had tasted in Santa Fe was from—and to meet the people who had made it.
WITH ROOSTERS CROWING all around Teotitlán del Valle, we drove to the market in the village center to find something to eat on the road. A miniature version of Abastos, it was already lively. Ron was well acquainted with many of the vendors, most of whom were women wearing aprons and shawls pulled tight against the morning chill. Many were selling tortillas and tamales they had cooked at home and were keeping warm in embroidered-cloth bundles stored in beautifully woven fabric bags. We bought some empanadas filled with chicken and mole negro, and their mouthwatering smell filled the truck cab as we left town and headed farther south on Highway 190.
The rising sun revealed a morning mist shrouding the valley. It slowly burned off as we passed the pre-Columbian ruins of Yagul, which date to approximately 500 BCE and occupy a volcanic outcrop just north of the busy thoroughfare. Here and there were expansive fields of agaves that local magueyeros (maguey farmers—also, mezcal workers) had planted for distilling, and we passed a couple of primitive fábricas de mezcal (mezcal stills, also called palenques), which had been set up for tourists.
“Let’s stop and take a look,” Ron said, pulling over by one of them.
He briefly walked me through the mezcal-making process. Two men were piling split piñas around a circular, fifteen-foot-deep horno. Once heaped inside it, the agaves would be covered with earth and baked atop wood-fired rocks for several days, until their starchy white flesh was cooked brown with caramelized sugars. The hearts would then be transferred to a circular milling area where they would be pulverized under a tahona (a massive round millstone—usually pulled by a horse, a mule, or a pair of bulls). The resulting mash would be transferred to several wooden tinas (fermentation vats), where it would stew for perhaps a week or more into a bubbling brown soup.
Finally, the fermented mash and liquid would be introduced to the belly of an alembique de cobre (copper still) that was heated from below by a wood fire. The heat would separate the alcohol from the rest of the mixture, so that it would collect as vapor at the top of the still. From there, the alcohol would move, drop by drop, through a long copper tubo (pipe) that extended between the still and a water-filled cooling tank. The pipe corkscrewed into the water, disappeared at the bottom, and emerged from the tank’s base. When the still was in operation, clear mezcal would steadily drip from it into a container.
To my uneducated eye, the operation appeared dirty, makeshift, and archaic—almost like a rustic display one might find in a living museum—and I wondered if it was hokey. But Ron said it was actually more or less the way most mezcal fábricas looked and worked in Oaxaca, and was pretty much how things had been for hundreds of years.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Ron cautioned. “Some of the distillers around here are amazing artists.”
We hit the road again. Turning north, we aimed toward Mitla, a Zapotec settlement featuring a ceremonial site whose oldest buildings dated from 450 to 700 CE. If Monte Albán had been the political center of the ancient Zapotec, Mitla was their religious one. Its ruins are noted for their uniquely detailed mosaics and fretwork, a Mixtec style. After we passed Mitla, the valley narrowed, and we turned and headed north on a tinier road that switchbacked down into a deep green expanse. As we entered a village at the bottom, Ron spotted a semi, its license plate from the Mexican state of Jalisco, loaded with small, prematurely harvested piñas.
“They’re taking away our goddamn babies!” he growled.
AT THAT TIME in Jalisco, the state where tequila is predominantly produced, there was a major agave shortage, which was partly a cyclical occurrence. When prices for agaves drop, farmers become unenthusiastic about planting them, with the result that the supply of harvestable magueys ceases to match the enormous international demand for tequila. This time the scarcity was largely due to a severe blight attributed to the fungus Fusarium oxysporum and the bacteria erwinia carotovora, which collectively caused TMA: tristeza y muerte de agave (wilting and death of maguey). As many as 40 percent of the country’s two hundred million A. tequilana plants had been affected, causing a massive crisis for one of Mexico’s biggest exports. Unable to compete, many small-scale tequila distilleries shut their doors.
Magueys may appear formidable, but despite their spiky defense systems, there exists a tiny David to the plant’s Goliath: the agave snout weevil. The black, inch-long beetle is considered the most destructive vector of blight. First, it uses its needlelike proboscis to burrow a hole into the center of the rosette. There, it both lays eggs and infects its host with fungi and bacteria damaging enough to kill the maguey. As the plant sickens, the beetle larvae chew through its weakened tissues—now made soft and munchable for a hungry grub—and the once-mighty agave loses its color and wilts to the ground like a forlorn gabacho doubled over with a bad case of turista (diarrhea).
In the wild, the most disease-resistant magueys propagate and secure the continued survival of their species via an arsenal of methods—through seeds, through small plants growing from their flowers, and through shoots sent out from their bases that develop into baby agaves, which are clones. But when non-resistant plants are cloned and grown in a corporate-scale monoculture, as they are by the tequila industry, they become particularly vulnerable to weevil-borne infections—and disaster can strike.
Ron said the situation was so dire that Jaliscan trucks were coming to Oaxaca from hundreds of miles away to haul off the local maguey crop. According to the legal requirements of tequila’s DO, if a spirit is labeled TEQUILA 100% AGAVE, it should have been distilled only from A. tequilana. But the Jaliscan semi we saw was filled with piñas of espadín, the maguey species most commonly grown for mezcal. This particular agave is normally harvested within eight to ten years, but much younger plants were now being uprooted to address the needs of the tequila industry. Ron said it was very likely that other regional maguey species were also being ransacked. Furthermore, local agave prices had risen significantly—a turn of events that put Oaxacan mezcaleros in the position of not being able to afford the local maguey, while witnessing the sell-off of their future materia prima.
“Who keeps an eye on all of this?” I asked Ron.
“No one,” he replied, shaking his head.
Oaxaca was beginning to feel like the Wild West.
WE WOUND OUR way up to, then through, the village of Santa María Albarradas, which clings to a steep slope at around fifty-five hundred feet. From there, Ron steered us onto a muddy track that continued upward into the hills. We were now surrounded by dense forests of pine and oak trees hung with Spanish moss the color of seafoam and dangling bromeliads still dripping with the previous night’s rain. The route grew rough with potholes as we made our way up and down hills and around bends, then sloshed through streams rushing faster as it began raining yet again.
After several bumpy miles, I began feeling hungry and unwrapped one of the empanadas we had brought along for breakfast. It was still warm and delicious. But soon after wolfing it down, I felt strange chest pains and an alarming tingling sensation in my left arm. Given my family history of heart ailments, I began to panic.
“Ron,” I said, “we need to go back. I’m having a heart attack.”
“No way, compadre. We’re hours away from the closest hospital. If you’re going to die, you’re going to die.”
“Come on! I’m not kidding!”
“It’s
