If tequila is king, raicilla is the queen Dry-baked agave gives this mezcal a distinctive flavor, writes John Pint about a visit to the makers of the artisanal Raicilla La Reina in Rancho Nuevo, Jalisco.

MEXICO LIFE If tequila is king, raicilla is the queen Dry-baked agave gives this mezcal a distinctive flavor, writes John Pint about a visit to the makers of the artisanal Raicilla La Reina in Rancho Nuevo, Jalisco.

Making raicilla at Rancho Nuevo: after heating the oven, the fire is extinguished and the piñas are thrown inside.

If tequila is king, raicilla is the queen: a visit to a rustic distillery in Jalisco

Dry-baked agave gives this mezcal a distinctive flavor

By John Pint

Friday, April 5, 2019

“Have you ever seen how they make raicilla, John?” asked my friend JP Mercado. Well, I had been told that raicilla was a kind of moonshine made in the mountains, but beyond that I knew nothing, so when JP offered to take me to a taberna (rustic distillery) where they make it, I signed up on the spot.

“And where is that taberna located?” I asked my friend.

“In a place called Rancho Nuevo, which is 70 kilometers east of Puerto Vallarta,” Mercado replied, but when he sent me the coordinates, I stared at my map of Jalisco in disbelief. Rancho Nuevo appeared to be situated right smack in the middle of a huge empty space — with no roads visible — identified only as Sierra Jolapa, a mountain range I had never heard of.

“Well, well,” I thought, “this already sounds interesting.”

Before heading for the taberna in the hills, I tried to learn what I could about raicilla.

JP Mercado with the Maximiliana agave.

I found out that the mezcal industry — according researchers Zizumbo and Colunga — was probably born in 1612 in the state of Colima when the conquistadores cut down all the coconut palms on the coast in an effort to eliminate the production of a distilled spirit called tuba or vino de cocos.

The thirsty population then turned to agaves. When the Spaniards eventually got around to taxing these spirits, local people came up with a tale to tell the tax collector: “We aren’t making our drink from the piña or agave heart (which was taxable) but from its root (raicilla)” — which, of course, is the very same thing.

Finally came the day for me to visit the raicilla taberna. Early one morning JP and his wife Ana picked me up. As we drove, Ana, who had grown up in that mysterious Sierra Jolapa, told me that while traveling around Mexico and the world, she would present new friends with a gift of raicilla, knowing they would surely never have heard of it.

“But everyone who tried it was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted and would want more.”

Eventually the owners of bars and hotels also began to ask the Mercados about this “vino del cerro” and they began to look into the question of permits and regulations that might allow the raicilla of Rancho Nuevo to be marketed commercially, as is tequila.

“Wait a minute!” I interjected. “Exactly what is the difference between raicilla and tequila?”

The distillery is nestled in the hills of the Sierra Jolapa.

JP told me I might as well add sotol, bacanora, tepemete and bingarrote to my list. All of these beverages, I found out, are distilled spirits made from the juice of a cooked agave, so all of them are mezcales (actually, this is incorrect. Sotol is made from a member of the asparagus family).

Tequila is made only from the blue agave, while raicilla can be made from any one of five agaves, and so on down the list.

To complicate things, territory comes into play here. The word tequila can only be used for blue agave spirits produced in Jalisco or parts of four other states. “The denomination of origin for raicilla was unclear up to very recently,” JP told me, “but now the product is protected and can only be made in Jalisco.

“Meanwhile, we have obtained federal, state and local permits to produce our own brand of raicilla, which is called La Reina, made only in Rancho Nuevo where we are now headed.”

From Guadalajara we drove west and then north, through ever higher hills covered with oaks and feathery pine trees, perhaps Lumholtz’s pine. Following steep, narrow dirt roads we skirted the edge of a deep valley bordered on the other side by gorgeous red cliffs.

At the end of a three-hour drive, we reached La Taberna de la Reina, situated alongside a brook bubbling with clear, clean, drinkable water.

Raicilla La Reina, “queen of mezcales.”

Here we were welcomed by the maestro of the taberna, Don Julio Topete Becerra, who carries on a tradition passed from father to son. Right from the spot where we stood, we could see every stage in the raicilla-making process.

The hillside above us was covered with Maximiliana agaves, which have very broad leaves. To my surprise and delight, I learned that these agaves come from seeds, not clones (as do tequila agaves), so the flowers are fertilized by bats, suggesting that every bottle of raicilla deserves a “bat-friendly” sticker.

After six to eight years, the agave is mature. Its pencas are removed (often with an axe) and the root is broken into several pieces. The next stage is cooking, which turned out a bit different from what I had seen at tequila distilleries.

The oven is made of adobe with walls half a meter thick. A hot fire is started inside the oven and allowed to burn for six hours. Once the oven walls are hot, the coals are pulled out with a long-handled rake and the chunks of piñaare thrown inside. Immediately, the two openings of the oven are closed with big blocks of adobe and sealed tightly with clay.

So the agave root is not steamed or smoked, but dry-baked, giving raicilla its own distinctive taste.

