Spring 2021 Tour Update

March 15, 2021

Dear friends of Experience Agave,

What a year it has been. The human losses have been incalculable, and the economic ones staggering. Experience Agave has been shut down de facto since the second week of March, 2020. Luckily, our entire team has weathered the storm and is doing well. With increasingly positive vaccine news, we are now beginning to plan for the resumption of mezcal and tequila tours.

As always, our priority remains maintaining the health and safety of our team, guests, and partners at distilleries, hotels, restaurants and other venues throughout Mexico.

Both our team members and our partners are eager to resume hosting guests who are willing to take reasonable precautions. For the time being, we will be working exclusively with guests who have been vaccinated against COVID, have had it and recovered, or quarantine for ten days upon arrival in Guadalajara or Oaxaca.

We are currently working with such guests on private mezcal and tequila tours, and are cautiously optimistic about the resumption of four-day group tours in the fall. We ask for your patience as we revise our pricing structure internally and with our providers — please remember all of us have been shut down for a year!

The public health situation in Mexico and abroad changes constantly, as does our knowledge about the virus and best practices. We are committed to staying abreast of information as it emerges, and will continue to be completely flexible in offering refunds for any cancellations resulting from the pandemic. We are immensely grateful for the patience of all our clients who have had to put travel plans on hold, and continue to be aware of the need for doing so.

We look forward to seeing you again in Mexico relatively soon. If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know

Sincerely, 
Clayton J. Szczech
Founder, Experience Agave

2020 Tour Update

Agave Landscape

July 20, 2020

Dear friends of Experience Agave,

We are currently working with a public health consultant and our partner distilleries, hotels, and transportation providers to ensure that when our tours resume, Experience Agave will have effective safety protocols built into every aspect of our tours. We are preparing to implement social distancing, temperature checks, mask usage, frequent sanitization of surfaces, al fresco meals, and other “best practices.” We are confident that will be ready to host you in safety and style when the time comes. 

Nevertheless, as both the United States and Mexico struggle to contain the novel coronavirus, we have decided that we will not be resuming public tours for the remainder of 2020. This includes the public versions of our Valley of Tequila Four-Day Experience, Tequila Highlands Four-Day Experience, Valley of Tequila Day Tour, and our Mezcal Pechuga Camp. We will not be offering a public Day of the Dead Tequila Experience this year either.

Our priority remains maintaining the health and safety of our team, guests, and hosts at distilleries, hotels, restaurants and other venues throughout Mexico. We are particularly concerned with the possibility of bringing COVID-19 from hotspots in the US to rural areas in Mexico that have been successful in keeping the virus out of their communities. 

We will continue to accept reservations for private tequila and mezcal tours with start dates in September and later. These tours will be contingent upon the circumstances on the ground in both Mexico and the United States, and we will continue refund 100% of any payments towards tours that are cancelled due to the pandemic. 

We are all in this together, and we sincerely look forward to seeing you again in Mexico. If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know

Sincerely, 
Clayton J. Szczech
Founder, Experience Agave

Mezcal’s meteoric rise continues, but not all industry insiders are ready to toast (The Guardian, October 2016)

“Mezcal, tequila’s stronger and smokier relative, has become a staple spirit in trendy bars across Mexico and the United States in recent years, and the agave-based drink has inevitably attracted the interest of global alcohol giants. In the process local growers are worried a unique spirit is under threat…

Mezcal has been made for centuries in 26 of Mexico’s 32 states, but the DO [denomination of origin] limits production to just nine states. Distillers from other areas have expressed outrage over NOM-199, a new regulation proposed by the government and industry giants including Diageo and Pernod Ricard, that would have forced them to label their products as “komil” — an obscure indigenous word meaning “intoxicating drink” understood by almost nobody in Mexico.

A revised proposal would have them use “aguardiente de agave” – meaning agave firewater – instead of “destilado de agave”, the more literal name currently in use. Agave spirits expert Clayton Szczech said that while preferable to “komil”, the word “aguardiente” still has “a pejorative connotation that makes people think of cheap rum and seems designed to taint these products in the marketplace.'”

