Ruminations of an Expatriate

Puerto Escondido

Other things I like about Puerto Escondido are that it’s very clean, it’s very relaxed, the folks are friendly, and it is a very beautiful place.

Revisiting the above post some hours later I realize, though the title refers to thoughts in the plural, I left but one. So here’s another.

Plumb and Level

I realized today why plumb and level costruction is so important in USA construction, and why in Mexico it’s generally not so important.

USA construction typically uses factory made, perfectly squared materials, plywood, sheetrock, and OSB for example. To facilitate the application of the factory squared panels the frame must be square and plumb.

Here in Mexico, buildings don’t generally use the factory squared products, but are constructed of cocrete; masonary; mortar; and finished in stucco, which hides almost any imperfection. Concrete and/or mortar can more readily account for plumb and/or level imperfections.

Mezcal

There is lots of Mezcal produced in Oaxaca, and one sees lots of fields of Maguey plants, even high mounttain patches, and roadside distilleries, touting their finest, all along the bus routes through Oaxaca. The Maguey is a variety of the Agave genus, which the reprobates amongst my five readers (which I suspect is in the strong majority) will recognize is the plant from which Tequila is rendered.

I asked a fellow at a beach-side Puerto Escondido restaurant, where I sat for an hour drinking margaritas and watching the comings and goings, as to the difference between the Maguey and Agave. He told me they are the same plant and that the difference in flavor between Oaxacan Mezcal and the Tequila of Jalisco derives from the different environments in which they are grown. Though I appreciated his answer, being a skeptic, I remained unconvinced. I did a Yahoo search and found the following excerpt at this site:

They both derive from varieties of the agave plant. Tequila is made from only one species of agave, the agave tequilana Weber (blue variety). Mezcal, on the other hand, can be made from five (!) different varieties of agave. The production processes also vary, tequila being distilled twice and mezcal being distilled only once.

So it’s the differences in the variety of Agave plant and and the distilling process differentiate Tequila and Mezcal. I know from my distilled spirits research (which resulted in the construction of a valved reflux still from which I produced moonshine) that Tequila and Mezcal are distilled using “Pot Stills”, which is just what you probably will imagine. A large, usually, copper kettle, in which the fermented “mash” is heated to the ethanol boiling point; a vapor-tight kettle cover from which emerges tubing of increasingly small diameter, often including a variety of differently shaped copper structures between the kettle and cover which provide a bit of reflux action; the tubing is then configured as a condenser, often a copper coil immersed in a container through which water continuously flows, causing the ethanol vapors to condense in the tube, from which the product is collected. Distilling twice, as with Tequila, removes more of the non-ethanol chemicals; and, thus produces a purer product. But with pureness comes a reduction in flavors.

Perhaps you also know that to truly be called Tequila, it must to have been produced from 100% Blue Agave. Both Mezcal and Tequila are made from the juicy, pulpy base of the Agave plant, which resembles a large pineapple and from which the succulent leaves grow. I was told that the plants mature in seven to ten years. When mature the leaves are cleaved from the pineapple with machetes; the pineapple is removed, trimmed, heated for a time; pulped, fermented, and distilled; and that which will become the more expensive stuff is placed in barrels, which impart colors and flavors that intensify over time. The four year old Mezcal is quite dark and very flavorful. The clear stuff may have been produced last week.

I was told by the fellow at La Casa de Mezcal in Oaxaca that worms are placed in Mezcal bottles as a marketing gimmick which apparently works in the gringo market, and that Mexican do not include worms in their blends. The only place I’ve seen Mezcal with worms is in tourist areas.