Everything you wanted to know about making Tequila — Feb 11

One can’t go to Mexico and not learn something about tequila, and to assure we learned enough, we did two day trips, one to the town of Tequila and to the Jose Cuervo tequila places, and the other was a Tequila Express First Class train trip.  First, our trip to Tequila.

We headed out on a Charter Club bus again with Rosie as our guide.  Here was our route:

As we got closer to Tequila, we began to see the blue agave plants everywhere, and they seemed to appear in every little bit of space we could see.  More on that later, but here are a few of the agave fields.

The fields went up the mountain sides and were down in the valleys too 

And even in small spaces alongside the road.

We were even fortunate to see a group of people harvesting the agave, and they were quite excited to have their picture taken.

One picturesque scene is Mt. Tequila, a volcano whose hardened core from its eruption 220,000 years ago rises from the middle of the mountain, a rare occurrence in geological history.

The eruption of this volcano creates soil that is conducive to the blue agave plant, which, by the way, is not a cactus, but is rather a succulent. FYI!

Another similar beverage is mezcal, but tequila is now a protected beverage which must be grown in this area and be certified (such as champagne), so if the bottle does not have a stamp and does not say 100% Agave, then don’t buy it.  You are getting a cheap substitute.

It was mass produced beginning in the early1800s, and in the last 18th century, José Guadalupe Cuervo received the first official concession to produce the tequila from the king of Spain.  In 1860, it was first bottled, and now, everyone has seen a bottle of José Cuervo Tequila.  More on that later.

Our first stop was at the Cuervo agave farm, and the growing process was described for us by none other than a Cuervo descendent, and if you’ve seen the recent Cuervo TV ad, he is in it.

The growth of the blue agave plant takes up to 10 years, but the farmers have figured out how to cut down the growth time to 7 years.  Yes, it takes 7 years to grow one plant, and the plant, once harvested, is dead, so you have to start over again. To compound the difficulty, one agave plant doesn’t give you much liquid.  You need thousands of them.

Each plant sends out suckers which are smaller plants that the farmers allow to grow reasonably large.  Then these sucker plants are planted in the fields, and through a process of trimming of the leaves several times over the 7 years, the sucker is finally ready to be harvested itself.

The small sucker is removed from close to the base of the original plant 

The sucker, since it needs no water, can be tossed into a mound, and once the mound gets high, they plant the suckers in a new field.

The Cuervo descendent who was our guide

He sharpened his blade to get ready for a trimming.  First, the plant is trimmed into a tree like shape.  Next time it is trimmed, it is more like a ball.  They do this so the worms which can get into the leaves, do not spread into the heart of the plant.

This little brown dot is a worm hole — evidence of the worm eating its way into the base (The reason why they cut off the tips of the leaves during the growing process) 

When ready for harvest, the leaves are whacked off by hand.

And then the ball (no real root system) is trimmed neatly.  The more expensive tequilas use only the material from the ball; cheaper ones can use a bit of the stems too. 

Here is a neatly trimmed ball.  Note that it looks much like a pineapple.

Julie worked hard on the trimming.  Well, sort of.  She did pose for the picture :-).

We had a taste of the core of the plant.  Tasted very bland and chewy.

 After our instructional session at the farm, we headed into the town of Tequila to visit the Jose Cuervo distillery, which wasn’t in production at the time.  Actually, they were building their own distillery on their land where we were in the fields, and we saw several concrete trucks rolling past to get to the new distillery site.  BTW, there are over 600 brands of Tequila in Mexico.  Cuervo is the largest of them.

The distillery was huge, and the process is complex, so I’m not going to attempt to reproduce it here, but here are some pictures of the mechanical contraptions within the distillery:

The ovens

The distilling process vats

Some of it goes into white oak barrels for 1 month to a number of years., depending upon quality wanted.

The various tequilas the Cuervo distillery makes, from cheapest (on right) to most expensive (on left)

Three different kinds of charring inside the barrels, with each one providing a different flavor

At the end of the process, you could see the chemists at work assuring quality for the products 

An added benefit — we got to go down into the cellars where the Cuervo family reserves are held.  It was a huge stone room with tequila going back to the 1800s.  It also included all the artistic boxes they are currently using for each year’s new product.

The descent. . . .

We did one more thing at the distillery — a professional tequila tasting, the subject of another blog posting.

