If I remember rightly the mezcals on offer at El Rey were slightly different to the ones I got samples of later on that day in the restaurant. I didn’t bother to even try and record tasting notes at the time due to the immense quantity of awful, neon coloured, gel like, liqueur things they kept throwing at us. Obviously I drank them out of politeness but they were pretty foul. Thankfully I remember enjoying the standard mezcals a lot more but lets try them today and see what happens…

El Rey Mezcal Joven. 1005 Agave. 40%. 25cl.

‘Joven‘ or ‘young’, is the equivalent of a blanco, it is simply brought down to 40% abv with water and bottled as is.

Colour: None

Nose: Immensely farmy with huge notes of ‘medical soot’ if such a thing exists. Very clean, cereal smoke notes and lots of them with a big medicinal set of aromas underneath. Germoline, salt, fresh tar, cactus, little notes of petrol and diesel oil with rotting leaves and earthy notes. This is about as rustic as spirits get I think. There are some undeniably feinty aromas in this, really thick and oily with notes of paraffin wax, a hazy rubber quality and something vegetal and drain like. Again these would be major flaws in some spirits but in mezcal you just have to understand that that is what the classic profile is meant to be. You’ll either love its dirty, unrefined quality or hate it plain and simple.

Palate: Thick and vegetal at first with an aggressive spice note and a flurry of beefy medical notes. Heavy and clunky notes of bandages, TCP and iodine come along one after the other with a real dirty smokiness still sticking to the roof of your mouth. Makes your mouth feel like the inside walls of a grotty local pub that has remained uncleaned after decades of heavy smoking clientele. Something curiously menthol and gravely with more notes of decaying leaves, old mushrooms, mashed potatoes and gentian.

Finish: Medium to short with something like elastic bands, cold cuts of turkey and more cactus notes. Still incredibly oily and thick.

Comments: It’s very hard to know what to make of such a drink really. I absolutely adore how old school it is, you can taste how all those basic, hands on production methods contribute to the character of the spirit but it is also quite hard to enjoy it on a purely olfactory level. I would love to see what would happen to this spirit if you gave it 30 years in a refill hogshead in a Scottish maturation climate. A hard one to score but I think it is a good example of young Mezcal.

Score: 68/100

El Rey Reposado. 100% Agave. 40%. 75cl.

This one has spent six months in oak.

Colour: Very light yellowy green.

Nose: This one is greener, leafier, and mintier that the Joven and feels somehow much fresher. The medicine and the smoke qualities come across as cleaner and more pristine without too many pronounced feinty notes. There are even some very crisp phenols and little notes of peat in this one. Very nice on the nose so far. Becomes saltier with time and a little brinier with notes of lemon juice and lime zest. Very sharp and quite well composed I think. After a few minutes and if you dig your nose deep enough the feinty aromas start to emerge but they are quite delicate really.

Palate: Very sweet on delivery with some almost cloyingly concentrated smoke notes,liquid smoke with boiled cereals, cactus, lime juice, salt, cucumber, iodine, sweaty socks, drains, coal. All kinds of weird flavours here, some good some bad. Although I’m sure a mezcal enthusiast would tell me they all have an essential place in the profile. Very limey and very salty this one. Good but again, as always, very difficult stuff.

Finish: Lemons and limes and all things salty/feinty, stretched out to a good length though. Some quite earthy vegetal flickers in the fade.

Comments: Again it is very hard to know what to make of such a beast. The wood obviously made quite an impression during their six month chatter. However I wouldn’t describe the end result as balanced, I like the nose much better than the palate.

Score: 64/100

El Rey Anejo. 100% Agave. 40%. 25cl.

This one has lept from six months all the way up to five whole years in oak barrels so this should be a big departure form the other two…

Colour: Light honey

Nose: This is much softer and very different from the other two, new shoe leather, mead, toffee, eucalyptus, all kinds of oily notes, silky, fragrant smoke and some very green notes like aloe vera and freshly crushed cactus. Very pleasant actually. Now some soft notes of fresh butter, grass and light cereals come through, it’s odd how many of these mezcals can display a blatant cereal quality. Milk, muesli, fresh vegetables and a very thick smoky/medicinal combo, these smoky medical qualities are distinctive but much more elegant and controlled than in the younger expressions.

Palate: Again quite sweet but it is well tempered by spice, smoke and barley sugar notes and as such is not as cloying or imbalanced as the reposado. More big notes of fresh grass and aloe vera with something quite bitter like sap or tannins in the background. Hay, manure, engine oil, more very farmy qualities, a big industrial farm in a glass. There are still some very earthy and dirty feinty notes in there but I think this is an integral part of most mezcals’ natural character.

