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The Santa Catarina Minas volcanic soil is 25 miles south of the Mexican city of Oaxaca. For nearly a century, the Angeles family has been making Mezcal by cooking and crushing the hearts of the plants. Mezcal was sold in plastic jugs and bottles. Mezcal was more than a product, it was a custom to be drunk to celebrate festivals and special occasions, or even as medicine.
The craze began a decade ago. Mezcal was promoted by bars and mixologists in the West as a drink for nerds. The Negroni was invented by someone. The New Yorker had a long piece about Mezcal. Some celebrities backed their own brands. Mexico's exports of Mezcal increased from 2.5 million liters a year in 2013 to 5.8 million liters in 2019. The boom was an opportunity for the Angeles family, who run Mezcal Real Minero. Over the last couple of years, the costs have become apparent.
Producers in Oaxaca and other places are over-harvesting wild Agaves in order to meet the demand for Mezcal. Alfonso Valiente remembers walking for three hours through a part of the state of Sonora in Mexico. Angeles tells of producers who have to buy and have them trucked in from places 13 hours away, and of forests being chopped down to plant more agave.
Mexico has been here before. The blue Agave was over-harvested from the wild when it achieved hard-liquor stardom. Big manufacturers grow the blue agave only in their own farms, which makes them sterile in the process. The Mexican government and alcohol companies think the rage for tequila is a success. It is a lesson in how the West's consumerist fads often lead to ransacking of poorer people. The same thing will happen if we don't do something about it.
Mezcal's appeal is due to the fact that it is made from different parts of Mexico, which gives it a different flavor. Mexico has at least 53 species that can be used to make mezcal, and 16 of Oaxaca's 30 species are used by the Angeles family. Valiente said that these species are key to their ecosystems. The bats that drink from the flowers of the agave plant cross-pollinate with other plants in the Mexican landscape, such as columnar cacti. He warned that the effects will cascade and the system will collapse if the Agaves disappear.
The domino is being pushed. There are two ways in which Agaves are diminishing. Since you need wood for the fires to make mezcal, you also see an over-exploitation of Mexican habitats.
The second mode of disappearance involves the growth of farmed Agave by using a section of the root as a clone. Angeles said that this kind of monoculture is cheaper and quicker.
Mexico is large and diverse, so the species are widely distributed, but the process has begun. Some Agaves need as long as 30 years to mature. There are parts of Mexico where you don't see the Agaves, but there are a lot of little ones.
Sarah Bowen, a sociologist at North Carolina State University and the author of "Divided spirit: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Production," said that the history of the drink is older than that of mezcal. They didn't recognize traditional methods of small producers.
When the Mezcal boom was on the horizon, the process started off in a more collaborative fashion, but it didn't pay much attention to the fact that the mid-century regulators didn't pay much attention to the fact that there was a lot of diversity in the area. She attended a meeting when she visited Oaxaca and Mexico City in 2009, when a lot of people were talking about needing a new way to govern and regulate Mezcal.
The power dynamics between bottlers and retailers on the one hand and small producers and farmers on the other grew even more skewed without rigorous guidance. Mexican farmers and local producers felt compelled to make more and higher volumes of Mezcal as London and New Yorkers ordered more and more of the drink.
When government regulations came into force to specify what can and cannot be branded Mezcal, they were still light on protecting them. There is nothing more to be said about how to cultivate or preserve the flora and fauna of the area. The rules are enforced by non-profits and private bodies. A lot of the ancestral and artisanal producers can't afford to pay these fees. It's a double hit. Valiente said that the small producers don't receive sound advice on growing and harvesting the plants.
Valiente's preservation project started seven years ago and is supported by universities in five states.
She said that they have collected seeds for eight different species. In 2005, a biologist advised her family to switch to seeds, but they didn't have the resources to do it.
Mezcal devotees don't know how sustainable their drink is. The university in Valiente gives a bat friendly certification to producers of Mezcal who allow at least 5% of their Agaves to flower for the benefit of bats. iente is not part of the project. Angeles is skeptical about the label. We need to think of it as part of a whole.
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