The other adventure for the day was to amble around the town plaza in Tequila, see the shops, have lunch, and generally just enjoy the beautiful day.  Tequila is another one of Mexico’s magic towns (a designation for cities of historical or cultural or social significance) and it is also a UNESCO heritage site.  They are working on updating the exteriors of the buildings to make it more of a tourist attraction.  It is a pretty city.

All the towns have this type of name plate at some prominent location within the community, probably the towns in the state of Jalisco 

Cuervo means “raven” FYI

Lots of historical sculptures in the town square

And real Mexican vaqueros (Maybe real)

Every town square must have a church

And this one also has a tequila barrel tourist vehicle.

Ajijic — our home for a month

We have already shared pictures of our abode for this month.  As the month progresses, we are pleased with everything about it.  But now we’d like to share something about the community, past and present.

Before the arrival of the Spanish, the area was probably occupied by nomadic tribes, the Coca people who settled on the northern shore (that’s where Ajijic is).  “Ajijic” is probably an Indian place name derived from Nahuatl, the native language of the area.  In old Nahuatl, Ajijic means “place of water” or “place where water bubbles up.”  When the Spanish arrived, Don Andres Carlos and Fray Martin “founded” Ajijic in 1531 because it had a good source of water.  By 1833, the population was probably around 2000.

Some famous people have lived here, including many writers, some well-known, some lesser, and the place still has multiple writers who come, enjoy the weather, and write.  In the past, D.H. Lawrence was here where he wrote The Plumed Serpent and which apparently has some unflattering tidbits about the area.  Guessed I’ll have to read it.   In the late 1930s Somerset Maugham lived in Ajijic and finished his novel The Razor’s Edge.   And Tennessee Williams lived here in the 1940s and played poker every night at the Old Posada, apparently a real celebrity hangout in the 50s and 60s.  Some of the guests included Liz Taylor, Charles Bronson, James Coburn. But back to Williams — the poker nights inspired him to write a short story called “The Poker Game,” which eventually became A Streetcar Named Desire (from https://www.chapala.com/chapala/ojo2007/writers.html)

Not sure if anyone famous is living here now, but I would not be surprised.

One thing that creates some of the charm of the city is the fabulous murals which are everywhere.  They all have meaning, and unfortunately, we don’t know the intent of most of them, but here are a few of the murals you will see walking down the streets.

It’s probably not a surprise that almost every street has a mural because Ajijic is known as the “arts” town for the Lake Chapala area.  Many, many streets are filled with art shops, both owned by gringos and indigenous artisans, with every kind of art imaginable.  No kitsch shops, so if you want to buy trinket souvenirs or a postcard, this is not the place.  No tee-shirts either, except for this shop:

All kinds of art classes are available also, and one day when we were having a cocktail in one of our favorite outdoor patios, we saw a group of about 8 gringoes who were painting various scenes from around the plaza.  Here are three of the painters intently working on their products:

It’s also a very clean city with trash picked up every morning, and it must be hung high on a fence or something so that the dogs don’t get into it.

Speaking of dogs, there are a few.  We have a couple in our neighborhood which do their share of barking :-(.

Speaking of things we dislike — some of the streets (both roads and sidewalks) are cobblestones, and they are very difficult to walk on.  To attest — I, who can’t remember ever falling before — fell the other night walking home in the dark.  You really must look down ALL THE TIME.  And in the words of the owner of our AirBnB, “Don’t even think about wearing flip flops.”  Happily, though, the city is working on redoing the sidewalks, and the downtown plaza area and surrounding shopping streets have all been redone.  Whew.  Here are some of the pretty, pretty streets:

The music scene is also vibrant.  A couple of the dominant locations are Perry’s Pizza (happily right next door to us) and La Bodega where several nights a week you can find local retired musicians rocking the night away.  They have sign-up sheets too, so singers (and other musicians) can join the main group for two songs: jazz singers,  blues singers, rock musicians, you name it, they are here, and many of them were professional musicians in the US (or wherever) so they are good!  Here are a few pictures from some of the music nights:

There are also places that sponsor trivia.  We went to a couple of trivia nights at the Cocktail Bar.  Great fun.  Smart people.  Good questions.  Teams of 6.  No cheating.  

And, you never know what you will see when you walk around the next corner: