The Golden Age Of Agave

An exclusive excerpt from Mezcal and Tequila Cocktails: Mixed Drinks for the Golden Age of Agave, published by Ten Speed Press

- By Robert Simonson

For much of the 20th century, tequila was known more for shots than mixing. You didn’t savor it; you threw it back. As for mezcal cocktails, well, there were none to speak of. Hell, in the United States market, there was almost no mezcal. And what mezcal there was—that forbidding bottle with the worm in it—wasn’t very good and was little understood by the bartenders who poured it and the few drinkers who ordered it. If tequila was a dare you took up in a bar, and regretted the morning after, mezcal was a double dog dare, a journey into the truly unknown.

Tequila’s and mezcal’s reputations today could not be more different. The spirits have enjoyed a complete turnaround in both status and popularity. In the 1920s, when Prohibition was in effect, Americans began traveling south of the border to drink agave spirits because they couldn’t lay their hands on anything alcoholic at home. Today, Americans drink them out of preference. Consumers’ eyes have been opened to the spirits’ historical and artisanal heritage, and that they are the products of centuries of tradition and craftsmanship.

Their newly elevated status reflects the endless agricultural variety of the hearty agave plant, from which both tequila and mezcal are derived, and their terroir, not to mention the inimitable touch of the tequileros and mezcaleros who create the liquors, many of whom are following family practices that go back generations. The distillates have finally joined other spirits commonly labeled with adjectives such as “elegant,” “complex,” and—that favorite term of marketers— “premium.”