Nectar Corridor

Episode 10

What Makes a Good Mezcal?

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Hello and welcome back to The Nectar Corridor, a podcast where we explore the incredible world of mezcal, the most emblematic and diverse spirit of Mexico. I’m your host, Niki Nakazawa.

In this tenth and final episode of Season 1, we are going to consider a basic question that has a rather complex and nuanced answer: what makes a good mezcal?

First, we speak with Cynthia Villalobos from Aventureros del Mezcal about her collaborations with mezcal producers and how she came to be a recognized voice in the mezcal world.

Later, we speak with Jesús Espina Ortiz from Archivo Maguey, who discusses what it means to drink mezcal and how he created a unique tasting experience integrating a lot of his background as an industrial designer.

This podcast was originally recorded in Spanish. Our conversation with Cynthia is interpreted by Carmen Reyes.

Cynthia Villalobos:

My name is Cynthia Villalobos and I am a chemical engineer by trade. For the last 10 to 13 years, I’ve worked in the world of mezcal and although I’m based in Oaxaca, I work with producers all over Mexico.

I have always known about mezcal because I am Oaxacan, and it’s always been present in parties and in sad moments too. But in 2006, I was lucky enough to meet Graciela Ángeles, who is now the manager of the Real Minero company. We became good friends and she wanted to professionalize the company. She wanted to turn this family business into something more formal. I had done cost analyses for some companies, so I started doing it for her mezcal business.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Back in 2006, when Cynthia and Graciela began working together, mezcal was a largely overlooked industry with a greatly undervalued product.

Cynthia Villalobos:

No one wanted it. I remember that people thought it tasted too strong, and that it felt like a cheap drink. They wanted nothing to do with it. Through doing cost analyses for producers, we noticed that a lot of them were losing money.

So I decided to help mezcaleros with their cost analysis and ended up working in Michoacán, Mexico City, Guanajuato, Puebla, Guerrero, and obviously Oaxaca. And it turned out that every single producer was losing money. They would lose 50 pesos here and 80 pesos there, and make no profit whatsoever. So I realized that all the costs for the production of mezcal were not properly taken into account, and that producers were just following the market.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Cynthia explained to me that the drastically low price per liter of mezcal was caused by two main factors.

Cynthia Villalobos:

First off, many people would find and extract wild magueys for production, which meant that they weren’t looking at how long each plant had taken to grow, or how many to leave planted in order to reforest the area.

And the second reason is that only the market was being served, which meant that a lot of costs were not taken into account. For example, those of us who work with producers know that normally it’s a family business, and everyone from the youngest son to the wife plays a part in it. We see it a lot in Miahuatlán – they don't use day laborers to cover the mezcal oven. Instead they use the “tequio.” We're talking 15 people who help to cover the oven and if they weren't there, someone would have to pay for that work.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

The word “tequio” refers to an explicit practice of mutual aid or collective work where members of a community contribute with their labor, materials, or know-how to projects that benefit the common good.

Cynthia Villalobos:

In Oaxaca it is very common, and it basically means “mutual help.” In other words, if I have an upcoming event, I’ll ask my community for help. So let’s assume I’m planning a party. The women from other families will help me kill the chickens, make the mole and essentially do everything food-wise. And then the men perform activities such as the cleaning of the property and uncovering the oven in the palenques. And then when it’s someone else’s turn to ask for help, you have to go and help them.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Cynthia has spent time in other parts of the country where producers work alone often because labor is more expensive. In addition, they might deal with the issue of organized crime, which also affects them when it comes to finding labor, because they must compete with the high prices offered by illicit activities to those same workers. I asked Cynthia to talk a bit about the challenges shared by mezcal producers throughout Mexico.

Cynthia Villalobos:

First off, there is a romanticization of mezcal. Those of us who have tried it and have been fascinated with it, see this mystical and beautiful part of mezcal. But we don't see all the work involved for the mezcal producers.

