A mezcal musing for Cinco de Mayo, originally published in print by Food & Dining Magazine (Spring 2017; Vol. 55). It seems John Carlos White was testing me to see if my range extended beyond beer — but I was delighted to discover this noblest of spirits.
Text follows the issuu link. For the latest about the heavenly mezcal I sipped nine years ago, visit Mezcal Mala Idea.
Mezcal: Tasting Mexico By the Kiss
Mezcal won’t tell you everything about Mexico, but you’ll be in a far better mood to learn more
“Mezcal,” said the Consul. The main barroom of the Farolito was deserted. From a mirror behind the bar, that also reflected the door open to the square, his face silently glared at him, with stern, familiar foreboding.
I’ve never been to Mexico, not even once, but it’s impossible to hear the word mezcal without thinking about Geoffrey Firmin, known informally as the Consul, the central figure in “Under the Volcano,” Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 literary masterpiece.
The novel takes place in the city of Quauhnahuac, a rendering of Cuernavaca, where Lowry briefly lived in the late 1930s. Lowry was a talented, troubled, and sadly alcoholic Englishman, but in spite of his self-inflicted debilities – perhaps because of them – he possessed a keen, detailed writer’s eye for the physical and cultural landscapes he experienced in Mexico.
The Consul, Lowry’s fictional doppelgänger, devotes his last hours on earth to wandering Quauhnahuac’s cantinas during the annual Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead:
And now he saw them, smelt them, all, from the very beginning—bottles, bottles, bottles, and glasses, glasses, glasses, of bitter, of Dubonnet, of Falstaff, Rye, Johnny Walker, Vieux Whiskey blanc Canadien, the apéritifs, the digestifs, the demis, the dobles, the noch ein Herr Obers, the et glas Araks, the tusen taks, the bottles, the bottles, the beautiful bottles of tequila, and the gourds, gourds, gourds, the millions of gourds of beautiful mezcal.
When I read “Under the Volcano” just after college, it marked the first time I’d ever heard of mezcal, the traditional Mexican spirit distilled from agave. Inspired by the novel, a friend and I determined to conduct field research — for purely academic reasons, of course. We proceeded to a nearby package store, and a shelf filled with cheap mass-market tequila and just one solitary bottle identified...Read more
