Pulque was the drink of priests and sac­ri­fi­cial vic­tims for a thou­sand years.

Pulque

by Thad­deus Tripp Ressler           

          Four of us hopped into a cab from the cen­ter of town, two Mex­i­cans and two Amer­i­cans. I knew things were about to get inter­est­ing when we turned onto a long stretch of dirt road. I live for these kinds of moments, on an adven­ture with three peo­ple I bare­ly know going to do some­thing I’ve nev­er tried before on the word of the oth­er Amer­i­can that swore up and down that this is the place to get pulque. When we got out of the cab sev­er­al chick­ens across the dirt road eyed us up and down. There was no sign in front of the pul­que­ria, but of course I nev­er did get a straight answer as to whether or not it was a speakeasy. Inside of the pul­que­ria amount­ed to a shack made of mis­matched wood slats with a saw­dust cov­ered dirt floor. It was small inside, maybe 10’X10’, with mis­matched seats and bench­es, some of which came out of an old car. I’d be will­ing to bet an old Bee­tle con­sid­er­ing there’s more of those dri­ving around in this town than 1940’s Berlin. The bath­room, which was the first thing I asked about once inside was a cement hole in the ground with a show­er cur­tain around it. I’m guess­ing there isn’t a whole lot of female traf­fic in this place.

            Trish, ever the social but­ter­fly, goes right up to the lady behind the counter and hugs her and asks her how she is in her slow­ly but sure­ly get­ting bet­ter Span­ish. They talk for a lit­tle while me and the guys, Gui­do and Bil­ly, light up cig­a­rettes and set­tle in. Once Trish and the pro­pri­etor have fin­ished their con­ver­sa­tion she orders us up a round of pulque with just a touch of aguamiel, hon­ey water.

            I’ll be hon­est, I did­n’t have a chance to do a lot of research before I came down here, I was busy fin­ish­ing up one job while get­ting ready to move, while find­ing a new job. I’m kind of glad that I did­n’t. I was hand­ed a clay mug filled with a frothy white liq­uid that kind of remind­ed me of how pastis or absinthe look once you’ve added water.

            Pulque is not some­thing that the Amer­i­can pal­let may ever be ready for. It is the ancient alco­hol from pre-Columbian times. Think wine, but made from a cousin to the aloe plant. I am in no way squea­mish or one of those “tex­ture” peo­ple, but the com­bi­na­tion of luke­warm, slight­ly gelati­nous, and sour is some­thing that made me have to order myself to swal­low. It espe­cial­ly did­n’t help when a sin­gle long string of goo stretched out from my low­er lip to the mug a foot away from my mouth. I’d like to say that I got used to it, but through two large clay mugs of it, I did­n’t notice an improve­ment in how my mind recoiled from it. I will say that the expe­ri­ence was great­ly improved once the effects kicked in.

We decid­ed it was time to break out the home­made Jen­ga set I had bought from a lit­tle old lady walk­ing around the taque­ria we had just come from. Three young boys peeked their heads out to see what we were doing, so of course they got an invite to play. We even got the pro­pri­etor to come out from behind the counter and play a round. All while tak­ing swigs of pulque and remind­ing myself to swal­low. It’s odd, no one seemed to have the same prob­lem drink­ing it as I did. It did get me think­ing about the Span­ish and real­ly thank­ing them for bring­ing dis­til­la­tion with them.

            Aside from the veg­e­tal fla­vor, there is no real cor­re­la­tion in fla­vor between pulque and what it becomes once dis­tilled. There are so many mis­quotes, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and gen­er­al ambi­gu­i­ties when it comes to Tequi­la and it’s big broth­er Mez­cal. Just recent­ly John Taffer of the show Bar Res­cue stat­ed in an inter­view that tequi­la comes from mez­cal and mez­cal is where they get mesca­line from, sor­ry John, not even close to being accu­rate. All tequi­la is mez­cal, not all mez­cal is tequi­la. All mez­cal is made from one of the cousins of the agave, usu­al­ly Agave Amer­i­cana or Agave Tequi­lana

            Tequi­la, much like cham­pagne is a ‘pro­tect­ed des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin’ prod­uct. Tequi­la is a mez­cal pro­duced in Tequi­la, and a few oth­er des­ig­nat­ed places, using pure­ly blue agave. It must also be made in one of sev­er­al num­bered dis­til­leries. There are a few more legal tech­ni­cal­i­ties most­ly hav­ing to do with the process, but you get the idea. Tequi­la can range from dry to off dry, veg­e­tal or pep­pery, and even flo­ral. Mez­cal, on the oth­er hand, has far few­er restric­tions on it, mak­ing the range of fla­vors even broad­er and more excit­ing to some­one like me.

            Due to cer­tain fool­ish legal­i­ties, the US imports very few mez­cals. Most of the ones we get are of the super smoky vari­ety akin to peaty scotch­es, which is fine, they’re very good, but we miss out on some tru­ly mag­i­cal fla­vors. For exam­ple the “400 Cone­jos” I drank was very light and del­i­cate, dry, and light­ly flo­ral with hay like fla­vors. Com­pare it to the “Cor­rale­jos” tequi­la I drank the next night and the tequi­la tast­ed brutish, robust, and sweet.

            Unfor­tu­nate­ly most peo­ple’s expe­ri­ence with tequi­la has to do with a poor­ly made mar­gari­ta for hap­py hour, or that one time they took shots and had a crazy night. Then of course there is Cin­co de Mayo. The day the army of Puebla kicked the French forces out of town, here’s the prob­lem though, the French retook the city a few days lat­er. Now per­son­al­ly I would­n’t real­ly call that a day to remem­ber, even Mex­i­cans don’t real­ly cel­e­brate it, but hey, some peo­ple in the U.S. need an excuse to drink tequi­la. I don’t know why, but from what I’ve heard there are peo­ple like that, I’ve nev­er had that prob­lem.

            We walked out of the pul­que­ria say­ing good­bye to the fam­i­ly and chick­ens alike, we left them the game of Jen­ga. I felt good, wrapped in a warm blan­ket of pulque, my mind at ease, and the world around me felt beau­ti­ful. While I may nev­er get over it’s odd­ly gelati­nous qual­i­ty, I would drink it again in a heart­beat. We slow­ly mean­dered up the dirt road to the main road talk­ing about life. While we wait­ed for a taxi to dri­ve by we felt it was best to sit at one of the many road­side bars that dot the coun­try­side and had a snack and a beer.

            When the time came to go we hitched a ride back into town in the back of a ran­dom pick­up truck, yet anoth­er thing not com­mon to Amer­i­can life. I have to say life can be pret­ty amaz­ing when you’re open to it. We rode down the moun­tain into the city on dusty roads that gave way to dusty city streets to an area close to where we lived. When we hopped out, we offered to give the dri­ver a few pesos, which was instant­ly turned down with a smile. Lat­er on that night I would be stum­bling my way home from a karaoke bar, but at that moment I felt glo­ri­ous… And hun­gry.

Agave Azul, from which we get Pulque, Mez­cal and Tequi­la

1.5oz Tequi­la

.75oz Coin­treau

1oz Fresh­ly Squeezed Lime Juice, take the extra few min­utes trust me it’s worth it

1oz Sim­ple Syrup

Sim­ple Syrup

1 part hot water

1 part white sug­ar

Stir until all the sug­ar gran­ules have dis­solved, do not add more water.