Originally posted by Ack-Ack
By Mexican law, all tequila has to be 100% agave, blue agave to be exact. In case you guys didn't know either, tequila is the same thing as Mezcal, both are made from agave plants.
Close, but no cigar.
There are two basic types of tequila, 100% blue agave (
cien por ciento de agave) tequila and mixto. The 100% blue agave tequilas are distilled entirely from the fermented juice of the agave. All 100% agave tequilas have to be distilled and bottled in Mexico. If the bottle does not say 100% blue agave, the tequila is mixto and may have been distilled from as little as 60% agave juice with other sugars (the term 'mixto', however, rarely appears on bottle labels; look for '100% agave' to tell whether or not it's mixto). Mezcal, on the other hand, can be made from any of the eight other varieties of agave. All tequilas are mezcal, but not all mezcals are tequila. Tequila and mezcal are similar, however in the amount of alcohol in the bottle (around 38-40%), although mezcals tend to be a little stronger.
Mezcal piñas - the sugar-rich heart of the agave - are baked in a conical, rock-lined pit oven over charcoal, and covered with layers of palm-fiber mats and earth, giving mezcal a strong, smoky flavour. Tequila piñas are baked or steamed in above-ground ovens or autoclaves. Most mezcal is produced around the city of Oaxaca (and can officially be produced in the states of Guerrero, Durango, San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas). Tequila comes from the northwestern state of Jalisco (and a few nearby areas).
There are four varieties of tequila --
blanco, the freshly-distilled young tequila,
gold, which is just blanco tequila with caramel coloring added (most gold tequilas are mixtos),
reposado, which has been 'rested' in oak barrels from two months to a year, long enough to acquire a golden color and a more peppery flavor, and
añejo, which is reposado that has been aged more than a year (but few are aged more than three or four years), and has a smoother, more woody aroma. Both 100% agave and mixto tequilas can be found in all three varieties above
There are regional drinks and local homebrews distilled from agave sap. These include sotol, bacanora and raicilla, as well as some simply referred to by the traditional name of 'mezcal.' Many of these regional drinks have only recently been legalized for production in Mexico, although distribution is still very limited. Pulque is also made from agave, but it is fermented without being distilled, so has a low alcohol content.
'Pulque' is a Spanish corruption of the Nahuatl '
octili poliqhui'. The Spaniards brewed pulque, but the woody taste wasn't attractive; they tried distillation, but what came out was akin to the roughest 'shine. They discovered that cooking the agave pulp before fermentation produced a sweeter juice; the fermented cooked pulp was called 'mezcal wine', which was then distilled into mezcal. Spanish brandy producers tried to shut down mezcal production with about the same success that English brandy distillers had trying to shut down rum production in the British colonies (i.e., none).
In 1656 the village of Tequila (named for the local Ticuilas Indians) was granted a charter by the governor of New Galicia. Tax records of the time show that mezcal was already being produced in the area. This mezcal, made from the local blue agave, established a reputation for having a superior taste, and barrels of the "Mezcal wine from Tequila" were soon being shipped to nearby Guadalajara and more distant cities such as the silver-mining boomtowns of San Luis Potosí and Aguascalientes.
The oldest of the still-existing distilleries in Tequila dates back to 1795, when the Spanish Crown granted a distiller’s license to a local padrone by the name of José Cuervo. In 1805 a distillery was established that would ultimately come under the control of the Sauza family. By the mid 1800s there were dozens of distilleries and millions of agave plants under cultivation around Tequila in what had become the state of Jalisco. Gradually, the locally-produced Mezcal came to be known as Tequila (just as the grape brandy from the Cognac region in France came to be known simply as Cognac).
In the 1930s the practice of adding non-agave sugars to the aguamiel, or "honey water," was introduced and quickly adopted by many Tequila producers. These mixto (mixed) Tequilas had a less intense taste than 100% blue agave Tequilas, but this relative blandness also made them more appealing to non-native consumers, particularly those in the United States.
