Alvin Starkman, M.A., J.D.
At minimum three times a month, in the course of leading a mezcal educational tour I’m asked by clients why, right now, is there a mezcal boom, and how and when did the public’s fascination with the agave spirit begin. Now my answers to the questions will certainly raise eyebrows from those with a different take on the matter, but that being stated, here goes, from someone who has been trying to figure it all out over the past 20 years or so.
Back in Oaxaca’s early era of modern mezcal bars some two decades ago, there was only one mezcalería, In Situ, owned by mezcal experts Ulises Torrentera and Sandra Ortiz Brena. It was so new and unheard of, and with a shoestring budget, that it had to open in a little corner of another bar. Of course, there existed La Casa del Mezcal and La Farola, but they were long-established bars catering to a different clientele, mainly locals, not particularly interested in sampling the plethora of varietals we currently encounter, but rather, just drinking. And at that time there were almost no English publications, nor interest in the spirit outside of Mexico.
Skip ahead to the present day and it’s difficult to keep up with the exponential growth in the number of Oaxaca city mezcalerías, books on the topic, articles about mezcal (I’ve now penned about 80 plus a couple of books), generalist tour guides and tour non-guides offering to teach visitors to Oaxaca about mezcal, and websites and facebook pages claiming to both know it all and question it all. Me, I call myself an “authority in training” and no more, because there’s so much out there to learn, both in the state of Oaxaca and elsewhere in the country; I would need another lifetime to learn it all, and then I would still only be scratching the proverbial surface. The point is, there is now a tremendous amount of literature online about mezcal.
Depending on the reader’s age, you, your parents and/or your grandparents should recall back in the day coming across the “mezcal with the worm,” as a cheap, fast and effective way to get drunk at college, frat parties, and just hanging out with school buddies and perhaps lovers. Yes, occasionally one might come across a reposado or añejo, but the quality was generally rather suspect regardless of which expression one was imbibing. One brand however, Encantado, tried to change the trajectory of the spirit, but fell on its face, I believe for political reasons. Texan Douglas French had been an employee of Encantado around the mid 1990s, so when the brand faltered, he opened his own distillery, and registered the company Scorpion Mezcal; a scorpion in every bottle. He used the moniker “worms are for wimps.” Without any real political affiliation to speak of, Douglas was able to break into the American market with a decent product despite having the kitschy connotation to it, because Encantado was indeed a drinkable mezcal; and that’s how Douglas initially learned the trade. Scorpion Mezcal succeeded where Encantado did not.
But it was American artist Ron Cooper, a visionary hailing from New Mexico, who perceived the unbridled potential of mezcal. Part of his brilliance was using the phrase “single village” when describing his range of mezcal products, a take off on single malt scotch, the popularity of which had begun to dramatically rise. He formed the company Del Maguey, promoting mezcal without the worm and not oak barrel aged. His take at it was to explain the plethora of nuances that can be derived from using different species and sub-species of agave. The succulent is grown in different microclimates (single villages, each with different water sources and airborne yeasts) and converted into the distillate by skilled craftspeople locally known as palenqueros, each with their own subtle differences in how they produced the spirit. They employed different tools of the trade and somewhat different means of production. Hence in or around 1995 we began to see village names on bottles, as well as local species-specific names such as tobalá, tobasiche, mexicano, tepeztate, etc., words essentially not previously in the vocabularies of agave distillate aficionados. Until then, it was just plain mezcal, made from agave in a generic sense. Back in the pre-Encantado day, it was not uncommon for producers to harvest cultivated agave, mainly espadín, but mix in whatever other types of agave they could forage, just calling it all mezcal, with no further delineation aside from having “the worm” or being reposado or añejo.
Ron Cooper shunned the worm, and steered away from oak barrel aging. He began paying his distillers under contract a wage which had never been contemplated by them in their wildest dreams. And as a result he had to demand a pretty penny from his retailers (and distributors). According to Ron, it wasn’t until a decade after he shipped his first pallet, that he began to make money.
Cooper was the catalyst for the present mezcal boom. It became clear that the agave spirit had become not only accepted, but even highly sought after by both spirits enthusiasts and those who until then had been shying away from alcohol with a relatively high ABV (alcohol by volume).
Other entrepreneurs began to take note, and appreciate the Del Maguey business model. In due course we found Alipus, Pierde Almas, El Jolgorio, Vago, and several other brands vying for a market share. Any of these brand owners could have been the first off the block, but they weren’t. Independent invention occurs when the environment is ripe for it. And by the mid-90s it was ripe for what was to come.
Who could possibly afford to spend $100 - $300 American dollars for less than a full liter of mezcal (i.e. only 750 ml)? The Western World began its own economic boom, with the .com/internet generation in full force, and umpteen ways to dramatically increase income, much more so than envisioned by our parents and grandparents. Families in the middle classes began to churn out offspring with much more significant financial resources than was previously the case. Back in the 60s and 70s it was parents who would buy Birkenstocks and Laura Ashley dresses for their kids. Now, these same offspring began to have funds to spend on vacations, bigger homes, fancy restaurants, and yes, now alcohol as well.
At the same time, multinational corporations began to buy successful brands of now-high-quality mezcal to which these consumers had begun to flock. They include Bacardi, Pernod Ricard, Constellation Brands, Diageo, and the list goes on. These companies have a global reach. And so mezcal has been able to be marketed in the most far off reaches of the world, such as the UK, Australia, Yukon Territories, South America, China and Southeast Asia, etc. For example, Diageo, which now owns Pierde Almas mezcal, has a diverse portfolio of over 200 brands sold in nearly 180 countries! And Pernod Ricard, owner of Del Maguey, operates in more than 160 countries, in Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia and Pacific, and of course The Americas. Prior to its takeover by Pernod Ricard, Del Maguey simply did not have the financial and other resources to reach such relatively remote areas of the globe. This all means that mezcal quickly became available in regions never before contemplated, to a worldwide market, with tens of millions more prospective consumers who little by little became aware of the spirit.
Celebrities began starting up their own brands of mezcal, following in the footsteps of George Clooney’s Casamigos tequila brand. And even Casamigos is now in the mezcal business. Perhaps the best-known celebrities to begin a mezcal brand have been Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad fame, who started Dos Hombres mezcal, 10% of which has been sold to Constellation Brands. And so we find literally millions of Breaking Bad fans who had never even heard of mezcal beginning to buy a bottle because of their knowledge of Cranston and Paul, and their love of the TV series. Some would come to love the Dos Hombres agave distillate. Others would be turned off by the product and thus mezcal, while others’ curiosity would be piqued and they would begin to explore other brands yielding different nuances.
One might shun the large corporations now in the industry, and similarly celebrity incursion, but with big bucks at their backs, they have been able to do an admirable job promoting the spirit, far and wide, with the Cranstons and the Pauls, and the conglomerates, spending whatever financial resources it has taken, to put mezcal front and center on peoples’ minds, and whetting their palates.
Human nature dictates showing off one’s knowledge of the latest craze. Hence, there have been a multitude of explosions, everywhere, regarding drinking something from Mexico, other than tequila. Tequila of course retains its pre-eminent place in the Mexican distillate marketplace. But mezcal is making a run at providing competition, even to the extent that tequila producers, also with significant funds behind them, are now getting into the mezcal business, this too helping to spread the good word about its competitor agave distillate.
Several years ago, when a relatively new industrial brand of mezcal hit the market, one of its employees contacted me. The brand wanted to purchase a photo I had taken, seemingly of good quality, at least in the eyes of that brand. The photo was of a palenquero working a donkey crushing the sweet baked agave, a mid stage in the mezcal-making process. I knew that the brand didn’t make mezcal in a traditional manner, so I refused to sell the photograph. The point is that big commercial industrial brands see the value in promoting tradition, even if not their own.
The hand-crafted nature of traditionally made mezcal is attractive to prospective newbees to the spirit. As is the fact that no two batches are the same, industry aspects of sustainability, and one’s ability to travel to rural Oaxaca (and other states) to actually see all stages of production being performed. It’s very different from visiting tequila factories, or wineries no matter how small, craft breweries also employing sophisticated machinery, gin and whiskey operations, etc., etc., etc.
It's big business these days. Alcohol distributors already flogging their wares extensively now have something else to promote. And in fact, those distributors without a brand of agave distillate other than tequila in the fold, are anxious to represent brands they believe will fatten their bank accounts and satisfy shareholders.
And then there are the web pages, some of which make money through ads, and of course some of which are wholly altruistic and want to help communities and their members who both grow and process agave. Just write the word mezcal or agave anywhere online, and you’ll be inundated with ads. It’s not for me to opine if the owner of any particular online site is motivated by profit, altruism, or a combination of the two. However the sites which do come to mind which seem to be popular include mezcalreviews.com, agave road trip and S.A.C.R.E.D, mezcalistas, and the umpteen facebook mezcal and agave sites such as Smoked Agave, Mezcal Society, and region-specific sites. This as well contributes to mezcal’s rising star.
In conclusion, in my opinion the mezcal boom dates to the mid 1990s and no earlier. Beginning at that time, there was a confluence of factors which lead to the public’s fascination with mezcal, which continues today, and hopefully, will progress well into the future, despite human nature’s tendency to be fleeting and unpredictable. ¡Salud!
Alvin Starkman operates Mezcal Educational Tours of Oaxaca (www.mezcaleducationaltours.com). Alvin was the first person authorized by the Mexican government to lead excursions into Oaxaca’s hinterland to teach about all aspects of the agave distillate through visiting small family owned and operated distilleries, known locally as palenques.
