It is an issue that daily negatively impacts the consumption of mezcal. Many owners and employees of Mexican restaurants, bars and mezcaleries, in Oaxaca and throughout the rest of Mexico, and indeed throughout the world, tell customers not to drink barrel-aged mezcal. It does not matter if it is rested (in oak for at least two months) or aged (at least one year); They say just don’t do it. Even some export brand owners fall victim to the misstep. The Mexican agave distillate, mezcal, is the relatively high-alcohol spirit that has conquered the global spirits-drinking community since the “mezcal boom.” The craze started around 2005, then caught on a decade later.

The people who should know better, and who are supposedly motivated in their entrepreneurial efforts at least to some degree to promote the mezcal industry, are simply trying to increase their customers’ perception of them as agave distillate experts. Oaxaca is the southern Mexican state that produces more than 85% of the country’s mezcal. Fans and novices alike flock to Oaxaca to learn more and pay homage. And so it should be up to the experts, particularly in Oaxaca, who are trusted by the consuming public, to give arriving pilgrims the right products. Many don’t.

Usually, one finds three reasons to discourage drinkers from drinking aged mezcal:

• “Aged mezcal is not traditional.” How many generations or hundreds of years ago should the agave distillate be considered “traditional” given that oak barrels have been used to store and transport mezcal probably since shortly after the Spanish arrived in what is now Mexico? , certainly from the eighteenth century?
• “I still haven’t found a good reposado or añejo aged in barrels.” How can that really be, apart from someone wanting to impose their subjective preference on others, since there are brands that have serious and well thought out aging programs? For example, aging for six months in a Kentucky bourbon barrel, then two years in a French chardonnay barrel.
• “Aged mezcal changes and masks the natural flavor, aroma, and nuances that vary by species and subspecies of agave, and we should want to retain and appreciate those unique qualities and differences.”

It’s the third reason that’s the most problematic, possibly just plain nonsense, and here’s why.

In a typical setting, we have a night out on the town, one goes to a mezcal tasting room, bar or mezcalería, or Mexican restaurant with a nice complement of agave distillates. Trust the advice of the bartender or wait staff; especially those relatively new to the spirit or just wanting to try different products. Your server might say something like “try this tobalá, it’s quite herbal”, or “how about a floral tepeztate?” or “I think you might like this somewhat sweet karwinskii from the Miahuatlán district of Oaxaca.” That seems fine to me. But then the problem begins.

That same “expert” who refuses to even talk about añejos or reposados ​​because they alter the unique nuance imparted by the particular variety of agave, will suggest a pechuga espadin (it costs perhaps twice as much as karwinskii). That breast has had the natural flavor of sprat altered dramatically not only by chicken breast, but also by a plethora of fruits, herbs, and spices; apple, orange, cinnamon, guava, pineapple, almond, banana, anise, rice, apricot, and sometimes more. Aren’t you drinking a spirit whose natural flavor has been altered far more dramatically than if it had aged six months in a bourbon barrel? And while the history of pechugas dates back perhaps to the 1930s in the state of Oaxaca, and to the 19th century in other parts of Mexico, the tradition of barrel aging predates both by 100 years, if not more. Pechugas are probably a much more recent phenomenon and much less traditional than reposados ​​and añejos.

Your server in that tasting room then encourages you to compare two mezcals of the same subspecies, one distilled in clay and the other in copper, suggesting you can spot the difference in flavors. Subsequently, the server may offer a fermented mezcal in cowhide followed by the next in a 1,000-liter pine-slat tank. And then two mezcals of the same variety of agave from the same traditional distillery can be offered, one in which the succulent has been crushed by hand and the other with metal blades. Why, then, won’t she “allow” him to compare the old with the non-old? He would suggest that it’s probably snobbery, plain and simple, for no other reasonable reason (except perhaps the exercise that it represents a means by which the establishment, run by experts, tries to rationalize its haughty prices).

Here is the problem. If one really wants to help consumers distinguish subtle differences in flavors, aromas, and nuances, shouldn’t we just try mezcal in which the agave has been steamed in a sealed brick chamber or autoclave (iron chamber)? ? Traditional cooking dictates baking the agave in an airtight oven buried over, at the very least, rocks, and you guessed it, firewood. If you bake something in a sealed chamber for five days over wood, the type of log used inevitably affects the flavor of whatever you’re baking, including agave; mesquite, oak, eucalyptus, etc., etc., etc. The pundits only want to promote traditional mezcal, so how do they rationalize, on the one hand, wanting the natural flavors to come through and, on the other, baking in a “traditional” oven?

There are brand owners who are anti-aging and claim to want to expose aficionados or aspiring aficionados only to traditionally made mezcal. They claim that mezcal should be stored only in glass or stainless steel, neither of which are “traditional”, let alone stainless. The same entrepreneurs will promote their products by storing some mezcal in clay for, say, six months before bottling, to give the consuming public something a little different, but of course not too different, like in oak. Yes, clay was used eons ago for storage and transport, so maybe we should all re-age our mezcal in clay. The problem is that glass and stainless steel alter the natural hues much less than clay; however, they are relatively recent forays into the industry.

Epilogue

We should be promoting mezcal to all potential future aficionados, and that means all mezcal. Many visitors to Oaxaca arrive with a plan to distribute the spirit, or open a mezcalería, in their home countries outside of North America. If we tell you that you shouldn’t be drinking or selling aged mezcal, you might believe that phrase from the “experts” who are giving you half-truths, and quite possibly creating confusion in the minds of those who pay careful consideration to what they hear. . Aren’t we removing the potential to attract new drinkers of the spirit, such as those drinkers who gravitate towards single malts, bourbons or whiskeys? More importantly, the justification for telling people what mezcal they should and shouldn’t drink is seriously flawed.