Finish: Quite long and silky on raw vegetables, smoke, grease, lemons and some interesting notes of marzipan.

Comments: I like this one a lot, it’s much better than the younger ones in my opinion. It seems that mezcal just needs a bit of careful age. Again, this makes me wonder about the potential of old wood plus long term cold climate maturation. Who knows…?

Score: 75/100

El Rey Anejo ‘Gran Reserva’. 100% Agave. 40%. 75cl.

This one is aged for a full eight years which should be interesting…

Colour: Dark Amber

Nose: This one smells like smoked treacle and kippers, a classic Scottish breakfast combo if ever there was one. It goes on with big notes of tobacco leaf, aloe vera, soy sauce, aged balsamico, leather, smoked mussels, ginger, boiled cabbage and, surprisingly, even some dark fruits like raisins and dates. Not much medicine in here, rather more notes of wood, smoke and spice, I suspect eight years in a barrel in the Mexican heat will involve a hell of a lot of concentration and evaporation. After time some odd notes of lavender and washing up powder with violets, caraway seeds, mushrooms and old pinot noir. It still has a very rustic, earthy, farmy edge to it. Fascinating nose.

Palate: Ok this is hard, it’s very extracted and woody but it has also seemingly gone back on itself and it is also almost exactly like sucking one of those pieces of freshly baked agave at the distillery. It has the same vegetal, stringy sweetness to it. Notes of dodgy caramel, burned sugar, toasted hazelnuts, creme caramel and bovril. This is weird. It even has some very unfortunate notes of sick in it as well. I think I’ll have to stop.

Finish: Becomes quite pleasant again for about a minute after swallowing but it is really cloying, sweet and extracted.

Comments: The nose on its own would have easily merited a score in the upper 70s but after what I would describe as a ‘unfortunate’ palate I think it’s going to be much lower. It seems that a divergence between nose and palate is very common with mezcal. All the ones I tried properly suffered from it. But then it is also worth remembering that, as a drink, very few of them are meant to be drunk in the same way as Scotch or Brandy. They are designed for mixing and swift, vigorous chugging. I think anyone interested in distillation and in spirits at all should try and taste things like this as they are very illuminating in their own right as well as often being fairly palatable if you can adjust your expectations and perceptions a little. I liked the Anejo the most I think, this one is just to wacky for me but it is very revealing nonetheless.

Score: 58/100 (the nose picks it up a bit but the palate really is hard)

So that’s the end of my Latin American adventures. At least it is until I decide to go back one day, which I inevitably will. It’s hard to sum up such a jam packed time. All I can say is that it was amazing. An experience I wouldn’t change for anything and the best decision I ever made. The countries in their own right are stunning, from the dust bowl of Pisco where I started to the plush and ancient beauty of a rapidly modenrnising Mexico where it ended. I would need a handful of lifetimes to truly know any of them, let alone all of them. All I did was skim the tops of a pair of endless continents. Shaving off in the process a handful of memories for myself. I take away from it some of the best photographs, hangovers, experiences and friends that I’ve ever had and above all it has made me understand that my own life is a very tiny thing. I met and saw countless people that live their entire lives invisible to the tick and consequence of the rest of the world. With as little knowledge and understanding of me as I will ever have of them. The accumulated rush of thoughts, ideas and feelings of the past six months is a deafening twine about the head and the heart, my life is small but it is also precious and I feel every moment I went through had some sort of value. One that isn’t quantifiable, just a feeling that you’ve done something pretty worthwhile, I think the word is humbling.

Anyway, next stop USA. Stay tuned…

The usual welcome at US customs is just one of many cultural highlights I have to look forward to.

Ruined temples just outside the city of Oaxaca.

If Guadalajara, the base city of tequila, is modern and alive, then Oaxaca, the city of Mezcal, is ancient and preserved. Walking between its graph like streets and its monumental plazas is a very different experience to seeing the open, rolling boulevards of Guadalajara. In Oaxaca everything reeks of the ancient, the architecture, the trees the land. It is a city seemingly devoid of modern industry, one that has come to rest on the great laurels of tourism in order to survive. It is here, on the outskirts of this ancient and beautiful town that mezcal is made. If we imagine that tequila is Mexico’s Cognac region, a traditional but refined drink, one associated with noble intent and respectable apreciation, then it is easy to see mezcal as Mexico’s Armagnac. That is, a rustic and simple drink, often boisterous and dangerous, a drink made by peasants for peasants. now obviously these associations are incredibly loose and based on some outdated historical notions about the various regions and styles. However, it remains true that mezcal is indeed, tequila’s dirty and more unruly distant sibling. Perhaps a word or two on production is needed here.

