Do you know what mezcal tastes like?

Mezcal is a distilled beverage made from cooked and fermented agave juice. But that definition barely scratches the surface of this incredibly complex spirit.

Most people outside Mexico are more familiar with tequila, which is in fact one kind of mezcal. All tequila is made from agave tequilana Weber, or Weber blue agave and cooked in steam ovens, usually in the state of Jalisco.

Mezcal, on the other hand, can be made from any of roughly 50 species of agave, and each brings a different taste to the final product.

Mezcal agave species have names like Tobalá, Americana, Durangensis and many others.

One of our favorite species is Agave Karwinskii, which is grown mainly in Oaxaca, and which comes in varieties called Cuishe, Baicuishe, Madre Cuishe, Barril, Tobaziche and Verde, each variety offering differences in taste (but all very good).

One way to look at the difference between tequila and mezcal is that tequila is simple and mezcal is complex. Tequila is relatively simple, because it's made with one agave type and one production method. Mezcal is complex because it's made from many agave types, many production methods, many variations on flavors and (like tequila) also has variety introduced through aging.

The word mezcal is a bastardization of the Nahuatl word "mexcalli," which means "baked agave."

Mezcal is made in the Mexican states of Durango, Guanajuato, Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas, Michoacán, and Puebla. But most mezcal is made in the state of Oaxaca.

Artisanal and traditional mezcal making is very much a phenomenon of Oaxaca. Of Mexico's 625 mezcal production facilities, 570 of them are in Oaxaca, producing 90% of the country's mezcal.

How Mezcal is brought to life

Mezcal is made from agave at the end of the plant's life.

Most agave plants are harvested after roughly 10 years, although some can grow for 30 years before harvesting, depending on the agave species. Most mezcals are made with farmed agave. But some are made with wild agave, and these have distinct flavor differences from their domesticated cousins.

When most agave species ripen, they bloom by quickly growing a single flower stalk up to 15 feet high, a process that, if allowed to occur, enables the plant to seed before dying, but the flowering spoils the piña for agave making. Mezcal growers chop this stalk off to preserve the piña until they can harvest it.

They chop the spikey leaves off with a machete, then hack and shovel the "piña" at the base to remove it from the roots. This piña is sometimes roundish, sometimes elongated, depending on the variety of agave.

The piñas are cooked for a few days, often in underground pits. Underground baking causes the smokey taste in most mezcals. They can also be cooked with steam ovens in the same way tequila is cooked.

The cooked piñas are then mashed, sometimes with a stone wheel pulled by a horse, and then fermented with water in wood barrels or vats.

The fermented liquid is then distilled, usually twice — sometimes thrice — in copper or clay pots. (Ancestral distillation happens in clay pots and wood pipes.)

After distillation

The reason mezcal is available in such breathtaking variety is that so many factors contribute to the taste: The species of agave, the cooking method, the fermentation time, the distillation process, the aging process, and also things added to affect the flavor. These can include fruits, herbs, spices, chicken, turkey or duck.

Mezcal flavored with poultry happens either during steam cooking or distillation. In other words, the turkey is not introduced to the mezcal after distillation. Produce, if used for flavor, is added to the boiling mescal during distillation.

For some types, a moth larva is added during the bottling process for flavor.

Most mezcal is not flavored.

Like tequila, mezcal is categorized by the degree of aging — Joven, Reposado, and Añejo.

Some of the smoothest and most flavorful mezcals are aged in wood barrels, and these tend to be yellow-orange in color.

When mezcal is aged in glass for at least a year, it's called Madurado en Vidrio.

The global mezcal craze

Abroad, mezcal is increasingly used in trendy craft cocktails, such as the "Oaxaca Old Fashioned." And, of course, mezcal is a celebrated foundation in Mexico City of the ongoing fusion of ancient mexican culinary traditions with modern and international ones.

Mezcal is growing fast in popularity outside Mexico, especially in the United States and Japan. One reason is that, in past decades, Mexico shipped mainly only low-quality mezcal abroad and the world didn't know how amazing good mezcal is. But in recent years, gringos have discovered the good stuff, and now can't get enough of it.

In 2019, the United States surpassed even Mexico in mezcal consumption, gobbling up 71% of all mezcal exports. In the US, however, mezcal consumption is stilled dwarfed by tequila, which is still much more popular.

Mezcal: a fundamental part of Oaxacan culture

In Mexico, mezcal is normally drunk straight and sipped slowly (never as a "shot," as is common in the United States for tequila). Mexicans say you "kiss" the mezcal, meaning that you take in each sip what amounts to only drops at a time — it enters the mouth practically as a vapor.

For the drinker, mezcal is more like wine than other spirits. Terroir, the agave variety and the mezcal maker and his methods determine the outcome, which can be variable in the extreme. Different mezcal types can hit your mouth like liquid fire or can be mild as water. It can offer up notes of herbs, cinnamon, sage, peaches or caramel. It can be smokey or fruity. Bitter or smooth.

In Oaxaca, mezcal is taken for every social occasion, from weddings to the most casual visit by neighbors. It's a central part of Day of the Dead, where the deceased is poured a glass of mezcal, which is placed on the home altar often in front of a framed picture of the deceased, and then loved ones sit and drink their own.

Once you've spent time in Oaxaca, the taste of mezcal becomes inseparable in the mind from the "vibe" of Oaxaca, especially the surrounding countryside and the Oaxaca Valley, where much of the agave is grown.

What does mezcal taste like? It tastes like Oaxaca.