Cooking Lesson #1029: Old Fashioned Mezcal Sour

…from the Perspectives’ Happy Hour Bar

​How you doin’? I’ve never really known what to do with Mezcal except drink it straight. I used to think that Mezcal and Tequila were sort of interchangeable, they’re not!
 
Mezcal is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from any type of agave. Agaves or magueys are endemic to the Americas and found globally as ornamental plants. I had a backyard full of these plants and never knew what to do with them.
 
Native fermented drinks from the maguey plant, such as pulque, existed before the arrival of the Spanish, but the origin of mezcal is tied to the introduction of Filipino-type stills to New Spain by Filipino migrants in the late 1500s and early 1600s. These stills were initially used to make vino de coco (coconut liquor), but they were quickly adopted by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific coastal regions of Mexico and applied to the distillation of agave to make mezcal.
 
The small size of the Filipino-type stills made it easy to disassemble and move while evading colonial revenuers. The many well-like ancient graves cut into the rocks in the region were also co-opted as fermentation basins for agave juice. The small size of the stills also allowed distillers to produce agave liquor from a very small number of agave plants or even a single plant.
 
Mezcal is made from the heart of the agave plant, called the piña. The Agave genus is a member of the Agavoideae subfamily of the plant family which has almost 200 species. Mezcal is made from over 30 Agave species, in contrast with tequila, which is made from only with blue agave.
 
Traditionally, mezcal is handcrafted by small-scale producers. A village can have dozens of production houses, called fábricas or palenques, each using methods that have been passed down from generation to generation, some using the same techniques practiced 200 years ago. This is an important difference with tequila which is nowadays mostly produced industrially.
Is that a worm in my Mezcal? Well, kind of. Not all bottles of Mezcal contain a "worm" (actually it’s the larva of a moth, Comadia redtenbacheri, that can infest agave plants), but if added, it is added during the bottling process. There are conflicting stories as to why such a thing would be added. Some state that it is a marketing ploy. Others say that it’s there to prove that the mezcal is fit to drink, and still others believe that the larva is there to impart flavor. Similar added ingredients can be scorpions and baby snakes.
 
Prep time:  5 minutes
Yield:  1 strong cocktail
 
Ingredients 
2 ounces Mezcal Clásico
3⁄4 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
1/8 teaspoon lime zest
1⁄2 ounce agave syrup
1 large egg white (1/2 ounce pasteurized)
1 pinch sea salt
1 lime wedge for garnish
 
Directions

1. Pre-chill a martini or coup glass in a freezer.
2. Add all the ingredients in a mixing glass.
3. Dry Shake (without ice) to emulsify, allowing the egg white to foam.
4. Finely strain the cocktail into the prepared chilled glass.
5. Garnish with lime wedge.

ChefSecret:  Can you make this cocktail with tequila? Sure, you can, just use a good quality gold tequila like Margaritaville or Jose Cuervo Especial Gold.

Quip of the Day:  Q.  I told my therapist about my mezcal obsession. He said, “Sounds like you’ve got a bit of a drinking problem.” I said, “No, I’ve got a drinking solution!” 
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