Like tequila it all begins with the agave, but not the blue agave, in Mezcal they use a sibling variety know as the ‘Maguey’ agave. Its process is similar, this agave once fully mature at around ten years of age, is stripped down to pineapple form than baked to concentrate its moisture and sugars. However, this is where the most crucial difference is born. In Mezcal they bake the agaves underground using smoke rather than steam. This is how they do things as the ‘El Rey’ distillery that we were fortunate enough to visit.

The agave is baked and smoked in a small underground oven for at least three days.

This enlongated process using the smoke from the wood that is burned slowly, results in a base product with a whole host of phenolic compounds and flavour elements that will give the mezcal its distinction. These baked pineapples are then crushed using an old stone wheel, a process that is about as old school as it’s possible to get. At El Rey this is what the milling wheel looks like…

After the baked agave plant is suitably crushed and macerated, the flesh is placed into a wooden fermentation vessel where it is left to ferment naturally, all that is added is boiling water to make up the liquid content…

The fermentation process at El Rey takes at least 15 days, a length of time that whisky production hasn’t seen since before the second world war at least. After this is complete the alcoholic liquid is drianed off and fermented in either copper or clay pot stills, at El Rey a very small copper pot is used. in fact the resemblance to the various old illicit stills once common in Scotland that I’ve seen is uncanny…

The still is tiny, the pot is set into the concrete slab below.

The liquid is distilled only once but very slowly and barely reaches above 55% alcohol, most mezcals don’t go above 55%. The still is wood fired and the condenser is a small copper worm running through surprisingly warm water. The resulting distillate is hot and powerful stuff, full of oily, smoky and richly medicinal flavours.

After distillation the spirit is either put into cask or diluted and bottled at Blanco. However, unlike tequila, there are many other variations and definitions of mezcal. Different types like Minero and Gusano, amongs many others, are achieved by variations in the sub species of agave used and the relative proportions thereof, you might call it a ‘mashbill’. Also the fermentation can be infused with different fruits and spices to lend other flavours to the fermenting juices. All these variations are accounted for in the names of the various types of mezcal. Although they also share the same basic definitions of Blanco, Reposado and Anejo as tequila.

Our guide doing his best to get us smashed.

One thing that the representatives of both tequila and mezcal share, is a deep rooted desire to get all of their visitors absolutely gubbed (to use a Glasgow expression). As we approached the tasting room/shop, it’s funny how all the shops in mezcal and tequila so closely resemble bars, it was clear we weren’t going away clear headed. They were keen that we drink, not taste but drink, at least a single hefty measure of each of their various products. Not only the range of mezcals from the Blanco to Anjo Gran Reserva but also the multitude of sickly sweet flavoured mezcal liqueurs. I did my best to be sensible but lunch was definitely required immediately after departing the distillery. We were fortunate enough to be offered more mezcal tastings at the buffet restaurant we went to. For various reasons that I can’t be bothered to explain here I managed to write proper tasting notes for these ones before I got around to writing the notes for the official El Rey bottlings. So to finish this post here are my notes for three assorted and interesting mezcals…

El Famoso. ‘Minero’ Blanco. 100% Agave. 40%. 1 litre.

Colour: None

Nose: Immediate strong notes of plastascene, brunt wash, acrylic, some very earth agave qualities, fresh tar and masses of medicinal hospital aromas. Gauze, floor cleaner, Listerine, antiseptic, mercurochrome, all kinds of medicinal aspects. I wouldn’t say that it’s complex, just intense and focused. It’s also very earthy and farmy, it doesn’t seem to have any of the saline coastal notes that can be found in the tequilas. Mashed potatoes, mustard seeds, motor oil and camphor. This has many similarities to peated new make Scottish spirit.

Palate: Sweet and earthy with more antiseptic notes. Also Euthymol Toothpaste, some green banana skins, burnt brown sugar and a very farmy style, cloying smokiness that sticks to the roof of your mouth. Big notes of gentian root, some mint and more thick oiliness.

Finish: The sweetness is short but the smoke and medicine flavours linger warmly for a long time.

Comments: A fascinating drink and definitely one to try if you like Gentian Eau De Vie. It would also be fascinating to compare to most peated new makes from Scotland.

Score: 70/100

Don Lucio Reposado. 100% agave. 38%. 75cl.

