El Peregringo

So on Friday a group of 36 students and several faculty went to Tequila to visit the blue agave fields and the Cuervo distillery, officially known as the Fábrica La Rojeña.

I have had an off and on relationship with tequila over the years. My sophomore year in college, a friend brought back a bottle of Mezcal (another distillate of a different species of agave) from spring break. We sat in my room and drank the whole bottle, straight from the bottle, passing it around in a circle. I ate the gusano at the end (parenthetically, I ate several gusanos in tortillas last night at dinner…). The next thing I remember I woke up the next morning fully clothed, face down, my feet on my pillow and both fists clenched beside me. There was a woman I’d never seen asleep next to me, also fully clothed, face up, but with her head on the pillow next to my feet. I got out of bed to hit the john, and when I came back to my room, she was gone. I have no idea who she was. I didn’t drink a distillate of agave for nearly 20 years after that.

My next “experience” with tequila came in the late 90’s at my friend Jay’s house. They had a margarita party in which I distinguished myself by being a complete ass–something about making fun of Phish fans. I swore never to drink tequila in public again.

Then, sometime in 2000 when working at Codefab, several ‘fabbers went to WWDC and as per usual, we went into the city to have dinner at Tommy’s Mexican restaurant. Both Bill and Alex are huge tequila fans, and were well on their way to getting one of Tommy’s “doctorates” in tequila. After dinner, Bill handed me a snifter which I assumed was brandy. It was wonderfully smooth, though clearly not a brandy. Turns out it was a very fine, very expensive tequila. I learned a lot from Dr. Bill in the time I worked at Codefab.

I’ve never really liked what I associated as José Cuervo–that square bottle of gold colored stuff that always gave me a nasty hangover. But when I saw a bottle of José Cuervo Tradicional, and that it was 100% Blue Agave, I bought a bottle to try out. It was actually quite nice and made some of the best margarita’s I’ve had. Since then, I’ve drunk a bit more tequila with my friend Steve Small in Shoreham, and learned that if I’m careful, I can actually drink it in public on occasion.

Our tour started out in the agave fields where our guide (whose name I don’t remember), and Ismael (who has worked in the agave fields for 37 years) showed us how agave reproduces asexually by spreading roots and sprouting. This is how they do most of their planting. The agave also reproduces sexually by flowering after some 3-5 years, but they typically try to prevent that because the plants put too much energy into flowering and not enough into storing the carbs later converted to sugar.

Though there isn’t a lot of science about this, at least on the Cuervo plantations, they “castigate” the agave plants once a year by cutting off the tips of their leaves. This is alleged to promote the concentration of the plants juices in the pineapple, but another source I’ve heard (a botanist who works at another distillery), there’s no real proof that this has any affect one way or another. Ismael demonstrated the technique, and then let one of the students give it a try. His machete is so sharp, I stepped away during this part–I’ve had a machete in my leg already once…

Once the “pineapple” of the plant is large enough–typically about 7 years–the plant is cut from the roots, trimmed of it’s leaves, leaving only the core, or pineapple, remaining. It is is this part of the plant that is cooked and later made into tequila. The pineapples can vary anywhere from 50 kilos on average up to 200 kilos. Cut open, they’re moist, but not terribly sweet tasting–not too different from a raw potato (which is the original source of vodka).

Once they arrive at the distillery, they’re graded and then loaded into the steam ovens. They’re steamed for 38 hours and then allowed to fully cool right in the oven before the next step in the process. They’re manually tossed out of the ovens onto a conveyor belt. At this point the pulp tastes remarkably like a sweet potato, only sweeter. It was really quite tasty, though a bit stringy. The cooked pineapples are then crushed to extract the juice and the remaining pulp is composted to put back on the fields.

The extracted juice is fermented using the natural yeasts, according to the guide. I have a hard time believing this. 38 hours in a steam oven would kill even the hardiest yeast, but he insisted that they don’t pitch yeast to start the fermentation. I didn’t believe it, but maybe by the time they have cooled, they pick up some wild yeast on the conveyor belt or in the crusher… Then I saw this sign:

So much for the guide’s information. The juice is fermented to about 5% alcohol and then it hits the pot stills.

With the volume that the Cuervo company ships, the pot stills we saw had to be just a few there for show. The full blown factory has to be much larger, even if they run 24 hours a day. With a pot still, as opposed to a column still, you absolutely have to double distill because the first distillation will include ethanol–you don’t want all your customers going blind. In a column still you can avoid the second distillation. I asked about this, but again, the guide insisted that they only use pot stills to retain more of the flavor of the agave. I don’t know if I believe him on this either. I’ve been in several rum and whisky distilleries, and while they almost all use a combination of pot and column stills, I just can’t believe with this small number of units they can produce the quantities we’re talking about.

After the second distillation, the tequila is mixed with water to bring the proof down to level desired, and then all but the ‘blanco’ is placed into oak casks to age. I shot these images hand held with the aperture wide open on a pretty slow shutter speed, in a quite dark space (despite the light appearance). We weren’t allowed to use any flash or tripods, and since I had had 3-4 shots by this point before lunch, I wasn’t the steadiest photographic platform on the planet. Sorry about the soft focus…

White, or blanco tequila doesn’t see any barrel aging at all. “Reposado”, or rested, tequila will see up to a year of barrel aging, though typically only a couple of months. “Añejo”, or aged, tequila will see at least a year in barrels before blending and bottling. The longer time in the charred barrels results in more color being taken on, so añejos are typically darker than reposados. I’m pretty sure some distilleries simply add color as well, but our guide was adamant about this that Cuervo doesn’t color any of their reposado or añejo tequilas. That I can believe, though clearly they color that nasty square bottle stuff… I decided not to press him on that…

Finally the tasting of the final product arrived. We had already had a couple before the tour started, and then a good shot of the pure distilled tequila before reducing the proof and aging, but we spent a little time here as well.

Mexico is known for its murals, and the Cuervo distillery is not exception. The mural at the end of the tour shows the goddess of tequila/pulque, Mayahuetl, revealing the secrets to the mestizos and natives. Of course the natives knew about fermentation, and had fermented the juices of some types of agave into pulque for centuries, the arrival of the Spaniards brought the knowledge of distillation, and rest is tequila history.