Another interesting problem is that we don’t really take into consideration the plant which is the foundation of production. So, if we do not consider that certain species can take five to seven years to grow, and others take 15 to 18 years. So that’s a big problem – we don’t appreciate all the effort that nature has gone through to keep these plants growing, and to take the time to replenish each species.

Another challenge lies in the marketing. Most producers are not prepared to market their mezcal properly. Many are not even fully aware of the basic permits, they don’t understand the process. And I don’t blame them – they are mezcaleros, not marketers. So that leads to an unfair playing field. Imagine that I am a person that is aware of all the permits and the process, I go ahead and buy and bargain and I generate a lot of income and you can see this reflected in costs.

For example, let’s say we have 200 pesos (which is around $10 dollars) and producers are earning 35 percent on the initial gross product. That’s 70 pesos. And then a middleman arrives and makes a 20 percent profit on the bottled product. But the final marketer is going to have a profit of between 50 and 60 percent of the value of the finished product. So we’re no longer talking about 70 pesos. We’re talking about profits of 150 to 200 pesos per bottle, which all goes to the marketer because they made the final product transaction. And the one who made the magic of mezcal come true only keeps 70 pesos. And that's in a good case-scenario.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

This path led Cynthia to found, along with other members, the Aventureros de Mezcal Association, approximately eight years ago. The project had been a long time in the making. Cynthia had always wanted to work on a social and cultural project, and for her mezcal just clicked.

Cynthia Villalobos:

We wanted to give visibility to the producers. We wanted to buy the product – a product that people cannot find in the supermarket or in a convenience store – and take it to the customer’s front door. It was like an online subscription, where you could receive a bottle of mezcal, from the producer directly to your home. About 10 years ago, we earned the trust of the producers because we made it a point to, from a market perspective, overpay them. In reality, this meant that they were paid fairly. So we bought mezcal from them at a certain price and we told them that they couldn't sell the mezcal below that price because they were going to lose. So we started to work with the producers and a lot of them started acquiring new clients, who paid them a fair price and this is how we started the marketing process. Then we noticed all the obstacles that we had to overcome in order to make this product legal. We do the cost analysis, the marketing but now we also help them with the legal process and we help producers so they can have their own brand.

It is a difficult and time-consuming job because a producer can make a delicious mezcal but doesn’t know anything about marketing. We make producers understand that they really have to fight out there with these huge, transnational companies that put a lot of money into the development of a label, marketing and other things. We’ve managed to export products from several producers to other countries. We give advice to companies and producers, we provide cost analysis and we try to accommodate them with marketers who have the same vision as us.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

One of the important efforts that Cynthia has focused on is reforestation and conservation.

Cynthia Villalobos:

There have been many experiments throughout the years. The idea has always been to make people aware of the conservation of species, specifically for those that exist in the area. In other words, if there is no espadín there, then espadín is not planted.

Then many people take seeds from here in Oaxaca and plant them in Puebla, or in Michoacán, or in San Luis Potosí. It could be that the plant does grow but there is a reason why certain species don’t exist in certain areas, that is why we have ecological boundaries, what grows in the south doesn’t grow in the north and doing these practices have a negative impact on the environment. We started to focus on the conservation of wild agaves but a lot of producers are very resistant because it is a lot of work, the planting, the care, the cultural aspect.

Paying people to reforest manually would be ok, but if you don't pay producers fairly for their mezcal, how can they pay someone else to take on reforestation efforts? It is a really complicated topic that without income it gets even more complicated.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Then there’s the issue of fair payment, which as Cynthia defines it, is one that generates at least 35 percent profit for mezcal producers, once all other expenses are covered.

Cythia Villalobos:

From the labor of the lady who makes the tortillas, the beers and cigarettes that are bought for the workers, the donkey feed and even considering the depreciation of the palenque. It still surprises me after so many years that very few people consider all of these things.

