Everything you need to know about Mezcal | How to Drink

okay i don't like that one something i felt like i didn't know enough about was mezcal somebody likes this i'm not that guy so i thought it'd be a good idea to fix that today on htd so as i said i didn't know much about miss kyle but i want to and for me the solution to that situation is to a do some research and b do some tasting so i have done the research part already let's start with what i found out because some of you for some of you this is going to be new information this is why you're watching this episode you want to know what is mezcal mezcal is a type of agave-based spirit that is produced in mexico and what is and is not mezcal is a tightly regulated affair uh see there's a number of agave-based spirits that are not mezcal or tequila and yes tequila is at least according to my research a type of mezcal but it is mezcal that is specifically produced in the state of jalisco i hope i'm saying that right guys i don't know if it's hellisco or jalisco halisco i think sounds more correct to my gringo ears tequila is a type of miscal basically that is specifically produced in the state of halisco using only blue weber agave in a process that does not involve smoking the agave hearts like mezcal does so broadly speaking i think the term mezcal is similar to the term whiskey and tequila is similar to the term bourbon it's like a specific type process so what is and isn't technically mezcal comes down mainly to federal regulations in mexico and there's a lot of weeds to get into they're really i think straight up listing every regulation that governs this stuff is going to be boring the main points tequila can only be made using one type of agave mezcal can be made using a few dozen varieties and tequila can only be made in halisco whereas mezcal can be made in durango guerrero mishokhan sorry guys san lois saying lois say hello us oh boy san luis san luis potos that's a tough one man i'm sorry that uh i'm it's a long long way off from high school spanish class san luis potosi tamale pass and uh zacatecas and thank you i'm so sorry people of mexico i'm genuinely my god the basic gist of how to produce mezcal is to harvest agave which if you've never seen one in person or a photo of one with a good size reference in the shop they are huge plants they might look like aloe or something but they're just absolutely massive and they're also nothing like aloe they find an agave that's just properly ripe hack off the leaves or branches or whatever you want to call those things which leaves a heart of an agave which is called a pina because it resembles a pineapple and then you roast the agave pina the traditional method is to pit roast them similar to like a pig roast actually where the agave heart is buried in the ground with hot coals for anywhere between a few days or a week you dig out the agave heart and pulverize it traditionally with a tohono which is a big stone wheel that's driven around by an ox which gives me very strong conan of our barbarian vibes then you take the broken smashed up chunks of roasted agave and ferment it sometimes they will dry ferment sometimes they will water ferment where you add water to it and ferment that soup that you make and sometimes they will do both of those for different reasons for various amount of time and then combine them before they distill it uh this fermentation usually happens in an open air fermentation barrel and the agave wine that they are producing here is called poke then you take the pulque you put it into a still very traditional mezcaleros we'll still use a clay still which is a pretty cool piece of ancient technology that is a terra cotta clay pot apparatus i think most of your distillation these days is gonna be done on copper pot stills there's an indicator on a bottle if it's done in a clay still because you would never go to the trouble of doing this in a clay still and then keeping it a secret that would be very stupid it gets uh typically distilled two or three times to get the concentration up to the final bottling strength which this is where mezcal is kind of very different from a lot of other spirits so as far as i know and i want to stress the point that this is as far as i know because what i'm about to explain is a huge departure from how i think pretty much every other spirit that i know has made so typically like with a whiskey for example you're going to distill the spirit up to a very high proof 140 160 proof and then you will age that spirit in barrels at that rocket fuel proof also called barrel proof and then when you bottle it you de-proof it by cutting it with water with mezcal they're only distilling it up to bottling proof though sometimes that bottling proof could be quite high my understanding here is that traditionally mezcal is not cut with water that's not to say that it isn't sometimes it's just that traditionally it isn't and probably if you're talking about high quality mezcals