 |
|
|
 Travel & Outdoors | October 2005 
Tequila's Sun Rises
 Elana Ashanti Jefferson - Denver Post
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico - Seated at a table swathed in bright woven fabric, facing a tiled bar where tourists ogle a vat of homemade rattlesnake tequila brewed from an Indian recipe once thought to cure arthritis and kidney problems, Armando Delgado could be mistaken for an old borracho were it not for his grandfatherly smile and the pen tucked into the pocket of his pastel golf shirt.
Delgado is the tequilero at Pancho's Restaurant & Tequila Bar, a hangout founded by American cocktail connoisseurs who have amassed some 500 types of tequila and mescal. Pancho's once boasted the world's largest tequila selection, before similar bars sprouted up in the United States.
Delgado sits in front of three bottles containing clear, gold and amber liquids. The tequilas - one blanco, one reposado and one anejo - are arranged near a green plastic gas can and smoothed wood platter where fresh-cut limes flank a mound of salt and four squat glasses.
Mexico embraces travelers interested in learning to negotiate its national drink - tequila. While the American love affair with the potent nectar of blue agaves began about a century ago, the latest notch on tequila's bedpost comes from this country's culinary elite.
Tequila-based cocktails such as tamarind, ginger and prickly pear margaritas - served in sleek barware instead of bulbous beach glasses - are becoming staples at trendy restaurants and nightspots. And that means Mexico's tequila tourism is as likely to lure travelers into a tasting at a restaurant in a largely English-speaking resort town like Cabo San Lucas as it is to reveal tequila's cultural legacy via tours of Mexico's famous distilleries.
"Tequila is truly the 'essence of Mexico' reflecting its people's warmth, strength, and passion," writes John Bragg, Pancho's owner and original tequilero, in one of his many essays on the subject. "Tequila is not for the fainthearted, but is well-suited for (people) who are enraptured by the gusto of drinking, eating and living."
Bragg's protégé, Armando Delgado, insists that anyone who buys Pancho's $45 tequila tasting have something to eat before the one-hour liquid tour. He begins the "Master of Tequilas" course by talking about the mural of Jalisco on the restaurant wall. Dotted with small, prickly, blue plants and cultural icons like mariachi singers and Spanish colonial churches, the mural indicates the dominant tequila production areas within Jalisco, Mexico's primary tequila-producing state. There, Delgado says, tourists can visit distilleries in and around the town of Tequila, which sits in the shadow of the Tequila volcano. "All of those names on that map are regions with tequilas," he says.
Mature blue agaves are as tall as he his, the tequilero continues. Often confused with cactus, blue agaves are native to Mexico and grow wild, though only some of them are suitable for tequila.
The Aztecs and their descendants once used a fermented beverage from agaves called pulque for medicinal and ritualistic purposes. But it was the arrival of the Spaniards that sparked the booming tequila and mescal industry in Mexico, which produces about 210 million liters a year, according to Newsweek. And Latin American scholar Ron Mader writes that more than a third of that tequila ends up in the United States.
As the Mexican music streaming into Pancho's becomes a wee bit louder, Delgado places his hand on the plastic gas can on the table in front of him. "The green (agave) is mainly used to make the beverage we call mescal," he says.
Pancho's distills its own tequila and mescal, serving the latter, a more primitive drink than tequila, from a gas can to underscore its fiery might.
"It's like drinking gasoline," Delgado says with a smile. A native of Acapulco, this tequilero had his first brush with the American tequila romance as a boy when he sold Chiclets to tourists outside nightclubs in his hometown.
Travelers who prefer to venture away from Mexico's beach towns and into the country's heartland can find numerous tequila tours. In Mazatlan, for instance, Vista Tours offers a five-hour trip to "La Vinata," the only distillery in the state of Sinaloa. The family-friendly Vallarta Adventures out of Puerto Vallarta offers a full-day tour of Tequila and Guadalajara, an area that fostered the original mariachi and boasts breathtaking 16th century architecture. And the National Chamber of Commerce of Guadalajara operates the Tequila Express, a one-day train trip that includes a walk through the Tequila Museum and two distillery tours. Tickets are available through several cultural agencies in Guadalajara, as well as through Mexico's Ticketmaster system.
The most enriching tequila research most certainly happens right in the town of Tequila, where companies like Sauza, Don Julio and Jose Cuervo, which has been making tequila there since the late 17oos, offer tours of their distilleries complete with a peak at the blue agaves and tequila tastings.
"They go all out," says Jose Lara, owner of the Denver tequila bar and restaurant Aztec Sol. Born in Guadalajara, Lara has family members who still work in the agave fields. He's also buying his own small tequila distillery.
"They feed you, and they have a bunch of recipes for dishes made with tequila," Lara says of the distillery tours popular among his relatives. "For someone who's into tequila, it's great."
Any attempt to understand tequila is also likely to debunk a few popular myths. Most tequilas, for instance, are never bottled with worms. Worms are more common in mescal, and those are edible.
Another myth is that you get what you pay for. Certainly true when it comes to designer shoes but not necessarily the case with tequila. In Mexico, the country's top-rated brands generally sell for $20 to $30 a bottle.
Back at Pancho's, Delgado discusses pictures of tended agave fields and the "jimadores" who chop away the plant's tough leaves to reveal its 100- to 150-pound, bulb-shaped heart. "The Indians used to dance on the top of the bulbs like grapes," he says.
Then he talks about the way huge, heated rooms once served as distillery ovens before autoclaves became the dominant way to harvest the blue agave's rich sugars. The sugars ferment for several days to produce silver, or blanco, tequila, and age for anywhere from a few months to more than a year to make the reposado (rested) and añejo (aged) tequilas. The latter is often preferred by longtime tequila drinkers like Delgado, but preferences generally boil down to each person's taste, he says.
Not that this tequilero sits around shooting back glasses of the stuff like an Old West gunslinger downing a bottle of whiskey. Those in the know sip and savor tequila. They never shoot it and rarely mix it.
Delgado wraps up by pouring each of the three types of tequila on the table, along with Pancho's own brand of mescal. Here the class dissolves into a midday social as tequila novices sip the selections and the tequilero turns a tangent into an entire conversation about life and changes in Cabo San Lucas.
At the end of the hour, Delgado's pupils leave the restaurant with red-trimmed certificates indicating each "completed the full course of requirements, which includes the consumption of large amounts of tequila." Their "Masters of Tequila" in hand, the tourists head back to hotels and villas to partake in another of Mexico's grand traditions - the siesta.
Staff writer Elana Ashanti Jefferson can be reached at ejefferson@denverpost.com. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us