Very few people really pay for the product that their maestro mezcalero is giving them, and in turn, the mescalero doesn’t know if he’s making a profit. So if we don't have a cost structure, it's very difficult to know that we're on the right path.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

The Mezcal Regulatory Council or the CRM attempted to create a table where the price per liter of a mezcal was established through an average price per degree of alcohol. So, depending on the maguey, for example in the case of espadín, the price per liter, per degree, was 4 pesos. So if an espadín mezcal was 40 proof, you had to multiply 4 pesos by 40 proof, which resulted in a price of $160 pesos per liter.

I asked Cynthia if, according to her vision, this system might help to define pricing. But she doesn’t think this is the best way forward, given the diversity of situations that producers experience. In the end, this table raised greater inequality for those producers who paid more for agave or, for example, generated wide differences between those who used or did not use agrochemicals.

Cynthia tells me that they began to work with a civil engineer in the treatment of “vinazas” and were trying to raise awareness about how to do it more efficiently and with less impact for the producer. The term “vinazas” refers to the chemical waste from the distillation of mezcal. I asked Cynthia what advice she has to reduce their impact.

Cynthia Villalobos:

One of the bad practices is that chemicals are thrown out hot. Usually when you throw something hot into a water bed, you end up killing part of the flora and fauna that lives there.

The second thing is that it contains very acidic and very aggressive compounds that affect the soil microbiota and makes it sterile. We chemists call it “chemical oxygen demand.” That is, if you put it in a body of water, it will absorb all the oxygen that is there. So, they are basically toxic compounds. There are many studies to treat these vinazas, but they are all focused on industrialization and on very large quantities. So what we recommend is to neutralize them in a tank with ash or lime, depending on the PH of each vinaza. And once it’s neutralized and cold, you can use it as fertilizer to water your crops.

Another practice we’ve tried to spread is reusing water. There are some projects that capture rainwater and reuse it. And we also teach producers that the amount of firewood that is used is truly brutal. There’s a lot of illegal extraction and trade of firewood. So we talk about the idea of responsible pruning, which means that every year, they dedicate part of their time to pruning the land or the trees that are within the community. This way they are able to collect firewood in a much safer and more sustainable manner.

Unfortunately, there are many practices that they don’t carry out consistently. Because in the end, what they’re looking for is to sell their mezcal. Many times they’re not thinking about the environment.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Cynthia also says that having an in-depth understanding of the chemical processes during the production of mezcal can be very useful for producers.

Cynthia Villalobos:

The main headaches of the producers are methanol, higher alcohols, furfural. So, when they don't understand where these types of compounds come from, they keep replicating practices that aren't necessarily bad, but that don't meet the physical-chemical parameters that you need to legally sell.

Methanol, for example, can generate in greater quantities by using poorly cut plants or overcooking the maguey. And this methanol can’t be removed later during the process. There was a widespread myth that the methanol was in the “puntas,” the first distillation of mezcal. But it’s actually in the “colas,” the final distillation. Examples like this highlight the importance of spreading chemical knowledge to the producers so that they can have better profits and practices. Although we love traditional mezcal, if it doesn't meet a standard, then it can't always be marketed properly.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

I asked Cynthia to explain what the CRM deemed to be the chemical parameters of a good mezcal.

Cynthia Villalobos:

Basically it has to meet an alcohol content of 35 percent to 55 percent. The idea that we call a 35 percent drink a “mezcal” seems sacrilegious to me, but the norm allows 35 to 55 percent. Each bottle can hold up to 10 grams per liter of dry extract, which is basically sediment. You can have higher alcohols from 100 to 500 milligrams per 100 milliliters. The minimum limit for methanol is 30 milligrams, while the maximum is 300.

But the issue is that the standards with which the Official Mexican Standard for Mezcal was made are copied from other standards. So we can’t compare fruit distillates, rums, whiskeys and others when the raw material is completely different. We’re talking about grains, cereals and sugar cane. And the maguey behaves in a totally different way. The maguey has compounds that favor the production of methanol due to the chemistry from the plant.