it would not be but my thinking here is that this process where you're not distilling every single drop of non-alcohol out that you of the mash means that more of those flavors will be preserved and they wind up in the bottle and that does seem to be the case as far as i've read and from the limited mezcal tastings i've done you may be familiar with the term tawar and if you're not familiar with it well you're about to be it comes mainly from the wine world but it's the tastes of the earth that the specific place that region that time and place the rain that we got this year what fruits were around if the cicadas were in bloom whatever do they bloom most spirits don't really have a toir the distillation process sort of nukes it um a few are considered to be very tewari though like a rum agricole uh and apparently mezcal in particular they have a tawar um there's a actually st george has a gin too that they claim is a tawarjin like that's like this saint george tawarjen is like hey this is a unique gin we have preserved the tawar and for that reason even though mezcal can be aged and is sold at different age categories just like tequila it seems like the hoven or unaged mezcal is really the most popular uh way to have it in the most common one thing in my mind that i've always had about mezcal is that for me it's i put it in the same category as an isla scotch and that's because mezcal can have that same super duper smoky flavor profile that you would associate with an isla in mezcal that comes from the roasting of the agave in an eyeless scotch it comes from the process the barley germination process is halted by smoking it with peat so it's different smoke sources different parts of the process also though i haven't tasted autonomous cal my understanding is that not all of the mezcals are going to be super smoke dominant particularly some of your wild mescals are going to be not super smoke dominant i think we're going to find out in just a minute since i'm going to taste all these mescals oh and one more thing about agave so tequila that's got to be made with a blue agave mezcal they can use dozens of varieties but the majority of miscal is going to be made from something called an espadin agave which is sort of the great granddaddy of the blue weber agave as well so if you see espadin on a bottle that's what that means uh a lot of mezcal also uses wild and even foraged agave when i go through these bottles i'll be naming they'll probably tell me what agave they use it seems to be pretty standard i'll tell you what it is but don't expect me to have an example of every single variety of agave here i actually physically don't think that would be possible there's like i said dozens um the majority of this will be espadin because as there's limits to my ability even my ability to source spirits as i know there are yours i got my spit bucket which here it is in its first appearance on how to drink i'll call it the seat belt this is the seat belt that prevents me from having another tasting accident like we did in the episode that tried to kill me uh which i'll guess i'll put a link down there below all of its use will probably be cut from the episode but a lot of people express concern that i i drink too much or that this is bad for my health a lot of you have commented lately that i look tired i'm exhausted i have two kids i'm in the middle of a pandemic and i'm making a show alone what do you think of course i'm tired i'm also old if you've been watching episodes four years old like my beard turned gray i got old i don't know what to tell you i need a vacation okay you want me to go on vacation don't stop watching the show so i want you to understand like there's a lot of mezcal it would be very stupid for me to just drink all this mezcal that i'm about to taste so we're going to use a spittoon you got to get these aren't you got to get oranges you're going to get these oranges they're navel oranges they're oranges from the grocery store but you got to get sal de gosano this is agave worm salt yes this is salt made from agave worms the agave worm is that worm that you sometimes see at the bottom of a bottle of tequila or mezcal um i don't know how traditional that is we can i i think that that's kind of a touristy thing and the traditional tasting vessel as i understand it is are these little terracotta guys they're a little bit glazed on the inside um they're cool there's like cool little they're not shot glasses they're like little bowls um and that's true you're not really supposed to like slam mezcal or anything by the way if you don't like it and you have to slam it maybe you should just drink something else that's fine you know i think it's really weird like you sip in your whiskey yeah i like it why don't we just start i have some water i'm gonna start by putting out my salad gosano this stuff man i love it's a little bit smokey it's a little bit salty oh this smells so good it smells like barbecue uh so you