Click here to read the original article in its entirety.

7 Unique Group Tours in Mexico (Travel Age West, September 2016)

“Designed by owner Clayton Szczech as ‘group tours for people who don’t do group tours,’ Experience Tequila offers hands-on tours around Mexico’s eponymous region to acquaint guests with the spirit. Clients will learn about all the parts of the tequila production process, from agave cultivation and harvesting to distilling. Guests will also imbibe in the private tasting rooms of some of the oldest tequileros (tequila experts) in the world.”

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The Rise of Mezcal: Great for Cocktails, Better for Oaxaca (AFAR Magazine, April 2016)

“Oaxaca is the second-poorest state in Mexico and its most indigenous, two braided facts that owe much to geography. When the Spanish plowed through in the 16th century, they found a rugged terrain dividing Oaxaca into isolated village-states. In some ways that’s still the case: Many communities have maintained their own dialects, their own traditions—and yes, their own mezcals.

So how do you penetrate the state’s 36,000 square miles of god-knows-how-many tiny producers? I had been led here by two guys from the United States—my spirit guides, if you will. [Experience Mezcal founder] Clayton Szczech is a serious fellow with a minor pompadour and dark, skeptical eyes. When he was younger, a career test predicted he’d grow up to become a podiatrist or an undertaker. Instead Clayton moved to Mexico to lead tequila and mezcal tours for the similarly obsessed…

…I didn’t want a cursory tour of all god-knows-how-many distilleries. I wanted to see one—to zero in on a single family at the center of these massive changes. To Max and Clayton it was a no-brainer. The next morning we’d drive out to the village of Santa Catarina Minas.”

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Blue Agave Endangered by Highlands Snow

Frozen Blue Agave at La Altena in Arandas Jalisco

Blue Agave Endangered by Highlands Snow

by Clayton J. Szczech, March 11, 2016

Residents of Jalisco’s Highlands region awoke Thursday to a substantial blanket of snow and ice covering the ground and local crops, including the emblematic Highland blue agaves. Online social media quickly filled with stunning and beautiful images, and alteños young and old took advantage of the novel opportunity to make snowmen and snow angels – activities they usually only see in foreign movies.

Those younger than about 25 years had never seen snow locally before. Their parents, however, easily recalled the winter of 1997, when a similar winter blizzard brought snow to the region for the first time in a century. That literal storm was an early element in the metaphorical perfect storm that created the severe shortage and crisis in the blue agave industry in the early 2000s. As the snow and ice continue to melt today, agaveros, tequileros and observers throughout the region are holding their breath, waiting to see how bad the damage will be.

Frozen Agave in Los Altos de Jalisco
Photo courtesy Federación Jalisco Internacional.

The blue agave has evolved for tens of thousands of years to survive extremes of heat and aridity. It is not native to the Jalisco Highlands, where it began to be planted only around the turn on the 20th century. The plants do not easily bear extended cold snaps, much less freezes like this. Extended low temperatures will “burn” the agaves’ tissues. Sugar content, necessary for Tequila production, can plummet. Agaves two years old and younger are particularly vulnerable, particularly if the cogollo (the top center portion of the plant, where new leaves emerge) is frozen.

 

Today I spoke with Dr. Adolfo Murillo, a Highlands native, organic agave farmer and owner of Tequila Alquimia, about what they’re seeing on their agave ranch in Agua Negra, on the outskirts of Arandas.

“Luckily for us, our fields are on the fringes of the state of Jalisco [near the Guanajuato border], where we get less rainfall in any given year. It turns out we also got less snow, “ said Murillo. “I’ve always said that the layout of the fields is very important. Agaves should be planted on a slope for good drainage, as ours are. Also, the slope should be toward the morning sun, so the agaves are warmed since early in the morning on cold mornings. Again by luck, in Agua Negra the sun began to shine early in the morning, so the snow that had fallen on our agave was melted off fairly quickly, and the agaves do not appear to have sustained any damage.”