When there is a lower alcoholic degree, there are also less problems with passing physical-chemical parameters, because you can make an adjustment with water. So this makes it much easier to pass these parameters. And a traditional mezcal is going to be approximately 48 percent to 52 percent. It’s a little harder to pass these parameters if you have a slightly higher-grade mezcal typically made by regional or traditional producers.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

I then asked Cynthia one of the most complex and important questions in the world of mezcal: What constitutes a good mezcal for her, and what parameters must be taken into account?

Cynthia Villalobos:

When talking about mezcal, it’s difficult to think of something standardized. It will depend on the flavor of the plant, the region and the season. We can’t think of mezcal from Miahuatlán as being the same as those from Sola de Vega or Yautepec. In other words, the variety of mezcal flavors and aromas, even when made from the same species, is really impressive. So the product itself cannot be standardized.

Second, we need to know what's going on with production methods and practices. An artisanal distilled beverage is not the same as an ancestral one. One that is crushed by hand isn’t the same as one fermented in a plastic drum.

Another thing that we have to take into account is waste management. Most of the producers don’t handle their waste responsibly. That’s just a reality. It could be because they’re uninformed, or they don’t have the resources, or simply because they don’t think it’s toxic or harmful to the environment. So for me, that would be another characteristic to consider if it is a good mezcal or not.

And the management and recovery practices of the ecosystem. In other words, of the plants that someone extracts, how many do they replant and in what way do they do so? Because it is not just sowing for the sake of it, but it is really that each individual plant has a function within the ecosystem. That is something we do not understand.

And finally, the cost and the payment. Do I take into account the lady who is there, staying up late with her husband, the distilling, the children who are there, the wear of the clay pots, the wear of the infrastructure?

Those points for me make a good mezcal. And someone once told me “Well, with your whole speech, you’re making mezcal prohibitive.” But honestly, I think it should be prohibitive because it's not a basic consumer good, it's alcohol. That’s how I see it. So do you want to have a good mezcal? Well, pay for a good mezcal. That's our vision.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

There are some tips that Cynthia has for consumers to know what to look for when purchasing a good mezcal.

Cynthia Villalobos:

We offer tastings at Aventureros del Mezcal in Mexico City, and I always tell people that we have to know where the mezcal that we are drinking comes from. You have to know from the outset if it has the name of a producer, or if it's just the brand. The label should provide as much information as possible, including how it was produced? How many liters were distilled? What kind of maguey was used? How many years did it take for the species to grow? Was it wild or was it cultivated?

And also ask the brand ambassadors. They have an obligation to have all this information at hand. If I question an ambassador about their mezcal, then that information will reach the owner, the brand or the producer. So I think we should ask those kinds of questions ourselves.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Cynthia’s response reminded me a lot about my conversation with Lalo Ángeles in Ep. 3. He said, “Mezcal doesn’t look for you. You have to look for it. It is made by hardworking human hands, and people should make the effort to seek it out.”

It is our responsibility as drinkers of mezcal, to do our own research.

[BREAK]

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Chucho Ortiz is the creator of one of the most complete mezcal tasting experiences in Mexico. He has worked for years to refine and improve the experience, collecting data from the tastings along the way.

Our conversation with Chucho is interpreted by José Maria Dondé Rangel.

Chucho Ortiz:

My name is Jesús Espina but I go by Chucho Ortiz. I am a mezcal selector and distiller. And I have a project called Archivo Maguey here in Oaxaca. My family has been involved in the world of mezcal for many generations.

My grandfather grew up in the town of San Miguel Achiutla, which is part of the Tlaxiaco District in the Mixteca Region. It is a town with a lot of pre-Hispanic historical tradition, but it is also a fairly poor area. He married a woman – my grandmother – in a nearby town. After that, he began a project called “Gusano de oro,” which means “Gold Worm.” And he would buy mezcal from local producers from the Mixteca region and start marketing them. This is really similar to what I do now actually.

