A Spirit Never to Betray

They must have noted how it became sweeter when cold set in, when the plant braced itself for shorter, colder days and moved much of the glucose in the leaves, into the overlapping layers of the bulb, or piña. They wove wreaths from the plant for their rituals throughout the land. They also valued the strength of the tall stalk or quiote and the fibrous leaves for weaving hardy baskets or even sandals. Someone must have noted, too, the light-headed benefits of fermentation, which became much more potent with the introduction of distillation that came with the Europeans in the 17th century. As happened throughout the Americas, hard liquor became a potent weapon in the European arsenal for vanquishing native populations who were not accustomed to such strong alcohol. To this day, alcoholism and diabetes continue to wreak havoc on indigenous communities.

Mexico was once synonymous with tequila from the state of Jalisco, which has given way to the mezcal boom centred in Oaxaca and, more recently, in San Luis Potosí. Now the introduction of sotol from Chihuahua, Coahuila and Durango into the global market is being heralded as a promise of prosperity for the maestros sotoleros, many of whose families have been producing the spirit for local consumption over generations in highly isolated regions of the north. Today’s infrastructure, the ambition of the marketeers and free trade agreements have made this possible. But what are the implications for the plant, the land, the people and the spirit itself?

Before delving into sotol – which is in fact not a true agave and is more closely related to the onion – a glance at the paths taken by tequila and mezcal can help clarify some of the complexities that sotoleros currently face, and possible solutions to some of these challenges.

Sotol, and its cousins lechuguilla and bacanora, are latecomers to the boom of Mexican artisanal spirits, which is just another way of saying that they had been heretofore ignored by the commodifiers. Sotol, mezcal and tequila enjoy the protected designation of origin, although ambition has given rise to disagreements about sotol because some of the 22 species of Dasilyrion spp. grow on both sides of the Mexico/US border.

Because tequila, mezcal, lechuguilla, bacanora and sotol are all derived from wild-growing plants, their taste, elaboration, effects and the environmental impacts of extracting and processing them are very different from most distilled spirits that come from grains.

The pre-Columbian ancestor of both tequila and mezcal is pulque, a slightly fermented drink (4-6%) brewed from the maguey plant that offers important health benefits stemming from the fermentation process. Distillation dramatically increases the potency of alcohol, but it also eliminates the nutritional aspects associated with fermentation. Always considered low-brow, a drink consumed by Indians, the slightly bitter, mucilaginous taste of pulque continues to be enjoyed in parts of Mexico. Tequila, its distilled sister, was once made from different agaves, and the varying techniques and formulas of each producer yielded a broad spectrum of qualities and flavours. When Cenobio Sauza discovered that the blue agave had eight times the yield of most other varieties, people in Tequila, Jalisco began to plant only that variety. As the industry grew, so did the cultivation of blue agave, leading to a monoculture landscape seen today in many of Jalisco’s hills and flatlands. Needless to say, the flavour spectrum of tequila has also become very regimented, along with the tell-tale bite of industrial alcohol and other additives used for mass-production.

The first of Mexico’s liquors to be globalised, tequila is technically a form of mezcal, but there are differences. Tequila is derived strictly from blue agave, whereas up to 30 of Mexico’s 125 known agave species are used for making different kinds of mezcal. Tobalá, espadín, tepextate, arroqueño, mexicano, minero, tobaziche and cuish are some of the most noted varieties of mezcal, each distilled from magueys with those names. Tequila’s alcohol content is mostly uniform, made for a broad market, and is generally much lower than locally brewed mezcal, which ranges from 48-53%. Mezcal is still intimately tied to local customs, which accounts for its broad flavour spectrum, and the plant and environmental diversity that it requires. Mass-market production is eroding tradition because huge distilleries buy up local production and make their own blends – often with additives, gradually erasing the purity and subtle distinctions and diversity that distinguish the mezcal landscape.

When it comes to spirits, purity matters. As a general rule, mass production leads to adulteration because industrialisation sacrifices art for efficiency, diversity for uniformity, quality for quantity and charges the image-makers with creating narratives that will boost sales. As the first agave spirit to be mass-marketed, the fate of tequila has paved the way for mezcal and sotol. Mezcal is struggling to keep artisanal production alive and has expanded its reach to other states where mezcal was not traditionally distilled, while sotol stands at the very beginning of the globalisation process.

Very few women make sotol, so traditional maestros sotoleros are mostly simple men whose ancestors taught them the craft. Some married into a sotolero family and others apprenticed with a maestro in their youth. Many inherited lands, belong to a rural community where the plant grows, or otherwise seek permission to harvest on other peoples’ lands. So, artisanal sotol distillation is an empirical craft tied to the land that relies on the direct transmission of knowledge and the cultivation of the senses that will lead to a superior and sustainable product.

Though current industrial distillation occurs year round, traditional harvesting is done in winter months because prolonged periods of cold weather tell the plant to draw its sugars from the leaves into the heart where they remain until spring. A plant needs at least 17 years to reach harvesting age. Climate change has wreaked havoc on this process because winters are no longer cold enough for long enough to permit good harvesting, and the plants are not concentrating as much sugar in the hearts. At the turn of the century, eight hearts were enough to produce one litre of sotol. Today, anywhere from 12 to 15 hearts, or more, are required. The skilled harvester or jimador knows which plants can be culled and which ones should be left to continue maturing. Jimar is more than just extracting the largest plant; it is understanding the relationship between the plant and its surroundings, and how harvesting one or another will affect the future growth of younger plants nearby. Such subtle, empirical knowledge means the difference between sustainable harvesting and barbaric extraction that will bring on the demise of that ecosystem.

The harvested piñas must then be taken to be cooked, shredded and distilled. As horses are virtually useless in rugged, mountainous terrain, burros or mules laden with huge baskets haul the bulbs to the distillation camp, or to be concentrated in one place and then moved by truck to the still. There, the bulbs will be roasted underground for several days in a round pit with wood-heated volcanic stones underneath them, that are then meticulously covered with layers of different materials designed to retain the necessary heat and humidity to cook the bulbs right. This process gives artisanal sotol (and mezcal) its characteristic, earthy flavours that can never be achieved in industrial, gas ovens.

Sotol hearts waiting to be roasted on a bed of wood-heated, volcanic rock (photo: David Lauer)

Workers fill the fire pit with hearts that will then be covered with several layers of different organic materials to maintain the correct heat and humidity (photo: David Lauer)

The swirling pattern of sotol hearts shows how they are more closely related to onions than other agaves (photo: David Lauer)

A copper cauldron where fermented sotol is cooked down and distilled (photo: David Lauer)

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After roasting, the bulbs are shredded either by machine or with machetes and then placed in wooden, open-aired vats in water, where they ferment for three to five days, depending on the climate. Once the desired level of fermentation is achieved, the distillation can begin. Maestros know by the smell of the liquid dripping from the copper tubing when the ethylic alcohol is spent and it’s time to collect the sotol. The first drinkable, wildly alcoholic spirits are called the puntas (tips) and the last are called the colas (tails). Most sotol is double distilled, which lets the distiller get the most out of the run, because blends are made using the puntas and the colas from both distillations. A low quality sotol has a lot of colas, and will produce a nasty hangover, but expert maestros know how to make the right blends to keep the alcohol content in their run high and keep hangovers at bay. Today, much of this is done with different types of meters, but a true maestro blends with experience and the sense of smell and taste, which pre-dates technology.

Bull horns are used to check the alcohol content of the batch. One fills the horn and observes the bubbles or pearls (perlas) that cling to the side of the horn. Their size and number reveal how strong the blend is. When one shakes most bottles of industrial sotol, hundreds of small bubbles rise to the surface and few cling to the side of the bottle. The perlas of artisanal sotol are large and take a while to dissipate, which tells you that the alcohol level is high: probably a good blend with more puntas than colas that will give you a more enjoyable experience.

Until now, sotol and its first cousin, lechuguilla, has long been stigmatised as rotgut for the poor. However, during Prohibition, sotol plants all but disappeared in the border regions of Chihuahua to sate Americans’ alcohol addiction, and campaigns against the scourge of alcohol drove sotol production underground, though little changed in the isolated communities where it had long been part of the culture. In the 1990s, early marketing campaigns that launched sotol as ‘the other tequila’ aged sotol in oak casks once used for brandy and bottled it elegantly in an attempt to ‘dignify’ the beverage and distance it from its clandestine origins. After artisanal mezcal became the rage in Mexico City and attracted the attention of monied investors, people began to look at sotol differently. In Chihuahua, regional gastronomical events often featured sotol producers, which gave some of them the opportunity to connect with potential investors. The same events re-educated urban dwellers’ palates, and a new generation took to the spirit.

