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PROTAGONIST / THE SOUL OF MEXICO
hose who have breathed the dust of the streets
of Mexico will never find peace in any other
country,” wrote British author Malcolm Lowry
in his book Under the Volcano, because Mexico is like
Tthat: lively, fierce, colourful, flamboyant; it is a land of
ancient traditions, taverns, sombreros, mariachi bands, divinities and
Mezcal. Mezcal is a distillate of agave, a succulent plant with spiky
leaves, as is the more famous Tequila, which envisages only the use
of Tequilana Weber agave, also called agave azul or blue agave on
account of its colour, while Mezcal uses around 30 different species
of agave, the most prized variety of which is Espadina, which yields a
more herbaceous, dry and savoury Mezcal than the one made from
Agave Tobala, which is mellower and has peaty nuances. Agave is pro-
cessed in pits dug into the ground, rudimentary ovens in which the
piña, the heart of the agave plant, is cooked by a fire burning leaves
and branches of resinous wood. Protected by river stones and resi-
dues of previous batches, it cooks for several days. The cooked mass
is then stone-milled to release its sugars, then the juice is collected
in a wooden vat, called a palenquero, or in steel vessels, where fer-
mentation takes place. This lasts from 36 to 72 hours and then dis-
tillation takes place in two stages: the first produces xixi, with 20/25
degrees of alcohol, and the second yields Mezcal, which can reach
60 degrees and according to the Normas Oficiales Mexicanas can be
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