And later on, he built a palenque. But he wasn’t a maestro mezcalero. He wanted to have more control over his production, so he would have all the work happen on his palenque and then he would go out and sell the mezcal.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Chucho tells me that what really stood out about his grandfather’s mezcal selections was that they were all from the Mixteca region.

Chucho Ortiz:

Matatlán, which is here in the State of Oaxaca, is the production center of mezcal worldwide. And the first mezcal boom in the region was during the 1950s and 60s. You could find mezcal from Matatlán in all the corners of Oaxaca. And the smell of cooked maguey, that flavor that everybody recognized, was totally tied to Matatlán.

My grandfather didn’t like that because he has always been very proud of the Mixteca people, of our land, of who we are. And I inherited that pride from him. He would say, “I don’t sell mezcal from Matatlán. I sell mezcal Mixteco.” And so he bought from many Mixtec mezcaleros, before the denomination of origin and before the production of mezcal in the region was prohibited. He had an incredible collection of bottles that no longer exist.

And part of my own project comes from there. I inherited my dad’s taste for mezcal as well because he grew up surrounded by mezcal and mezcaleros. He learned so much from my grandfather and then passed on the knowledge to me and my brothers. And so I tell people that we do not come from three generations of mezcal producers. We actually come from generations of mezcal merchants.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Chucho studied design in Fine Arts in Mexico City. He integrated a bit of Oaxaca into every single project, from designing to packaging and label-making.

Chucho Ortiz:

I designed packaging for products like moles, sauces, chiles, honey and obviously mezcal. One of them was called Espina Roja, and that eventually became my first brand of mezcal, which my dad manages to this day.

We bought mezcal from producers with whom my father had been working for a long time, along with some new ones that we met in the Sierra. We bottled it and we sold it as a Oaxacan Mezcal Experience. We wanted to be genuine and share our history, our heritage and our roots. We would say, “This is mezcal and this is how you should drink it. This is how we know it and this is its history.” And people really liked it.

It felt like at that moment, we had discovered this beautiful familial cultural wealth. And so we began to use that in our favor. Beyond investing in advertising and packaging, we try to have a very good product and a quality selection.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

Chucho has a particular interest in what actually defines a good quality mezcal.

Chucho Ortiz:

With mezcal, there is no information relationship, as it exists in the subject of wines. Right now you can have a wine, for example a cabernet, and you base its quality on what experts have said about it for hundreds of years. And they have that knowledge of what a good wine is expected to taste like.

But, in Oaxaca we are seeing an organoleptic tragedy because it is increasingly difficult to know if what is being sold is accurate to what the label says it is, in terms of flavor. It could be that they are selling you a tepextate, but it no longer tastes like a genuine tepextate. And I am talking about real historic flavors. Those of us who have been in the world of mezcal for so many years, know what it tasted like.

To put it another way, it's like when they give you a banana and suddenly it doesn't taste like a banana, even if it looks like a banana and you cut it open and eat it like a banana. We already have that organoleptic memory configured throughout our lives, we know how a banana should taste. And we’re starting to see this more and more with genetic modification.

My mom, who is a cook, will send me to the market to buy a tomato and then she’ll taste it and say, “No, this is not good because it doesn’t taste like a tomato.” That is the quick explanation of what we saw happening. We didn’t realize that there was a lot of quote-unquote “imitation mezcal.”

[BREAK]

Niki Nakazawa VO:

I met Chucho in 2013 when he had just launched his Espina Roja brand. At that time, he was around 22 years old and still a student in Mexico City.

Chucho Ortiz:

Back then, there were several festivals like the Agave Fest and a lot of us in the mezcal scene would get together there. In doing a historical analysis of this boom, I think it started in 2008 more or less.

And it has a lot to do with La Logia de los Mezcólatras, with the project of Don Cornelio Pérez and Maestro Lalo Ángeles. There, they started bringing mezcal tasting experiences. And we were so surprised by the diversity and the experiences of each individual mezcalero. There were some from the Mixteca Region, some from the Sierra, from Oaxaca, Michoacán and Guerrero.

I wasn’t necessarily part of this wave of people who were surprised by this diversity. I already had mezcal knowledge, from working with my family and from living in Oaxaca. And I think that the person who taught my generation to be surprised by that diversity was Félix Monterrosa. He is an incredible visionary. And his mezcalería Cuish is one of the oldest that has this approach of showing the world the diversity of mezcal.

When I was around 18 years old, we used to go to Cuish to drink mezcal for 10 pesos, and tepextate cost 30 pesos. It was cheaper than beer. They were the same mezcals that now cost 150 to 200 pesos.

My first time there, I already knew about pichometl, papalometl, and things like that. In other words, I knew mezcal and I wasn’t looking for anything new. So at Cuish, I saw a list of mezcals made from all different species of maguey. There were mexicano, tobasiche, tobalá and all for 10 pesos. And I’m a very curious person, so I tried one. And then I tried another. And then another. And it was like a child tasting a lemon or a strawberry for the first time. It was such an eye-opening experience, and I always tell Félix that he taught my generation to embrace diversity.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

I studied abroad in Oaxaca in 2005 and Cuish was also where I started learning about mezcal when I came back to visit in subsequent years.

Chucho Ortiz:

I would go to tastings with Maestro Cornelio, and I remember being so captivated by the way he would analyze the processes. Coming from an education of processes, a little from my family's gastronomy and another from studying design, I unintentionally merged my love for Oaxaca and my love for design.

Then I began to really get into the topic of researching mezcal, and understanding how distillation, fermentation and the biological processes of the plant itself worked. And it led me to understand the wealth that we as Mexicans have in our hands. We have the possibility of obtaining a high quality product in a very easy way.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

With his family traditions, his new training and his experience with mezcal, Chucho began to design a methodology to taste mezcal.

Chucho Ortiz:

As a school project, I started developing a methodology to analyze mezcal at a sensory level. But I didn’t really know anything going into it. Taking into account that in the end, drinking mezcal is not for human survival. It's not like if you don't drink mezcal you're going to die. So most of the things that are designed in the world are made for pure enjoyment. For example, sitting in a comfortable and ergonomic chair is a matter of pleasure. Or being in a nice house or driving a car, all those kinds of things are very human acts that are truly pleasurable.

The human is one of the few animals that seeks pleasure for ourselves. So I thought that if drinking mezcal doesn't depend on life or death, why don't we make more of an effort to enjoy it? Just as we make an effort to better design a chair or better design the lighting of a place. So, through design methodologies like this, usability, sensoriality, etc., I started to generate these methodologies that I really finished designing about four years ago. And I wasn’t even doing it for the grade, but in the end I got to know incredible characters that I consider my teachers.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

As we have already heard in previous episodes, there are often teachers and mentors involved in inspiring the path of new generations. Chucho tells me who they were for him.

Chucho Espina:

The person who moved me the most towards the path that I’m currently on is Daniel Abdelmassih. The two of us got together and started doing a lot of sessions to generate these processes. Our goal was for people to enjoy the product more. If we achieve that, people will understand the product more, and as a consequence they will respect it more.

I feel like we live in a time where the consumer thinks more about what they consume. Being inquisitive and having access to information makes it easier to know where everything you are consuming comes from. Large brands of mezcal face great challenges to improving their quality, because now more than ever, there are consumers asking questions.

And projects like Mezcaloteca, for example, were among the first that began to put such explicit information on their labels. One big rule that I have regarding my mezcals is that I cannot make mezcal if the maguey is not planted in this region. This is one way to help ensure that we are maintaining a healthy ecosystem.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

There were two key moments that marked Chucho’s path to designing these tasting experiences.