put your sauteed gosana around and then you dip your orange yum yum yum so we're gonna taste let's start with oaxaca it's over here on the side oh this one's got the worm ah there it is [ __ ] look at that the first one i've got is a worm it's disgusting i hate seeing that little summer [ __ ] in there because i really hate worms so i'll tell you what oaxaca is like first off it's spelt very gringo which is fun i guess that's to help you get it right 100 percent agave obviously it is made in oaxaca mexico but this is mezcal artisan reposado jesus i went this is so atypical uh it's in espadin and i'm going to say about i don't know what avocado means but kangasana means with worms so let's try this warm stuff it sounds like a smell like a white wine a little smoky on it boy just absolute random that we start with this one what is it it's like um well it smells like tequila i don't know how else to describe it i mean it's not overly smoky it's pretty mild and that's probably because it's a reposado it's a little aged i like that it does remind me of just like the taste in my mouth of working on the lawnmower and everything that goes with that that means i'm outside and there's like fresh smells cut grass a little bit of oil motor oil a little bit of exhaust but nice has a great warming effect it's not what you would call harsh at all this is really chill i think mezcal is probably gonna fall into the category of acquire taste so a lot of times people ask me hey why do you seem to like everything well i don't necessarily like everything that's a subject of quality i just try to give you guys objective qualities of things very very seldom is something objectively bad i'm trying to help you make informed decisions about what mezcals you might like this one reminds me a little bit a little bit of like the sweeter notes of gasoline if you recall getting your gas pumped when you were a kid and thinking i like that smell it's kind of like that and then sometimes they start to taste like mothballs i don't know why that is uh but that's me that's my own association and then then you know the fix is you cleanse your palate let's water a [ __ ] magic combo this is del maguey san luis del rio uh 47 single val single village mezcal you'll see that sometimes single village like that is the larger companies come they acquire and bottle some really local traditional variety uh brings you a collection of artisanal and ancestral mezcals made in the lush remote mountain plains and valleys of oaxaca each expression is named her village et cetera et cetera et cetera so this is san luis del rio or it's an espadin okay or a little tiny taste tiniest i mean a tiny little nip here honestly the amount that i'm tasting is so small i don't know that i can spit it back out it's just enough like coat my teeth that's a little more aggressive that has some very strong boy i wish i knew the chemical name for that stuff i don't it just reminds me of like i'm gonna say mothballs i don't know if mothballs is right it reminds me of this household cleanser that was always around my grandmother's house i personally don't have the palette to pull apart all of the subtleties of that one that one is but it's not i'll say this i've had a lot smokier mezcals this is not supremely smoky it has some iodine notes maybe i don't know if that's literally iodine but it kind of is like that kind of um acridy iodine parts is it salty yeah you might call that salty it's not salty in the way that eating some salt is but like yeah if i was drinking this as a whiskey trying to think about that now and i don't have salted oranges to compare it against yeah i might say that's a little salty and it has this kind of chemical taste but it's not a kind of chemical taste that i know you're going to you have to hate it's one that could be an acquired taste so if you're a mezcal drinker and you know what i'm talking about you may find that appreciative um this is herrodes which is a mezcal artisanal from the oregon it's from oaxaca it is uh espadin's so it's 100 maguey espadin oh wow this is a completely different nose on it i mean that smells like fresh fruit like apples almost whoa that's whoa that's so different that reminds me of like applejack that that's crazy how different that is that tastes like a calvares that tastes nothing like the other two we've had so far which is really fun i think that's super exciting to find like all three of these are espadin right yeah they all are um what a difference that is man that's huge departure it's like bright and fresh and um airy there's a note in there that tastes no one's gonna like to hear this but this is honestly where my brain goes tastes a little like just a just a touch just a hint there's a reminiscence about something i took i think it was chaotic for upstate some stomach the white chalky one but i mean it's it's here and gone it's here and gone it's not the main flavor and it's just a personal association that i have with