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!Tequila! A Natural and Cultural History

Natural History, Nov, 2004 by Laurence A. Marschall

!Tequila! A Natural and Cultural History by Ana G. Valenzuela-Zapata and Gary Paul Nabhan University of Arizona Press, 2004; $29.95 cloth, $14.95 paper

Agave, a genus of hardy succulent plants that dot the landscape from the Grand Canyon to Guatemala, derives its scientific name from the Greek word agaue ("illustratious" or "noble"). Yet centuries before Europeans first encountered the plant, during the conquest of Mexico, the indigenous hunter-gatherers of the region had already come to admire its virtues. Trimming its forbidding flight wig of spiny leaves, they discovered a sweet, nutritious bulb of plant material, called a bola, at the base of the stem. The native Mexicans roasted the ball, which resembles a giant pineapple, for several days among slow-burning coals. The roasted bola could also be left to ferment, yielding a mildly alcoholic drink known as mescal crudo.

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The most familiar modern descendant of the drink is tequila, a colorless liquor distilled from roasted, fermented blue agaves often given a little extra kick by adding sugar to the mash. For more than a century the plant has been cultivated principally ill the Mexican state of Jalisco, with production centered around a town a few dozen miles northwest of Guadalajara. Tequila--for that is the name of the town--has become synonymous with the purest, strongest form of the drink.

Many millions of agave plants grow today in Jalisco's volcanic soil, and much of the tequila produced there each year is exported to the United State and Europe, where it frequently winds up in such festive drinks as the margarita.

The worldwide popularity of tequila is a quite recent phenomenon. For many years the crystal fluid, sometimes distilled to more than l00 proof. was reckoned as nothing but a cheap high for boozing cowboys. But in the past few decades, as globalization has brought Tex-Mex and other spicy foods to palates accustomed to more timid fare, tequila has gamed legitimacy and even sophistication. To slake the growing thirst for the stuff, traditional agricultural practices have become industrialized, turning family farms into giant conglomerates.

As tequila flowed re the masses, a market for specialty formulas of the liquor took form. Market-savvy growers lavished care on the best agave plants, carefully controlling distillation, using only natural agave sugars in the fermentation, and aging the product trader tightly controlled conditions. "Artisan" batches of the best tequila began to be sold in designer bottles, appealing to a coterie of tequila connoisseurs who savor the drink undiluted, in small shots. A true tequila aficionado (dubbed a "tequilleur" by the authors) can argue the merits of agaves from the Los Altos region versus those from the zona centro with the intensity of a scotch drinker defending the superiority of a particular brand of single malt. Buoyed by the market for mavens, boutique bottles of the finest tequila can run as high as a couple of thousand dollars. Some restaurants specialize in the stuff--I visited one in San Diego several years ago that offers literally hundreds of brands of fine tequila.

Ana G. Valenzuela-Zapata and Gary Paul Nabhan, two respected experts on agave agriculture, have produced a scholarly yet entertaining guide to the history and husbandry of this phenomenal beverage. They devote an entire chapter to analyzing the problems associated with Jalisco's single-crop agriculture, which have led to devastating agave blights. They provide a lengthy bibliography and an illustrated guide to the various agave cultivars, along with copious reference note in the text. But they also give lucid accounts of traditional methods of cultivation, along with stories from the modern-day jimadores, harvesters who tradition ally wield a jaivica, or axelike tool for trimming and uprooting agave bolas. For most readers, tequila may be better sipped than studied. But since a little tequila goes a long way, this book call provide au alternate, albeit less intoxicating, form of pleasure. (See also www.ianchadwick.com/tequila/links.html for more lore and links about tequila.)

LAURENCE A. MARSHALL, author of The Supernova Story, is the W.K.T. Sahm professor of physics as Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, and director of Project CLEA, which produces widely used simulation software for education in astronomy.

!Tequila! A Natural and Cultural History

Natural History, Nov, 2004 by Laurence A. Marschall

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