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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A Volkswagen bus roadtrip: ‘Don’t turn on the air — we’ll never make it’ Passion for VW buses leads to Mexico City vintage tour service By Lydia Carey

A Mexico City VW bus fanatic offers roadtrips and even weddings in the iconic van.

A Volkswagen bus roadtrip: ‘Don’t turn on the air — we’ll never make it’

Passion for VW buses leads to Mexico City vintage tour service

By Lydia Carey

Monday, April 1, 2019

It’s strange the things that make us nostalgic. Ordinary things from the past suddenly feel magical looking back. For me it’s listening to records in my parents’ living room and having summer cook-outs; for Jorge Reich, it’s VW buses.

Jorge’s father bought a 1974 white and orange Volkswagen Hightop before he was born. He named it Matilda. The family had taken trips aboard a VW bus before, but this was the first time that they had their own.

It would begin a long obsession for Jorge’s father that trickled down into the psyche of his son and wouldn’t let him rest until he had his own Matildaalmost 40 years later.

Trips on the bus, in Mexico called a combi, were some of the happiest times for the Reich family. Jorge is particularly fond of reminiscing about their marathon trip to Quebec, Canada.

“It was the summer of 1984. I was eight years old and we traveled from Mexico to Quebec in 10 days. We visited Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Niagara Falls and then on the way back we went slower and saw New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and a bunch of the other cities in the U.S.”

Matilda 70’s VW van, called La Chata. JORGE REICH

“That trip changed my life. I remember loving the road so much. My dad would talk to me while he drove about what you needed to know to drive a combi – the air, how to pass, how to break with the motor. All the tricks.”

Today we are gliding down the highway in his own 1990 VW bus, a “luxury edition” when it came out because of the air conditioning.

“But 30-year-old air conditioning now? If I put it on we’ll never make it.”

Not that we need it. We are headed out of Mexico City on a bright, beautiful 24 C day, the everyday perfect weather of this part of Mexico. This is the fourth bus that Jorge has bought since he purchased his first in 2017.

She was a 1970 German Westy and he named her Matilda 70. Two others he sold at U.S. auto shows and the original Matilda is stored at his mom’s house for their yearly family camping trip. This bus, called La Chata, is what Jorge uses for weddings when he converts the bus into a mobile photo booth.

Despite all his projects, what he really wants is to get back on the road and so he’s decided to start taking tourists on vintage-style road trips in and around Mexico City — you bring your itinerary (or he can suggest one) and he’ll take care of the rest. We are taking the inaugural trip to the monarch butterfly sanctuary a few hours from here in Valle de Bravo.

I attest to the relaxation of having someone else drive and figure out the directions while I am free to just sit back and enjoy the scenery, and the bus is extremely comfortable for being 30 years old!

Part of the joy of sitting up front in a VW bus is that you have this incredible wide-angle view of the countryside. We pass miles of sunflowers with their heads turned to the sun, acres of flower greenhouses growing cut flowers for the Mexico City market, and loop through pine forests with hushed, needle-covered floors, dappled in sunlight.

The Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary is located about 20 minutes from Valle de Bravo, a small Pueblo Mágico often used as weekend getawayby residents of the capital. In January, February and March the monarchs arrive after their own three-month “roadtrip” from Canada and the northern United States.

Their journey has gotten harder as time goes on. Destruction of habitat along the way and in Mexico due to illegal logging and farming, the use of pesticide-resistant GMO crops (meaning farmers can more easily spray for weeds like milkweed, the main food source of monarch caterpillars), and rising global temperatures that force butterflies farther north in the summer, make their already life-risking journey even harder.

The 700 members of the San Mateo Almomoloa community that run Pierda Herrada have the responsibility of ensuring that at least in the sanctuary, no one is doing anything that would threaten these precious visitors.

Our local guide tells us as we hike the two kilometers to the top of the sanctuary that the butterflies travel around 200 kilometers a day as they fly from Canada to Mexico starting in September. The generation that we are about to see lives the longest (about eight to nine months) in order to make the entire trip from Canada to Mexico and back to Texas to lay their eggs.

A Matilda 70 VW wedding.JORGE REICH

One-third of the group will die along the way from the rain and smog and colliding with vehicles. Once they arrive they spend three months recovering, drinking water, feeding on flowers and resting. In February they begin to mate.

At the top of the trail the scene is undescribable. Butterflies are everywhere, convulsing on the ground in the throes of mating, alighting on the mountain wildflower for a sip of nectar and once in a while, when something spooks them, flying up en masse, covering the sun in a blanket of orange.

Monarchs have been taking this trip for centuries and follow an ancient path to their wintering sites each year. Because generations die throughout travel, their directional precision is not something that is taught to children by parents, it’s something instinctual in their very fiber.

Scientists still don’t know exactly how they do it but believe that it has something to do with the magnetic pull of the earth. Ciro, our guide, says that some believe they leave a residue from their feelers that helps the next generation find their way.

No one knows, but each year they majestically arrived to huddle up in two hectares of forest outside Valle de Bravo.

While the butterflies themselves are not considered endangered, their migration most definitely is. They are one of the world’s great pollinators, especially because certain flowers require the long proboscis of the butterfly in order to be pollinated.

A complex web of ecological interdependence means that the loss of the butterflies could have frightening consequences for many species. These butterflies will also become a thing of nostalgic memory if we don’t protect them.

As we get back on the road with our dust-covered feet and legs, Jorge slows the bus down even further to get a look at the last lingering orange and black wings floating across our path. I wish we could travel alongside them on their cross-continental trip.

We silently wish them well on their journey and continue on with ours.

Lydia Carey is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.

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