In The Heart of Mezcal
“This boom started with the hipsters.”
Eber Villalobos guides me down an artfully graffitied street in Oaxaca City, talking about mezcal’s current boom.
“Chilangos (people from Mexico City) come to Oaxaca for vacation and try the mezcales here. Bar owners started bringing mezcal back to the D.F. and made it trendy. It’s partly a way to touch a piece of our history, partly to proclaim Mexican identity and it’s partly a badge of honor. If you bring something rare to the wider public, you get to say I explored this place and look at what I found.”
A former chilango himself, Eber immigrated to Oaxaca five years ago and founded Ánimas Mezcal, a small brand that markets the mezcales made by area distillers, or mezcaleros.
One could hardly find a better place to make mezcal than Oaxaca, nor a better time to do it than now. Oaxaca provides the ideal soil and climate for the agave, known here as magüey, from which mezcal is distilled. The various…
Categories: The Expeditioner