Agave dreaming. Ch.1
To my fellow mezcal enthusiasts:
I have been postponing writing these memories for three years now. Apparently, the best time to do it is precisely at the worst time. I’ve just had my first child and found that late-night shifts taking care of her are full of Instagram doom-scrolling and Reddit rabbit hole hunting. Between the quiet hum of the white noise and the exhaustion, free late-night hours have just opened up. If you guys do the math, she is two now. It’s funny how a toddler’s sleep schedule can finally grant a man the silence needed to look back at his own life.
I’ve partnered with one of my best friends and we have planted, so far, 54 acres of Agave Espadín. For now, I will try to keep our identities undisclosed; Mexico can be a dangerous place, particularly Michoacán. So far, this is our story.
Chapter 1: From Paper to Plant
2021 had just started. At the same time the COVID-19 Omicron variant was booming, tequila was too. All over the Mexican news, people were excited about how tequila was about to overcome whiskey consumption in the U.S. This seems pretty plausible now, but decades ago, tequila wasn’t #1, nor #3—not even in Mexico! People saw tequila as a low-quality, low-price spirit because that is exactly what it was. Awful Añejos were everywhere; the go-to flavors back then were woody reflux and dry, dry tannins. Or both! (Thank you, Don Julio and Siete Leguas, for offering quality Tequila Joven before we even knew we wanted it).
A lot of us Mexicans migrated, or rather, matured from tequila to mezcal. That’s what we expected to happen in the U.S. also—or at least, that’s what I hope. I, along with hundreds, maybe thousands of entrepreneurs, landowners, farmers, and distillers, are hoping for the same. One big problem: there’s too many of us. A gold rush in a land where the gold takes at least seven years to grow. We are all betting on a future that is still maturing under the sun. But that’s for another chapter.
With this in mind, I called my former roommate, one of mezcal's early adopters and a lover of funky tastes. He used to bring to our college apartment some underground Cupreata mezcal paired with some of the stinkiest and most delicious aged Cotija cheese you will ever find. The smell was so intense we kept the aged and ultra-dry cheese inside a plastic bag, inside a Tupperware, outside on our balcony. That balcony was our first tasting room, and that stinky cheese was our initiation rite. That pungent aroma and the smoke of the Cupreata became the soundtrack of our early twenties.
So I called him: "Hey man, let’s get into the mezcal business."
He just said to me: "I’m already starting. We need the plants in the ground before the first rains of the year (late May). I’m flying to Oaxaca this weekend to try to get some plants. Join me."
This was February. The clock was already ticking, and the soil was waiting.
I will upload the next chapter sometime next week. Thank you for reading.