it boy that just really reminds me of a calvadus or some kind of an apple-based spirit which is fascinating how a smoked agave can taste like that that's crazy and play-doh a little bit like that's what it was it wasn't milk and magnesium it was like play-doh for a touch just for a touch this one is a very exciting one because look at the bottle that is some cool ass looking presentation and i am a sucker for cool presentation uh oaxaca oven esparine unless yeah actually i think that's the agave it's maguey asparini [Music] [Music] yo all right this might be good stuff oh that was a big pour that's going to be one that's going to wind up in there a little bit this bottle does not permit me to do a very gentle pour so i've got more in my little copita than i would like but buttery oh my god the nose smells like melted butter holy [ __ ] that's so cool peppery it's so peppery it tastes like chopped up bell peppers like a little bit spicier than chopped up bell peppers just like that kind of slightly astringent fresh vegetable vibe man that's some cool stuff not really very smoky at all a little bit not bitter but a little bit astringent and buttery wow that's cool i like that one a lot bozav i like that one it's a shame but you know that's what that says that's what that's there for back to another del maguey offering single village this is las milpas esparine [Music] whoa what is that smell it has a oh man what is that smell that has a really so stupid high pitch high tenor kind of chemical smell um i don't know you know pitch sounds weird but like it has that bright smell way up here but i can't place it it smells a little bit like disinfectant but not like bleach it smells a little bit like a little bit a little bit like you know like barbra salad something your doctor's office would use but like not in a way that's overpowering like i hate that smell of a doctor's office i like it here it's really muted it's a relation to that whatever that smell is there this is a relation to that thinned way out not nasty okay i don't like that one oh man i dislike that one a lot that one has a flavor i just hate uh it's it's a obvious personal taste issue somebody likes this i'm not that guy [ __ ] i'm sorry i hate to say that um it's a very aggressively chemical flavor um kind of that's a strong mescal that one is very uh kind of knocks the wind out of you i'm not that's not for me um personal taste personal thing yeah i'm really sorry i lost my bus that one i mean i hate to say this is nastiest thing to say that one kind of reminds me of like siphoning gas and actually getting a mouthful of gasoline like that is not my jam i'm sorry mesquel vago um by aquilino garcia it is this is an a karwinski um agave plant from candelaria gole stone grind copper still march 2020 batch the batch of that that batch was 287 liters that is like that is small batch that is crazy small fresh cut grass super strong fresh cut grass smell oh yeah that just smells plain in the backyard when you were a kid very aptly very fresh grass wild onions i mean that is a dimension apart from the rest of these guys is wildly different that's cool um i would have to be in the mood for that but i don't hate that at all it does have a there's a late arriving kind of chemical astringency um that's kind of the taste of cactus i think is what that is and it's something you either like or you don't like it has that menopause taste this one is called the sunbrace you'll never guess who the dosambrace are it's aaron paul and brian cranston i guess they saw how much money uh uh george clooney made on tequila and they said we better get in on something here apples again agave i think it's actually it's a sub thing of espadin it's a angus defolia angostifolia but it's a type of esparine that watermelon kind of like copper and watermelon and apples definitely coppery oh that's got a strong um like mothball taste that's main flavor i get on that it's not bad i mean i think that you see that enough in this a lot of people must like that or seek that out so it is the primary flavor here is that kind of mothbally taste um i'm not catching a lot of elder stuff on here it's not particularly smoky although for all i know my smoke receptors are kind of burned out at this point it is kind of that one note but light it's kind of it's cool to the mouth honestly cooler than a lot of the other ones this one almost i mean they're not they're all the same temperature this one has a kind of almost like a refrigerated vibe to it um how that happens i don't know not as many twists and turns as like the bazaal or the mexical vago which are both really interesting and i really like the oaxaca which makes sense because i don't really have i mean it's the one that was apparently a little bit older so it's kind of muted some of its flavors which for a guy like me makes a lot of sense because i don't really i'm not a huge mezcal lover i like it though i mean i do like what i've had i find this very