Colour: Pale straw

Nose: Imagine if you took a farm with all its manure, machinery and stables, smoked it for a few days and then mixed it into a smoothy, you might get something that smelled a little like this. This is extraordinarily rustic, stinky, oily, farmy, incredibly smoky and medicinal. A real earthbomb as it were, some green notes in there as well, quite vegetal and thick with aromas of salt, sandalwood, black pepper, peat oils and some curiously yeasty, autolytic notes at the back. This smells like it could be a very young but very good Islay malt. Further notes of margherita, cucmber and lime juice.

Palate: On the palate it is curiously subdued, it doesn’t live up to the intensity and character of the nose. The palate is thin and bland by comparison with some disappointing notes of butyric, cardboard, stale malt (???) and mushy peas. Not particularly inspiring and lacking much complexity. Given time it improves a little with some nice notes of mint but otherwise it is still a bit disappointing.

Finish: Decent length but unfortunately on the same flavours.

Comments: This was a bit unfortunate. The nose was fantastically exciting but the palate just didn’t deliver. Maybe Mezcal is better without age?

Score: 60/100

El Famoso Gusano. 100% agave. 40%. 1litre.

Colour: White wine

Nose: This is completely different, it smells more like a tequila with a huge initial saltiness, bags of preserved lemons, citrus oils, lemon wax, chocolate limes and thick vegetal cactus notes. It must have something to do with a mix of different species of agave in the mash which is the definition of a ‘Gusano’ mescal. Very earthy and rustic this one, a big departure from the others in that it is not as intensely smoky or medicinal. Those elements are still there but they play a more background role.

Palate: Big notes of soap and lime, literally like chewing a bar of citrus soap, but not in a bad way if that’s possible to imagine. Very oily and earthy still but also surprisingly fragrant. Some notes of creosote and tar begin to come through making it more classical in style. Camphor, hessian, grassy, green smoke notes, very unusual all round really. Quite a ‘difficult’ mescal I’d say, not that I’d really know mind you.

Finish: Long, lemony, grassy and even slightly mineraled. Fascinating.

Comments: It’s difficult to know what to say about a spirit like this let alone what to score it. It has some fascinating characteristics and seems to be quite different from other mescals I’ve tried, almost a perfect combo of tequila and mescal. It’s tricky to know what to say about a spirit that clearly flaunts characteristics that in a Scotch would be major flaws, I’m thinking the big soapiness for instance. Yet here it seems to work. I think most whisky drinkers won’t like things like this, you kind of need to recalibrate you taste buds to accept a different drink profile entirely. I think it’s good but, more importantly, I think it’s a fascinating drinking experience. They probably don’t make more rustic, old style spirit anywhere else in the world. (with the possible exception of certain Alsatian Eau De Vies).

Score: 75/100 (please take this with a massive spoonful of salt)

What comes to your mind when you think of mass produced alcohol, of big name brands and massive sellers? I hazard a guess that images of stainless steel, industrial size fermentors, vast column stills and cavernous warehouses would be quick to the fore of your mind. This is what I was expecting as we travelled to Jose Cuervo on the same afternoon as we left Tres Mujeres. However, I had just seen a hundred miles of stainless steel at Tres Mujeres, a supposedly small, traditional, handcraft minded distillery. So in retrospect it makes sense that the stereotype was again inverted as I arrived at the very beautiful Jose Cuervo distillery. You all know the name, it’s the only tequila that has a proud place in every liquorist, off license, wine merchant and supermarket the world over. It is the only one that has achieved global domination over the brand and image of ‘tequila’. Most dedicated off licenses stock a few others but to really find a good selection you need to dig seriously deep, go online or, better still, go to Mexico, so it is quite impressive that JC has managed to conquer the world in this category. I suppose the obvious point here is that it was a niche category that, 95% of the time is well served by a single brand, one brand was always going to fulfill this role and it just happened that JC came along at the right time with the right attitude to succeed. So, given its global nature, it was pleasantly surprising to find a very traditional distillery nestled between the shadows of ancient architecture. Perfect courtyards, pillared walls and stunningly kept buildings all reek of the vast profit that JC’s success has earned. It seems like a place where every aspect of execution, presentation and process has been very carefully considered. A distillery where practicality and method have been balanced by aesthetic necessity and image. We were treated first to one of these video presentations, proving that it is not only big Scottish distilleries that love them so much. This one was fairly decent in that it gave a good account of JC’s history, even if while doing so it managed to look like a low budget ITV historical reconstruction from the early nineties. There was also a very floaty woman who kept on appearing, inexplicably at random, wearing an extremely jazzy white dress and gazing at the camera with an expression that seemed to suggest either raging lust or blinding agony mixed with a good dose of deep confusion. All very perplexing really, thankfully it was fairly short and with that the tour was well underway.

