Tequila & Mezcal

When visiting @drinkaddition in Seattle three years ago to avoid the Royal Wedding, he told me what a big tequila fan he was and how he was building up quite a collection. My reaction was, Why? Are you crazy? That stuff is foul. He protested the contrary and gave me a tasting through the different styles of tequila. The next day I went out and bought a bottle to take back home with me.

Like Jägermeister, building a reptuation on being so rough that it has to be necked as quickly as possible is not good for the long-term economic stability of a drink - compare that to whisky or brandy, drinks seen as sophisticated and mature and therefore commanding premium and super-premium prices. As I learnt, tequila is capable of that sophistication, but also of a welcoming intimacy sometimes lacking in those superaged drinks. Tequila's a drink that should be taken seriously, and the gradual rise in the sales of premium tequilas suggests that consumers are finally beginning to appreciate this.

what is tequila?

It's made from agave, a pretty crazy plant that grows in the ground like a potato, looks like a pineapple, and has massive razor-sharp leaves. Tequila production is always going to be small, especially compared to spirits like vodka, because it takes seven to ten years before the agave plant's ready to be harvested (and it dies once it's flowered, so that's that for production). Harvesting also involves tackling those massive razor-sharp leaves with a large axe, a time-consuming and labour-intensive process.

Tequila has to come from a specific area of Mexico, loosely around the town of Tequila and the city of Guadalajara, and has to be made from blue agave (there are 200 other varieties). There are two types of Tequila: Tequila 100% Agave, which is exclusively made from blue agave, and Tequila, or mixto, which is 51% blue agave. It's the former you want to be trying.

how's it made?

The leaves are cut off as close to the plant's hard core (piña) as possible; this piña is halved and cooked, either in traditional ovens or pressurised cookers, which produces fermentable sugars. This cooked agave is ground down to release the sugary juice and then fermentation starts, which lasts several days. Distillation then takes place in a pot still to produce a spirit which at around 55% is still full of the agave flavour, before it's watered down to the desired level of alcohol (min. 35%).

styles

blanco - tequila aficionados argue that this is the purest expression of the agave, as the drink undergoes no oak ageing.

reposado - this literally means rested, which is quite an expressive way of saying that it's spent a small time in oak (minimum two months). This gives it a pale golden colour and a light sweetness. Personally, I find this style a bit of an inbetweener.

añejo - this means aged, meaning that it's spent at least one year in an oak barrel (old Bourbon). Again, certain tequila purists may argue that this takes away from the agave flavour, but it does add a buttery, vanilla complexity to the drink, as is the case with any spirit.

Which style you prefer depends entirely on personal preference, but the characterful agave flavour should always be evident. There's also a style called muy añejo (very aged) which I've never tasted, but I wonder if the oak would smother that agave taste.

what does it taste like?

The agave taste is very distinctive; the nearest British equivalent is perhaps turnip. Unlike a lot of other white spirits, the aroma of tequila is immediately apparent: bitter, green, rooty, earthy, and, quite simply, agave (if I ever get to smell agave, I'll say it smells like tequila). You might get other spicy vegetables like pepper and jalapeño, but that might be overcomplicating the simple expressive agave qualities. If it's been aged in oak, then there'll be a creamy vanilla texture as well; but the key is marrying the natural agave characters with the oak.

diploma tasting

We only tasted two tequilas, both of them from El Jimador, a major brand. The blanco was very simple; it didn't really have the immediate, expressive agave flavours that one would expect from this style, and was quite disappointing. The añejo was superior, with cheesy, vanilla, cigar smoke aromas. I think this demonstrated the point about the greatest tequilas being blancos; it takes real skill to create highly expressive, complex drinks solely from the plant, while oak can add a complexity that hasn't come from the plant itself.

mezcal

And then there's a sibling drink which at its worst can be as bad as anything out there and at its best even better than anything out there. Mezcal isn't as geographically specific as tequila and can be made from a number of agave varieties. It also very rarely encounters oak. The piña is roasted in underground ovens, which gives mezcal aggressively smoky and earthy aromas - a more extreme version, for both better and worse, of tequila. This is a drink you have to spend some money on - and when you do it's worth it.

Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal - Santo Domingo Albarradas

Here's a mezcal I bought on my last trip to Seattle. On the nose it has all the characteristic bitter green vegetables from the agave, with a delicate smoky earthiness. That smokiness really comes through on the palate, where it's almost like an Islay whisky, with seaweed and smoked fish flavours, but there's a lasting smoked spiciness to the drink, like roasted peppers. This is a white, unaged spirit that tastes as complex and long as an aged whisky, yet is youthful and fresh, full of the aromas of the raw material. This is tequila/mezcal at its most expressive and youthful, but with real lingering complexity, and proof that you don't need oak ageing to produce a great spirit.

note the absence of a worm