Tequila

Fred wants to know how they split these babies. With an ax, one at a time. Hard, hard, work…

Photo by David Lansing.

And take a look at the hats on these guys. They stuff rags underneath them to cushion the weight of the agave but it can’t help much. Just look at the size of the pinas about to be loaded into the horno in the background. 

So after Ismael Gama and I had tromped around in the agave fields for awhile, we headed for the nearby Cuervo factory which is both very modern and ancient at the same time (it was startling to learn that Cuervo has been around since the mid-1700s—in tact, it’s the oldest continuing business in the Western hemisphere).

A pile of agave hearts at Cuervo. Photo by David Lansing.

What was ancient about it was the process. I stood there, just inside the factory gates, and watched as a truck from the field we’d just been in came in and dumped hundreds and hundreds of just-harvested agave piñas (and just looking at this photo, you can see why they’re called “pineapples”).

Now, in order to make the mash for the distillation of tequila, the first thing you have to do is roast the piñas. Which is about as lo-tech as you can imagine. After the truck has emptied his bed, a couple of guys in Buster Keaton-like leather hats come over and split the hundred-pound piñas in half. Then they lift them on top of their flat-topped hats and carry them to the outdoor ovens, or hornos, piling them 10-feet-high. I mean, this is brutal, back-breaking work. These guys must be stronger than hell (and probably don’t last very long in this job).

Do you think this guy has a tough job? Photo by David Lansing.

When the ovens are full, they slam shut the thick metal door and roast the piñas for a day, maybe a day-and-a-half, at a low temperature—175F to 200F—until it looks (and tastes) a bit like candied yams (in fact, in the town of Tequila, you can buy roasted agave in the markets; locals eat it like candy). I had some and it’s rather tasty. I’m surprised somebody like Thomas Keller hasn’t put it on a menu yet.

Roasted agave, which smells like vanilla and tastes like candied yams. Photo by David Lansing.

After the agave has been roasted, it’s shredded and mashed in big stainless steel tubs (this is where the factory gets more modern; back in the day, they’d dump the roasted agave into a stone pit and a donkey would walk around and around in a circle pulling a large stone wheel to mash the pulp).

This gives you a sort of sweet, honey-colored juice called aguamiel (honey water) which is then combined with yeast and placed in a vat to ferment for a couple of days and then transferred to a copper alambique, just like whisky, where it it distilled at least twice but sometimes three or even four times. The first distillation tastes petrolly and nasty; the third you could almost drink straight (as I’ve said, the more distillations, to refine the rough, low-grade distillate, the better). When you taste that final distillation it is just pure agave. But they’re not done yet.

According to Mexican law, even blanco (white) tequila must be aged for 14-21 days. Not a lot of time, but still, it changes the taste. Reposado (rested) tequilas can sit in oak barrels for up to one year while the anejos are aged anywhere from one to five years. Unlike whisky, tequila doesn’t really get any better sitting around for more than five years (there are some extraordinary exceptions) and it also doesn’t hold up indefinitely in the bottle. In other words, it’s not the sort of thing you want to put away for ten or twenty years; open it and drink it.

Which is exactly what Ismael and I did with a bottle Cuervo Reserva de la Familia, a rare blended tequila that takes several three-year-old anejos and ages them in oak for up to 13 years. Did I say tequila doesn’t hold up very well after five years? Listen, there are exceptions. This is one of them.

A la buena vida.

It rained all morning. A hard rain. And the sky was still a splotchy gray pillow so I was a little surprised when Ismael Gama offered to take me out into the gray-blue agave fields outside the little town of Tequila. But then again, this wasn’t something I wanted to miss. A friend of mine, Ana Maria Romero, who knows more about tequila than almost anyone I know, had arranged for me to meet Señor Gama after I’d expressed a desire to see agave being harvested.

“Then you must meet Ismael,” she said. “He is the best jimador I know,” a jimador being someone who uses a machete and a special flat-edge shovel to harvest the enormous agaves that take 7 to 10 years to grow before they’re ready for the alchemies of fermentation and distillation that will turn them into tequila.

Ismael dove his dirty truck through a muddy field owned by Cuervo, stopping along a row of giant blue agaves where half a dozen other jimadors were working. We watched them for a moment so I could see how it worked. With deft strokes the men quickly hacked off the barbed spears of the six-foot-tall agave, then used the flat-spade to trim the hundred-pound pineapple shaped heart, the pina, that would be roasted and mashed at the distillery.

Ismael Gama, a jimador, harvesting a 100-lb. agave pina. Photo by David Lansing.

Frankly, I told Ismael, the work looked incredibly difficult.

He smiled. And then he grabbed his machete, made a series of quick downward slashes, lifted out the pina, and trimmed it to its core—all in a couple of minutes.

“It is hard work,” admitted Ismael. “Which is why we work only six or seven hours a day.”

And how many agave plants can you harvest? I asked him.

He shrugged. “Quizá trescientos.” Three hundred.

And then he handed his machete to me. I wish I could tell you how easy it was, how I quickly pruned the towering agave plant and lifted it out of the red volcanic soil, just like Ismael. But I’d be lying. The truth is that I so quickly bloodied my arm that Ismael took the machete away from me before I turned into a pin cushion. But he didn’t laugh at me. He holstered the machete and handed me a rag to mop at the blood. Perhaps, he said, we should go now to the distillery and sample a little tequila.

An excellent idea, I said. And that is what we did.