The ancient ovens at Jose Cuervo.

We made our way through more utterly beautiful courtyards, bathed in colour, fresh flowers and beaming paint, past piles of agave pineapples and finally into the distillery where we looked first at the ovens. The quality of the agave fields that JC has was heavily emphasised to us but without seeing them (not to mention my lack of ability or experience in the area of agave assessment) then I cannot really say anything about the early stages of the agave harvest at JC, other than that it is carried out in the same traditional methods that all agaves are still harvested by. Much more interesting was the ovens they used. The ovens were numerous but clearly ancient and have long operated unchanged, apart from the external apparatus for removing and transporting the baked agave. The agave is baked for upwards of thirty hours before being disgorged and then fermented using a delicate strain of bakers yeast. It seems that the more active distillers yeast is rarely used in tequila production, another example that in terms of its attitude towards its base ingredient, tequila has more in common with French brandy production than with whisky. Once fermentation is completed it is filtered and sent to be distilled.

If the stills at Tres Mujeres were futuristic ambassadors from the age of stainless steel, the ones at Jose Cuervo were firmly rooted in a copper past. They were truly fascinating examples of how the still types can vary. Copper pots with copper columns directly on top, you could be forgiven that JC was that last bastion of Lomond Still distillation in the world. However on closer inspection I discovered that the columns on top of the pots were filled with curled copper tubing that the spirit had to pass through in order to complete its distillation, kind of like a reverse worm tub if that makes any sense. Once the spirit makes it through it arrives at another length of copper tube in the worm tub condensers that sit outside the building. The spirit undergoes this process twice and is distilled up to a strength of 55%, much lower than the 70% at Tres Mujeres but much more in line with the tequila standard style of lower distillate strengths. This is a fascinating and very old style approach to distillation compared to many Scottish distilleries. The difference in the final product is significant to that of Tres Mujeres, the more premium releases from JC are much earthier, oilier and ballsy but without the same complexity of TM. Considering that tequila undergoes much less aging by comparison to most other aged spirits, it is fascinating to see how the influence of fermentation and distillation is taken very seriously in relation to the final character of the product. The playing fields of fermentation, distillation and maturation are much more level with tequila than with most other spirits.

In the warehouse you could feel the temperature difference to a Scottish one, it was humid and much heavier, with no reek of dunnage or earth but more a dry, woody aroma. The types of oak filled, we were told, are American, French and even Canadian, I was surprised to see a row of ex sherry butts tucked away in the back of the warehouse later as we passed through. Unfortunately they had noticed me taking pictures by this point and asked me to stop due to the ‘high content of alcohol in the air, the electrics in a camera might set them off’. What utter horse shit! I’m sick of going round distilleries and being told not to take photographs, the idea that a camera could somehow trigger an ‘explosion’ by igniting alcohol vapors in the air is utterly laughable. We used to take tours round Ardbeg all the time, often the spirit safe would be lying open and people would take pictures (flash or not) inside it. I was once told by a reputable distiller that such notions were heath and safety madness, you could extinguish a cigarette in the bowl of an active spirit safe and never blow anything up, let alone with a camera. So, anyway, that’s the reason I don’t have a picture of sherry butts filled with tequila for you. However, interestingly enough I do have a shot of the pipes overhead in the warehouse spraying a fine mist of water over the casks. This was done once every ten or so minutes to try and regulate the moisture levels in the air and not let everything become too dry.

This is not a process that’s done at every distillery, so it’s interesting to see that JC consider it necessary to try and control their maturation environment, or at the very least arrest some of the heat’s effect on the maturation process. It is done to limit the evaporation of spirit through the wood, but I suspect that in doing so, it will also also influence the interactive effect inside the cask. The majority of these casks will not mature over five years of age, however when I asked about the oldest casks they had I was told that they certainly had some stock that was more than ten years in cask. Interestingly they also refill their casks at least seven times. This would make sense, especially if each fill is less than five years. All this only served to make me curious about what the effects of different levels of active wood would be on the tequila spirit over varying time frames. However I suspect I will have to wait quite some time before I can have that tasting, single cask tequilas are few and far between and they weren’t about to hand out cask samples willy nilly.

My overall impression of JC was that it was one of the very few distilleries I’d ever visited that genuinely married old style production techniques with modern attitudes to marketing, distribution and mass production. It is a distillery of undeniable beauty and, once you get past the standard bottlings, you will find tequilas of all ages to match that aesthetic beauty. I think perhaps you can visit all the smaller distilleries and producers in Tequila that you want but if you missed Jose Cuervo, you’d be denying yourself a big and important piece of the tequila jigsaw.