Chucho Ortiz:

The first moment that marked me at a level of personal introspection, was once when I was on my way to Mexico City. It was September and this is when the Agave potatorum begins to bloom. And the potatorum has a beautiful zigzag-type quiote. All magueys are beautiful when they flower, but the potatorum has this very special shape. And I remember looking at it back then and thinking about how, once again, drinking mezcal is an act of pleasure. Seeing a work of art is an act of pleasure. And seeing a flower like that potatorum was an act of pleasure as well.

So at that moment I realized, there's no problem if the mezcal runs out, as long as we continue to see those flowers. In the end, there is no problem, if we run out of mezcal, because there will always be another one. There will always be another maguey, and there won’t be a problem if we stop drinking mezcal.

And that's the kind of thing I feel that sometimes brands don't do, and it's the kind of thing that moves me to continue working. Ask yourself, “Why do you hold on to having tepextate in your collection when there is no tepextate, there is no tobalá, there is no Sierra Negra, there are no such agaves?”

And that has also led to my selections becoming smaller, not because they are exclusive, but because you don't have to force the agave to grow or to exist. Just enjoy every time you have the opportunity to drink a mezcal.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

The second moment of realization for Chucho was during a trip with his wife and daughters.

Chucho Ortiz:

One of my daughters, Valentina, asked me why I liked mezcal so much and I told her the same thing that I told you – about how my family passed this tradition down from generation to generation. And then she asked me, “What does mezcal taste like?” So I asked her, “Well, what does an apple taste like?” And I kept thinking about that. It motivates me to know that if I continue to do this work, then I will be able to show my daughters what real mezcal tastes like.

Like I said before, it is increasingly difficult to find the authenticity of flavors. I am seeing more and more brands in Oaxaca that claim to produce mezcal, but what they are producing is agave alcohol. Because mezcal, at the end of the day, is a heritage drink – it preserves the flavors of the land, of the tradition, of the techniques. And that drink is no longer viable if, for example, you take potatorum from Puebla and make mezcal with it here in Oaxaca. Yes, you're producing alcohol, and you're doing it with the plant you mentioned, but it no longer tastes like what a tobalá from Sola de Vega should taste like. Those are the things that move me to do what I do.

Niki Nakazawa VO:

As we heard, Chucho designed a unique mezcal tasting experience by integrating his cultural and family knowledge, the teachings of his mentors and his design studies. I went through this whole experience with him. Our conversation is recorded in Spanish, and if you're interested in hearing it, check out El corredor del néctar wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks so much to Cynthia and Chucho for speaking to us. And to our voice actors, Carmen and José Maria, who is also the founder of Panorama Mezcal and Beverage Director at Claro Restaurant in Brooklyn.

¡Saludos desde las tierras del mezcal y hasta la próxima!

The Nectar Corridor is part of Whetstone Radio Collective.

Thank you to The Nectar Corridor team, producer Jackie Noack, associate producer Rosina Castillo, editors Andres Jimenez and Max Kotelchuck and researcher Olivia Mayeda.

English translations by Jackie Noack, with editorial support from Carlynn Crosby and Emily Vizzo. Cover art by Alex Bowman. Thank you to Las Norteñitas de Oro for the use of our theme song, “Jinetes en el cielo.”

I’d also like to thank Whetstone founder Stephen Satterfield, Whetstone Radio Collective Head of Podcasts Celine Glasier, sound engineer Max Kotelchuck, associate producer Quentin Lebeau, production assistant Amalissa Uytingco and sound intern Simon Lavender.

You can learn more about this podcast at whetstone radio.com, Instagram and Twitter at @whetstoneradio and subscribe to our YouTube channel Whetstone Radio Collective for more video podcast content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone Media at whetstonemedia.com.

The Nectar Corridor is originally produced and recorded in Spanish. If you would like to listen to the original interview, you can search for El corredor del néctar wherever you get your podcasts.