enjoyable but i'm not like a you know i'm not looking for the most aggressive mezcals i'm looking for stuff that's pretty easy sipping this is mezcal de rombes a lot of these were from oaxaca so this one is definitely not oaxaca salmiana that's the agave above ground stone with quixote tohono wild yeast in rock and copper pot still so this one should be fairly unique based on that layout of things it's a different place it's different everything this has a very similar coppery smell i think it was the was it the sun brace that had the coppery smell very similar yeah like a metallic smell wow dude i love that that is cool that is like um it's like sweet actually i mean i don't think it's sweetened but it has a very vegetal sweet taste what a surprise that is nothing like these other ones it must be agave the salmianna it tastes like what you would imagine just like slicing into a big fresh aloe or agave it would taste like would you imagine it would taste like not even like what it would actually taste like oh man that's cool it's a little bit fruity in a weird sideways kind of way like almost like it's an imagined fruit that you've never had before that one's really cool which is funny because i am a sucker for packaging like so many humans and i look at that and i would think man what is this like i don't know a discotheque bottle i don't i'm not in love you know it wouldn't be one that i would think i'm not a fan but just based on that you know but it's good that's good stuff i like that i like that a lot that's really interesting um if you like a really harsh mezcal this one may not be for you i find that to be a really cool mezcal because it's honestly just not anything it's really unique i mean it's like the bozal and the vago both had really kind of their own thing going on so does this this is very not like the others um which is fine it's just nothing wrong with any of these honestly um it's just interesting when one is really breaking the mold and i wonder if if that is a whole style that is more like that or if this is really kind of just a unique you know the rumbas tastes like none none of the other ones at all maybe almost cal from san luis potosi tastes a little bit that way this is a miguel um [Music] made by a single parlenko cooked in an oven pit smashed by hand with wooden mesquite mallets into a stone canoe holy [ __ ] that sounds exhausting fermented in wooden pine vats oh pine natural yeast five days distilled in a double distilled in copper with a 350 liter capacity by wood fire 53 alcohol from the still it says right there still proof so i mean that's it they only went to 53 fresh cut grass again i think that that's going to be a common theme i mean gonna be we're almost done that has been a common theme the fresh cut grass it kind of smells like a cut succulent like you've cut into a succulent now it's picking up like hey now it smells like hay i was gonna say it smells like a horse farm but i'm gonna be a little bit more um because i spent a lot of horse farms growing up gonna be a little bit more politic uh i don't want you to get the wrong idea it doesn't smell like manure it smells like straw hey definitely yes very much so it's more specific than fresh cut grass cool to your lips [Music] [Applause] what the [ __ ] damn that's got some kind of smoke like backdraft that comes up out of your lungs um it starts out cool your lips oh this is some nice uh vegetal fruit forward and then like the dragon shows up man it just got some serious um smoke in there but not smoke like um a peat or a scotch smokey at all like that that's got some like uh mesquite or some i don't know like like a dry bitter kind of smoke acrid smoke oh my god holy [ __ ] tiny amounts go a long way with that one man that's that is some serious [ __ ] that's good but definitely uh that's that that puts some hair on your chest no joke 100 you're like oh i'm here for this i'm along for the ride it never overtook me it never was like ah stop i don't want it which is maybe what's so surprising about it because it is that's a lot of flavor a lot of smoke a lot of acrid notes without ever being like this is too much um there's still nuance to it which is pretty cool that's cool [ __ ] so these three um i mentioned to curiata and by the way i should tell you guys kuriata um i don't they won't have all of these but curiota should have a number of these mezcals if you want to try any of these for yourself i'm pretty sure that they have wah i think that's why they sent them and i don't know if i'm pronouncing it wrong i assume that's pronounced wah like oaxaca i don't i don't know um for of course i looked at it and i said oaks interesting i'm pretty sure that's why i told him i was doing a thing on tasting mezcal they said oh we got to send you these they're awesome they do come in really cool bottles these are like porcelain bottles they kind of evoke a retro future mayan revival slash um memphis style like 80s thing i [ __ ] love