How to taste mezcal respectfully

Mezcal is not a shot. It is agriculture, family and time — a drink that takes eight, sometimes twenty-five years to make before anyone lights the fire. If your first experience of it was a rushed tasting at a bar, the palenques of the Tlacolula valley will change your mind in a single morning.

A palenque is a family distillery, usually a few rows of agave, an earthen oven, a stone mill and copper stills. There is no rush here. The agave hearts roast underground for three to five days over oak and river stones, and the whole village smells of sweet smoke before a single drop is distilled.

When the maestro mezcalero pours, notice how he does it — from a height, in a thin stream, so the pearls of bubbles form on the surface. Those perlas tell him the alcohol content better than any instrument. Sip slowly, a kiss of mezcal at a time. Let it sit on your tongue. The first sip is smoke; the second is the agave itself; the third is where you start to taste the hills it grew in.

Respectful tasting means asking questions. Which agave is this — espadín, tobalá, tepeztate? Was it wild or cultivated? How long did it grow? A wild tobalá can take more than a decade to mature, which is why it costs what it costs, and why a good mezcalero will never waste a drop of it.

Come hungry for the stories more than the drink. The best palenque visits end at a family table, with memelas, salsa and the people who made what is in your cup. That is what mezcal has always been for: not a party, but a way of sitting together.