2023-12-25 12:00:04
Sosima Olivera, member of a collective that manages a mezcal factory, in an agave espadin field in Villa Sola de Vega, in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, July 26, 2022. PEDRO PARDO / AFP
On the sides of the hills, in rocky fields, well aligned and without wild grasses, they are now legion in the Mexican countryside: agaves, these majestic succulent plants, native to Mesoamerica, whose fruit contains a nectar which, fermented then distilled, becomes tequila or mezcal, the two emblematic strong alcohols of the country.
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Until the 1990s, you had to climb in the woods or wander the deserts to see them. Agave was wild and grew freely among trees and cacti. The peasants always had them in their fields, between the corn and the beans, to distill mezcal in rudimentary stills, which was offered more than it was sold. Only the Tequila region, in the state of Jalisco, already had intensive agave monocultures to produce tequila, so popular on the American market.
But since mezcal has become so much sought after, the landscape of the Mexican countryside has been turned upside down. In 2022, Mexico produced 14.5 million liters, exported to eighty-one countries, compared to 1.4 million in 2014. The number of producers thus increased from 3,000 ten years ago to more 25,000 today. “This commercial success has blinded producers to the ecological damage of the activity. And the creation of a controlled designation of origin has not changed anything: both the surface area and the territorial extension have only increased”explains José Blancas Vazquez, ethnobiologist at the University of Cuernavaca (Morelos).
In 1994, Mexico created this name to regulate the sale: originally, it was limited to five states, including that of Oaxaca, still responsible for more than 90% of production. To be able to put the word “mezcal” on their bottles, Mexican states must simply demonstrate that the production is a local tradition. “It’s not very difficult, mezcal is produced in all the countryside of the country and always has been”, adds the ethnobiology professor.
“Much more profitable”
In a few years, eleven states obtained the denomination, before the Mexican Mezcal Quality Regulatory Council (Comarca) took the deterioration of quality to court and put the brakes on this expansion. Except that the absence of a name in no way prevents agave plantations from proliferating. This is the case in the state of Morelos, south of Mexico City, which still has no name, but there are more and more agaves.
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