The most unusual procedure in making raicilla is the one that comes next. The sweet, juicy mezcal is not run through a crusher or under a stone wheel. Instead, it is placed in a long, hollowed-out tree trunk (oak) and mashed by hand using heavy wooden pounders with long handles.

This is back-breaking work and if you visit the place, they will dare you to try doing it for just five minutes.

Once the canoe-shaped trough is filled with juice, the gooey, fibrous mixture is removed using buckets and poured into wooden barrels for fermentation.

The next stage, as in tequila-making, is distillation. This is easy to understand at La Reina, where you can see the final product dripping from the end of a long copper tube, most of which is coiled inside a barrel filled with water.

The final stage of production is aging. Don Julio dipped into a barrel and I got my first taste of properly made raicilla. What a surprise!

“This is really good!” I exclaimed. “It can hold its own against any tequila, in my book.”

“Now you can see why Ana’s friends were always pestering her for more,” said JP. “In these hills, they say, if tequila is king, raicilla is the queen.”

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  Visitors try their hand at the machacado process.

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If you would like to know more, or to visit the taberna in Rancho Nuevo, just leave a message at Raicilla La Reina. You’ll discover that both JP Mercado and his wife Ana speak excellent English.

The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.

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Mexico City: State of the Stomach 2019 Culinary Backstreets They were making tlayudas, the signature Oaxacan dish, and already had a pair of traffic cops waiting in line. The smell of melting cheese and fresh ...

Mexico City: State of the Stomach 2019 Culinary Backstreets They were making tlayudas, the signature Oaxacan dish, and already had a pair of traffic cops waiting in line. The smell of melting cheese and fresh ...

On a recent weekend evening, we came across two young men fanning the flames of a small charcoal stove on the side of the road near Mercado San Juan in the Centro Histórico neighborhood of Mexico City.

They were making tlayudas, the signature Oaxacan dish, and already had a pair of traffic cops waiting in line. The smell of melting cheese and fresh tasajo, dried, smoked beef, was enough to convince us to join the queue.

A tlayuda is a wide, crunchy tortilla filled with meat, cheese and beans. The young men had brought the ingredients fresh from their hometown in Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte. Combining Oaxacan cheese; chewy, salty tasajo; avocado; and a thick layer of mashed beans, the tlayuda was simple and delicious.

This staple comfort food is one of many included under the catchall phrase “Vitamina T,” which refers to the many “T”-named foods – tlayudas, tortas, tacos, tamales and more – that provide a big nutritional bang for your buck. Some might guess, looking at the new restaurants opening left and right in tourist-packed neighborhoods like Roma and Condesa, many with names in English and menus boasting international dishes, that the prevalence and importance of “Vitamina T” foods, often consumed at small informal spots and impromptu street stands, are waning.

The story is never that simple in Mexico City, though. The city’s culinary identity is certainly changing, thanks in large part to the boom in tourism. Yet this is only the most recent factor to shape how Mexico City is eating; shifting demographics, urbanization, property development, international economic policies and the ebb and flow of crime in the city have all molded a dining scene that is, on the one hand, catering to foreign tastes while, on the other, elevating traditional Mexican cooking techniques and dishes that were considered old-fashioned. Like Mexico City itself, the Mexican capital’s food scene is caught between several opposing forces: convenience versus slow cooking, home-grown versus imported, tradition versus innovation.

For many years, Mexico City was hardly an international destination; starting in the 1970s, the federal government was more focused on promoting beach destinations like Acapulco, Cancun and Los Cabos. Moreover, the city’s reputation suffered through years of high crime in the 1980s and 1990s and the devastation of the 1985 earthquake, which leveled many parts of Mexico City. In the early 2000s, left-leaning mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (now Mexico’s president) invested heavily in the city’s historic downtown, attracting visitors who had long avoided the area. But another set back came with the drug war launched in 2006; Mexico City was largely removed from the violence, but headlines about bloody cartel confrontations around Mexico turned many tourists away.

During that time, those familiar with Mexico City’s world-class museums, restaurants and lively neighborhoods felt like they were in possession of a well-kept secret. But more and more people visiting the city realized it wasn’t the gritty, dangerous capital they had imagined. Recent accolades from The New York Times, National Geographic and a host of travel shows have only increased the hype. And Alfonso Cuarón’s new Oscar-award-winning film Roma (2018) and its breakout star Yalitza Aparicio are drawing even more attention to the capital and the eponymous neighborhood.

On the culinary side of things, high-end Mexico City restaurants like Pujol and Contramar have become must-visit destinations for visiting gastronauts and regular fixtures on annual regional and global “Best Restaurants” lists. Mexico City chefs have even become something of a bankable commodity: Pujol’s Enrique Olvera has opened a successful restaurant in New York, while two other chefs – Alam Méndez of the Oaxaca-inspired Pasillo de Humo and Gerardo Vázquez Lugo of Nicos, a family-run shrine to traditional Mexican cooking – have both been recruited to oversee the menu creation and opening of restaurants in the Washington, DC, area.

Will everyday Mexicans benefit from this resurgence of traditional Mexican cuisine and small-scale agriculture?

