How to make Tequila...

Things I Learned While on Vacation in Mexico...

How to Make Tequila

First you find a Blue Agave Plant...

Then, pull off the leaves leaving the "pineapple"...

Cure the "pineapples" in a stone pit heated by burnt wood to add flavor...

Mash the "pineapples" by a milling stone powered by a donkey...

and drain the liquid into a pit dug into the ground...

Ferment in containers that smell incredibly bad and then distill several times, the first time to get rid of toxic heavy metals...

Age in oak barrels and then have this incredibly funny and personable son of the owner sell you 500 ml bottles of Tequila Reposado for $60 US.

It is imnportant to taste tequila in a particular way....

First...

Take about 1/2 ounce of Tequila and drink it down.

Second...

Inhale through the nose and then exhale through the mouth.

Third...

Pay attention to what you are tasting.

You should NOT experience a burn.  You should note the oaken flavors of the barrels in which the tequila was aged.  You should notice the quality of the base liquor.  Oh... and there definitely should NOT be a worm in your tequila!

Mescal is technically the distillate of any of the agave species, tequila included.  Tequila, however, is differentiated by the fact that it is from the blue agave plant and is aged in oak barrels.  Over the years, mescal has been identified with the "hooch" made around Oaxacal and is the Mexican version of "corn likker".  It is a strong and harsh liquor.

Eventually, around 1950, a certain Jacobo Lozano Paez hit upon the idea of adding a worm to the mescal bottle as a marketing gimmick.  It was almost as if he said... "Let's see if we can get the (stupid) macho gringos to eat this worm with our hard liquor, the stuff tastes like paint remover anyway!"  The worm is actually the larva of the agave worm butterfly that burrows into the "pineapple" and gets cooked up in all forms of mescal, tequila included.

If you need to know, the agave worm should be light pink, blanched from an original coral color.  If it is white, it is actually a different larva from the worms that afflict the agave leaves.  Some say the white worm isn't as tasty as the coral one.