maestro mescalero, the master who makes it, has its own techniques, and its own equipment, which also adds to the very unique flavor of each batch. Once you try an artisanal mescal, you'll never get to try that mescal ever again, because it's like wine, and it’s years. The seasons change, the soil changes, plant, too.


(8:55)Harry Hawk

So, Juan Pablo, like with the wine, this is a Bordeaux, 1972, is there a terminology to refer to them so that you know the year, the terroir, and so forth?


(9:06)Juan Pablo

We always specify the town that it's been made and the type of agave. So you can have a Tobala, or an Espadin, or Tobaziche, or maybe a Haveli, but all these types of agave, for example, the blue agave, or tequila nueva, it's one type of agave that you can get mescal out of. If you were to make it in the traditional, most craftily made mescal, there's a way that tequila should taste like when it's done non-industrialized and with no additives.


(9:39)Nicholas Gilman

And remember that tequila, the original name of tequila is mescal de tequila, and what we call tequila was actually a type of mescal, a very specific type, made in a specific way, that's a little bit different form the kind of mescals we're talking about.


(9:57)Juan Pablo

Yes, any agave distilled spirits, are mescal, but when they got to make their own laws, they separate it from the types of mescal, and they were established in a town called Tequila, because they saw, you know, the potential of this plant, how quickly they grew, and all the sugars that were concentrated in the heart of the agave. But yes, there's a lot more flavors to mescal because you can make them with all of the agaves, not just with that one.


(10:24)Nicholas Gilman

So it's fast approaching happy hour, and I think maybe we should order a round of mescals, don't you think, Harry?


(10:32)Juan Pablo

Definitely, we should.


(10:34)Harry Hawk

Absolutely, you've whet my appetite, I must say, I might like to try the insects, but I definitely want to try the mescal.


(10:39)Juan Pablo

One thing I didn't say about mescal, and I wanted to add, is that when we go get this batches of mescal you can get there, to the sierras of Oaxaca for example, by car, but some of the times you can't even get there by car, so you need to walk and what this tells us is that they make the mescal for themselves, for their parties, for their weddings. This is like the warranty for me, like the thing I look for. It's not that someone came and inspected and saw if it was good for duty-free export, or any other sort. The reason that I buy them is that they approve it, and they make it for themselves, and this is what I try to bring to the restaurant.


(11:22)Harry Hawk

Is it hard to acquire them in a sense when you show up, do they say, "I don't want to sell to you" or if you built a reputation, or is it a negotiation?


(11:29)Juan Pablo

No, they know me already. Throughout the years, we've made a fascinating bond, and so they receive us with traditional dishes and food. This is always inspiring for the menu as well, and this is something that got me to have many more ingredients than just mescal. Places where I've found and was inspired by what they were eating, and then if you get that together with the creative process of the kitchen, then you come out with something like the things you are going to try today.


(11:59)Harry Hawk

All right, I want to end this. I want to do another very quick little segment if you have time. If not, it's okay. But again, please tell everybody the name of the place, where to find it, where to find it online, all of that, so that it stands alone. You've been listening to Juan Pablo, and you've been listening to Nicholas Gilman, and I'm Harry Hawk. Gentlemen, please tell us where to find this place and your websites, and so forth.


(12:23)Juan Pablo

We are located in the heart of downtown Mexico City. The street name is Allende, number is 3, and we are located a few steps from Tacuba Street. We are really close to Bellas Artes, Fine Arts Palace and an emblematic building of the city, very beautiful one, too. You can locate us in the number 55 21 55 76. The twitter is @limosnerosmx, our Facebook page is Limosneros, the webpage is limosneros.com.mx.

(12:56)Nicholas Gilman

And you can read my review at goodfoodmexicocity.com. Just look for Limosneros. www.goodfoodmexicocity.com.


(13:05)Harry Hawk

I am Harry Hawk, and this has been Talking about Everything. We've been talking about mescal and tequila and I hope that you have the chance to try some of the mescal, as I imagine I am about to do. I hope everybody has a great day. Bye-bye.