Dr. Murillo explains that it doesn’t take long to assess the damage. Plants that have been sufficiently frozen will begin to wilt as they thaw, eventually drying out and rotting.

Industry veteran and Selección ArteNOM owner Jake Lustig remembers 1997 and the ensuing crisis period well. That freeze, and the ensuing vulnerability of the agaves to a variety of pests led to “widespread consolidation and surrendering of Mexico’s national spirit to multi-national conglomerates earning their capital in Tennessee whiskey, Puerto Rican rum or French vodka, who could sustain agave price fluctuations. Some folks without that ‘diversification’ went bankrupt and closed or sold out,” according to Lustig.

Jake Lustig and Enrique Fonseca
Jake Lustig and master distiller Enrique Fonseca. Photo courtesy Jake Lustig.

As the whole world begins to grapple with the reality of accelerated climate change, the Tequila industry will not be an exception. Dr. Murillo points out that this snowstorm is no fluke, but rather the latest incident in years of changing regional weather patterns including freezing temperatures as early as October, sporadic and unpredictable rain, and a general breakdown in the formerly predictable annual weather pattern of warm temperatures and near daily rain from July to September.

We should know a lot more about the severity of the damage to the agave crop in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, you can be sure that thousands throughout Jalisco will be praying that the damage is light. Jake Lustig will be among them, signing off a recent message with this: “Let’s light a candle and hope that global warming trends pardon Mexico on this cycle and we don’t experience such dramatic losses.”

For continued updates on this situation, and all aspects of Tequila, sign up for our newsletter in the upper right hand margin of this page. Cover photo courtesy of Jenny Camarena.

Opposition to NOM 199 – An Update

As reported here in December, the Mexican Secretariat of the Economy has proposed legislation – NOM 199 – that could extinguish traditional mezcal production in areas outside of the Denomination of Origin (DO) regions. While presented as an effort to increase consumer protection, these rule changes would in fact result in less clarity for consumers. Non-DO producers would be forced to call their products “Komil” – a nonsense term with no history or modern day context – and they would be prohibited from stating that their spirits are made from 100% agave.Opposition to NOM 199

As expected, mezcal producers and their allies in academia, the spirits industry and the consumer sector have rallied opposition to this absurd and unjust proposal.

There are at least three places to register your opposition to NOM 199. The Tequila Interchange Project (TIP) has created an English-language petition which will be presented to the Mexican government. Spanish speakers can register their protest directly with the Mexican government here. Mezonte’s Pedro Jiménez also created a petition that you can add your name to.

Pedro also created this video that clearly illustrates the absurdity and injustice of NOM 199.

[vimeo_video id=152913439 width=460 height=285]

The Latest Affront To Traditional Mezcal: NOM 199

The Latest Affront To Traditional Mezcal:  NOM 199

by Clayton J. Szczech, December 4, 2015

Half of Mexico’s population lives in poverty, and yet the country’s Secretary of the Economy is making it a priority to clarify the definitions of frozen shots and Slivovitz. No, really. Oh yeah, and at the same time, renew its attempts to further marginalize small and traditional producers of mezcals and other regional spirits to the benefit of huge industrial producers.

The proposed legislation in question (PROY-NOM-199-SCFI-2015– we’ll just call it NOM 199) was published on November 25, though most of us in the agave and spirits world became aware of it thanks to David Suro raising the alarm online on December 2. The omnibus proposal would define and regulate all alcoholic beverages – domestic and imported – sold commercially in Mexico. It was created with the participation of the Tequila Regulatory Council, the National Chamber of the Tequila Industry, the Mezcal Regulatory Council, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, and Mexico’s two beer giants (note that this doesn’t necessarily mean that any one of them endorse the final document in its entirety).

The document’s preamble cites consumer protection as the goal of NOM 199. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the same argument was claimed for 2012’s NOM 186 revision, which would have severely restricted and marginalized the production of many of Mexico’s traditional regional spirits. Ultimately, PROFECO (Mexico’s federal consumer protection agency) came out against that proposal. A coalition of small producers, academics, and advocates from the worldwide bar industry (spearheaded by the Tequila Interchange Project – TIP) ultimately defeated that proposal, and a related one that would have trademarked the word “agave.”