Some of those younger people educated in the ways of cyber marketing and globalised economies have seen sotol as their path to prosperity, sought investors and, because they themselves know little or nothing of the plant or the process, courted the maestros with promises of prosperity. Some have crudely appropriated their knowledge in order to displace them and gradually take over the operation, while others have made their own blends by learning how to combine production purchased from different regions and producers. Maestros may produce specific quantities under contract as a way to sell part of their production and survive. So people with money who know absolutely nothing about sotol can create their own brand and larger producers can take advantage of other peoples’ harvesting permits.

Backed by the world’s second largest wine and spirit company, the multi-billion Euro French enterprise, Pernod Ricard, Noche Luna is a brand partnered with the rock star, Lenny Kravitz and produced by a fourth generation sotol maestro, D. Lalo Arieta in Aldama, Chihuahua. Such a partnership has created euphoric frenzy in some quarters and precautionary alarm in others. Despite declaring that its production is ‘sustainable’, accusations that harvesting permits have been either ignored or violated seem to be well documented and need to be investigated; merely comparing overall production with the plants required will shed needed light on the claims. The fact that such a large, multinational company is involved means that ambitious production and distribution goals must be met, and that puts the plant, the people and the ecosystems under great pressure. Unless major changes are made, partnerships like Noche Luna will do little to favour sustainable, local economic development and much to create more wealth for the wealthy as they devastate stressed, arid ecosystems and pillage traditions that are at the heart of Chihuahua.

The implications of the current economic model are deeply problematic. For example, to encourage exports, the Mexican government offers huge tax breaks for those who produce spirits for the international market while they tax small production for local consumption at unreasonable rates. These policies benefit large companies, further increase the pressure on the plant, hurt all kinds of diversity and threaten to drive the maestros with the knowledge into extinction. Production for the export market does little for local development.

Experience with globalisation has shown that small, local economic production networks are more resilient and beneficial for the common good than the vast, impersonal corporate web that would control us. Fostering connection to the landscape forges people who nurture it for the benefit of all. Small economies keep people on the land and promote diversity. To my mind, sotol should not be exported until truly sustainable production and reforestation methods are in place. Until then, people who come to Mexico can savour the amazing spirit and take a few bottles home with them to share.

Centralised reforestation programmes have meant that few varieties of sotol are chosen, and planted en masse in places where they do not necessarily prosper. For example, Noche Luna claims to have planted 850,000 sotols; if true, how many survived? According to Faridi Bujaidar, one of the very few people to hold a doctorate related to sotol production, reforestation and monitoring programmes are not working because reforesting, when it is done at all, does not use the correct varieties for each region and the local councils that are supposed to monitor the production of their members fail to keep accurate records. Such intentional inefficiency (wink, wink, nod, nod) allows people to exceed the permitted harvest limits to the detriment of the plant, and so the councils become complicit with pillage.

Dra. Bujaidar supports micro reforestation because locals know how to collect the seeds of all the varieties in an ecosystem and then transplant them in the conditions they need to survive. Employing the people who know the plants and understand their uses is a recognition of their worth that will benefit diversity conservation. Faridi spoke of sotol in regions where it rains more than it does in the desert. Sotol responds to stress to make the sugars that will become alcohol, which is why desert sotol tends to be sweeter than mountain sotol. More rain means less stress, so where it rains more the sotol will be slightly bitter, and the local maestro will add certain maguey varieties to sweeten it .

Some maestros age sotol in wooden casks, and others experiment with surprising finishing techniques like curing it with different meats like beef, venison or lamb which create subtler and more complex tastes that linger on the palate without significantly altering the basic flavour. The sotol boom has also birthed mixed drink recipes, which, for me, merely dilute good sotol or disguise inferior blends with a confusing array of flavours. Artisanal sotol is potent and, like a good single-malt whisky, something to be enjoyed slowly, one nip at a time.

A spirit is the essence of something that should never be betrayed; sotol captures an essence I cherish, at once harsh and soothing like the desert, deep and rugged like the mountains where it grows, and simple, direct and generous like the people who know how to bring out its many flavours.

Dark Mountain: Issue 26 – Dark Ocean

Our Autumn 2024 issue is a full-colour exploration of the world's oceans in an era of collapse – in narrative, verse, art and photography.

 

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