these bottles and this one we'll just do all three they're all artisanal hoeven uh this one is arono this is aro kenyo is what the agave variety is here the one thing i will say about these bring i made this mistake recently bring the glass to them don't think you're going to like man it'll mess you up trying to they pour like crazy um so this is the black bottle which is what does that smell it smells a little bit vegetal but it's a little bit um a little earthy a little dirt a little bit of metal a little bit of copper a little bit of like is that latex maybe it could be a little bit of latex smell not really because latex tends to smell more bleachy just you know what it is i think it smells a little doctor's office this one has that strong um mothball taste for me kind of right away and it lingers you get it it goes away and it comes back on your breath not as loud as some of the other ones so if you're looking for that flavor in a mezcal maybe the wah aro kenya is the one to go with there's some like buttery notes in there too it's pretty cool i like that actually i like that one because i found that this bigger sip i actually got a little less of the mothball taste which is not my favorite thing moderated it a bit um more buttery more vegetable more fresh cut grass which again a common theme with these and that might just be the limits of my palette maybe that's just the parts i can really detect this is another oven cool let's try it wait a second i think i'm gonna like this one we gotta clean we gotta give this one it's fair do and do a little pallet cleansing first so this is tobala oh man a little bactine smell there a lot of that mothball taste and then something else like sweetened like sweeter mothbally tastes i'm not i was quite in love with that as i thought that was going to be based on the the nose it's like a salty smoke acrid vibe there um and maybe a bit of the mothball's taste but that's a smokier one not all of these have been real smokey that one was rating is pretty smoky to me um okay let's move on to the last one this is the pizza tepes tate tip is tate a zt is a tough one for me hay straw strong hay smell like see like being by the sea like like sitting on the beach and smelling the ocean and a fire sitting on the beach um and smelling the ocean over a really smoky awkward campfire cool all of these are best enjoyed in small tastes because they're very potent flavors that are easy to overpower your palate and they're meant to be sipped okay that's why the kopitas are very very small bowls my personal favorites i was really impressed by the bazaal if i recall i really like this oaxaca and i liked the vago a lot those were my three favorites and over on this side oh and i love this this was really neat the san luis potosi hopefully this is going to give you some information about mezcal that you didn't have before it did for me um and it will help you make a decision when you buy some mezcal why not do so from curiata using the link in the pinned comment right beneath you until next time this has been htd today we were just tasting a bunch of mezcal really basics kind of explainer episode and maybe they're gonna be upset about some of my tasting notes because i don't think i really have a very refined palette for mezcal i honestly i'm glad you watched but you should probably take my mezcal tasting with a grain of salt because i'm not a mezcal pro um but maybe that's more useful maybe your palette is you're i mean in all honesty your pal is probably closer to mine than some mezcal aficionado because you're probably not that guy um so i'm coming at this as kind of a miscal beginner anyway um i will see you guys in just a few days with another episode of htd until then check out my socials which you are aware of and here they are on screen if you're watching this episode thank you you're one of the very rare few who make it to the end we are approaching the end uh check out curata curata.com or use the pin comment in the link below and uh hey check out these other episodes of how to drink since i've been making this show for a long time and there's a big back catalog of episodes that exist and they are thirsty for your eyeballs they're eye thirsty they have the eye thirst that is the grossest expression i could have possibly come up with there we should stop now while i'm ahead

Channel: How To Drink

Views: 437,121

Keywords: htd, how to drink, mixology, tape brothers territory, alcohol, liquor, bartending, mixed drinks, how to, how to make, spirits, bitters, drink, cocktails, cocktail, classic, recipes, what is mezcal, mezcal vs tequila, mezcal tasting, taste test, drinks for cinco de mayo, agave plant, tequila worm, best liquor to drink straight, oaxaca mexico, best mezcal, el mezcal, drinking mezcal, dos hombres mezcal, espadin mezcal, tasting notes, how to drink mezcal properly, cinco de mayo

Id: Lcqy9y2_ixY

Length: 30min 6sec (1806 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021