In the two short days since the proposal came to light online, forces are already mustering to defeat it. I’ve spent the better part of that time analyzing the document and gathering various perspectives in an attempt to summarize its contents in English. All English translations of the original text are my own.

While Mexican legal documents are typically Byzantine, this one is truly bizarre. Content aside, as a proposal it’s pretty incoherent, and in fact its many detractors suspect it was crafted to be deliberately confusing. Whether that’s the case, or whether it was simply the unfortunate result of writing by committee, it reads like a C-student regurgitating everything he thinks he knows about booze for an essay exam he crammed for the night before. But what it actually says is even worse.

‘¿Que?’ is for Komil

Tequila, mezcal, pulque, Bacanora, sotol, raicilla, charanda, and Comiteco are among the traditional Mexican beverages classified in the document, as is something called “Komil.” A Náhuatl (Aztec) word for “alcoholic beverage,” not a single person I spoke with this week – anthropologists, mezcal researchers, industry leaders – had ever heard the term. It was apparently plucked from a book by the backers of this proposal as an ahistorical dumping ground for agave distillates outside of any Denomination of Origin (DO) – spirits that traditionalists regards as mezcals that have been excluded from the DO.

“Komil” is defined as agave distillates (with as little as 51% agave!) from outside any DO region, having 32-55% ABV. Crucially, its producers would not be able to “make reference to plant varieties recognized in any Denomination of Origin” on their label or in any commercial material. In plain language, that means producers would be prohibited from using the words “agave” or “maguey.” This is that earlier attempt to trademark the word “agave,” which made its backers an international laughingstock, reborn. Or as one person remarked online – “zombie NOM 186.”

This would be disastrous for producers of, for example, mezcal in the state of Mexico, which is outside of any DO. Producers, currently forced to sell their mezcal as agave distillate, would instead have to sell “Komil” – something nobody has ever heard of – and would not be allowed to mention that it is made from agave. But there is also a permissive side to this that is at least as frightening. A global spirits giant could immediately set up a massive industrial facility, in any non-DO region, and produce a 51% mixto “Komil,” which would be exponentially cheaper, though commercially indistinguishable from the traditional juice. It’s easy to imagine the small producers driven entirely out of the marketplace, while the big guys introduce a “new traditional Mexican spirit” to the global marketplace.

Raicilla, Comiteco, and Cocktails

Although there are troublesome details throughout the classifications of beverage categories, the cases of raicilla, Comiteco and cocktails deserve special mention.

Raicilla is a traditional mezcal of Jalisco, made primarily in the northern mountains between Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, and the coastal range from Vallarta southward. It does not currently have Denomination of Origin status. The proposal would allow raicilla to be produced anywhere in the states of Jalisco and Nayarit, and allow the use of any agave varietal besides the tequilana. Pedro Jiménez, one of Mexico’s best known advocates for traditional mezcal, works closely with traditional raicilla producers in western Jalisco. He calls the proposal “the ultimate hypocrisy” in that it claims consumer protection as its goal, but will ultimately confuse and even deceive consumers with its hodge-podge of watered down, bastardized and made-up categories. “Not only that – it’s a total slap in the face, a denial of the human rights of traditional mezcal producers to work and practice their culture.”

In the classification of raicilla, other than stating the agave must be both mature and cooked, absolutely no production methods are mentioned or excluded. So, similar to the “Komil” example above, traditional producers could be forced into competition with “raicillas” made with autoclaves, chemical accelerants and column stills in, say, Tepic – far outside the actual raicilla region. Other traditional mezcaleros in Jalisco would also be forced to call their product “raicilla,” contrary to their unique history and traditions.