Meanwhile, the way tourists experience Mexico City is changing: Airbnb, Uber and TripAdvisor are taking much of the guess work out of visiting what used to be considered a destination for only the most intrepid travelers. Uber in particular has demystified the city for visitors who are hesitant to take the Metro or fear crime at the hands of taxi drivers (which had plummeted long before Uber came around).

The boom in Mexican tourism has both accompanied and helped push forward a renaissance of chefs exploring traditional ingredients and supporting the small-scale farmers who produce them. A number of newer initiatives like Maizajo and Yolcan now connect urban dwellers with rural producers – they are reestablishing ties that were severed due to a change in demographics and trade policy.

More specifically, the country experienced rapid urbanization in the second half of the 20th century, which means that most Mexicans live in cities nowadays. Traditions like nixtamalización, cooking corn with lime to grind it for tortillas, declined as more women entered the workforce and fewer families worked in agriculture.

Free trade was another blow to traditional Mexican cuisine. After NAFTA passed in 1994, cheap corn imports from the U.S. bankrupted Mexican small-scale farmers. As NAFTA re-negotiations unfolded in 2017, CUNY professors Alyshia Gálvez and Nicholas Freudenberg wrote in the Dallas Morning News about how the original deal changed Mexican diets:

“[Mexico] became a dumping ground for cheap U.S. soda, fast food and snacks formulated from the subsidized corn, sugar and soy crops that are the building blocks of the disease-promoting processed-food industry. As health-conscious Americans reduce their consumption of soda and fast food, Coca Cola, Kraft and McDonald’s have depended on eaters in Mexico and other middle-income nations to maintain revenue, following the path of the tobacco industry in recouping lost profits in developing nations.”

Gálvez’s new book, Eating NAFTA, elaborates on this argument. Mexico City’s population burgeoned throughout the 1990s as the countryside emptied out. People brought their food with them: in Mexico City you can find regional dishes from states Guerrero, Veracruz, Hidalgo and Puebla.

With such a wide variety of cuisines and a new interest in traditional dishes, as well as a growing population of tourists and locals interested in eating well, it might seem like a golden moment for Mexico City’s food scene. Yet the pressures are mounting.

First and foremost, recent spikes in crime are causing concern that Mexico City may no longer be a “bubble” protected from the violence devastating other parts of the country. While the drug war captures fewer headlines these days, 2018 had Mexico’s highest homicide rate on record (with most of that violence taking place outside of Mexico City). Still, during Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera’s term from 2012 to 2018, homicides went up 22 percent, a worrying trend that the municipal administration has promised to tackle.

Meanwhile, the city’s housing stock is strained, pushing rents up for both apartment hunters and restaurant owners. The rise of Airbnb has certainly made housing scare. Plus, young Mexicans in the capital region now prefer to live in Mexico City, after seeing their parents’ generation suffer through long commutes from far-flung suburban developments. Restaurants and bars popped up to cater to the influx of both locals and tourists. While rents shot up in neighborhoods like Roma, Condesa, Juarez and San Rafael, long-term residents and business owners were pushed out.

The southwest corner of the Central Alameda encapsulates these tensions between working-class Mexico City and high-end developments. Last year we profiled Tortas Robles in its fight to stay in the historic Trevi building. Just around the corner is Barrio Alameda, a recent development project that includes a high-end food court and boutique shops. Tortas Robles and its neighbor, Cafeteria Trevi, have managed to stay in the building so far. But future development in Centro Histórico threatens these multi-generational family businesses.

As Mexico City grapples with a changing urban landscape and the culinary world caters to the city’s new arrivals, the question now is whether everyday Mexicans will benefit from this resurgence of traditional Mexican cuisine and small-scale agriculture. Could native corn go the way of quinoa, which became unaffordable for many local consumers in Peru and Bolivia when it became trendy abroad?

Residents of Mexico City work long hours, suffer through endless commutes and pinch pennies as cost of living goes up and wages stagnant. Paying extra for locally grown food or making labor-intensive corn-based dishes isn’t always an option.

But Mexico City’s markets give us hope; throngs of shoppers still weave through the crowded rows of stalls at La Merced, Mercado Jamaica, the Central de Abastos and dozens of other markets and tianguis around the city. They pick out the freshest ingredients brought in from around the country to home-cook family recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation. If the top 10 lists and Yelp reviews get to be too much, it’s always worth ducking into a market and getting lost in the stalls until you stumble on something that looks good.

As for those two young men making tlayudas, we’ve passed by a few times in the weeks since but haven’t seen them or their makeshift food stand again. Like some of the best culinary experiences in Mexico City, it might never be repeated. Yet there’s one thing we’re certain of, despite the rapid changes taking place in Mexico City – there will always be another spot like theirs just around the corner.

Editor’s note: Traditionally we have published State of the Stomach pieces when beginning coverage of a new city, to provide an introduction to its food culture and how it shapes daily life. But as we dive deeper into the cities we work in, we’re taking stock of what’s changed, particularly as internal and external factors reshape both the culinary and urban landscape. So we thought it was worthwhile to reexamine how some of these cities are eating, which will inform our coverage going forward.

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