Comiteco is a traditional spirit made from pulque and sugar cane in the region around Comitán, Chiapas. The proposal, in defining Comiteco, makes no mention of any specific region, or of pulque. It says that Comiteco must be made from at least 70% “Maguey Comiteco” and some cane-based sugar source. No methods of production are mentioned or excluded. Here again, we can easily imagine a scenario in which this regional specialty has its tradition robbed with the introduction of “Comiteco” made with diffusers (chemical hydrolysis) in Mexico City or Cancún.

The proposal also defines cocktails, presumably for both ready-to-drink and on-premise consumption. The highlight? “Cocktails with mezcal” (for example) could have as little 25% of their alcohol content be mezcal! So your next mezcal margarita at the hotel bar might contain as little as 0.5 ounce mezcal and 1.5 ounces cane liquor (which itself is made from only 51% sugar cane, as defined elsewhere in the proposal), and the establishment would have no obligation to disclose that fact.

Although the proposal addresses pulque, Bacanora, sotol, raicilla, charanda, and Comiteco, not a single producer of these beverages was involved in the meetings where it was created.

Wake Up, It Gets Worse!

The majority of the proposal consists of a seemingly endless list of beverage types, from “anisette” to “vino.” If it weren’t for the unintentionally humorous errors, this litany could easily put you to sleep. Which may be intentional, since some of the most onerous stuff is buried toward the end, in Section 12, under the dry heading “National Products.”

This section requires producers of all alcoholic beverages to have their raw material and production inspected and certified, at their own expense. While at first blush this may seem reasonable, and is no different from the current practice for Tequila and certified mezcals, the reality here is quite different. There currently are no inspectors for products like sotol, raicilla, and other regional spirits, not to mention that few producers could afford such a luxury in the high-poverty regions where some of the best spirits are made.

Reflecting a further disconnect from the daily reality of average Mexicans, the proposal would require producers to produce complex and expensive financial records (facturas) for the purchase of their raw material. No mention is made of producers who grow or wild harvest their own agave, sotol or cane.

The CRM Perspective

The Mezcal Regulatory Council (CRM) participated in the creation of NOM 199, which seems to fly in the face of its recent proposed revisions to mezcal’s NOM 070. The CRM’s proposal was crafted over a year’s worth of meetings with mezcal producers from throughout the current DO, and seeks to officially recognize artisanal and traditional methods of production. NOM 199, on the other hand, seems oblivious at best (and utterly disdainful at worst) to tradition, and was created by a group whose vast majority was large Tequila producers (even an international Scotch whisky association was excluded – which is reflected in the many errors in the whisk(e)y section).

CRM President Dr. Hipócrates Nolasco calls the proposal “incomplete – something like an index.” He points out that producers weren’t able to make the trip to Mexico City, and insists that the CRM did its best to “defend mezcal, defend raicilla, defend Comiteco, defend pulque.” It is noteworthy that mezcal is the one beverage category defined simply by a reference to its own Norm – the result of Nolasco’s desire to keep this group from meddling in the current reform process. While acknowledging the many flaws and incoherencies of the document, he sees it as a necessary first step in regulating all alcoholic beverages in Mexico – reportedly 40% of which are counterfeit. “The project is well intentioned, but we have many criticisms,” he concluded.

What is Next?

The proposal has been submitted by the Mexican Secretary of the Economy for publication in the Diario Oficial (similar to the US Congressional Record). It may be published as soon as mid-December. Once published, there were will be a 60-day public comment period. Efforts are already underway in Mexico and the US to organize opposition to the proposal, and in defense of traditional Mexican spirits and the communities that produce them. Please sign up for my newsletter (in the upper right hand margin) and follow the Experience Mezcal Facebook page for updates on the various efforts.

Thanks to David Suro for bringing this to light, and to Pedro Jiménez, Erick Rodriguez, Dr. Ronda Brulotte and Dr. Hipócrates Nolasco for their time. Any errors or omissions are solely mine. By the way, the thing about frozen shots (sec. 7.5.3) and Slivovitz (sec. 7.2.21) is true – and my Slovakian friends will be sad to know that Mexico now says all Slivovitz is Serbian or Bosnian.