Push Admin

In Mexico to explore the legend of the ancient Filipino mezcalero

Article (news)

Ricky Carandang

<p>Santa Catalina Minas is a sleepy one horse town less than an hour away from Oaxaca City in Mexico. Its sparse, dusty landscape is dotted with wild cactus. From tall, thick cacti like the ones you see in old Hollywood westerns, to knee-high spiky  shrubs, there is cactus growing all over the place. As you drive by the small family-owned farms spread out through this town you notice that they only grow a single crop—cactus.  Santa Catalina Minas is all about cactus; agave to be precise.  Agave is what  puts  food on farmer’ tables.  It’s what attracts a small but enthusiastic  trickle of tourists. And it sustains  a group of artisans that  practice a Mexican tradition that has caught fire in North America: the making of mezcal. Because Santa Catalina Minas is the motherlode—where it is said that the finest artisanal mezcals are made.  </p><p>Like other devotees, I travelled to this town to meet the mezcaleros, to sample the different varietals, and to buy a few precious bottles of the liquid magic to smuggle home to Manila. But unlike my fellow enthusiasts, I had another motive: to investigate a legend that mezcal was not created by Mexicans but was actually invented by Filipinos.</p><p>It doesn’t really matter to me who invented the stuff as long as they keep making it. To me, mezcal, like a good tequila, shouldn’t be overanalyzed but simply enjoyed.  Over-analyzing or over-fetishizing it detracts from mezcal’s general badassery. But explaining the lore of mezcal is a great way to turn people onto it. I don’t recall exactly who told me the story, but it usually comes after a more familiar tale:  that the guayabera, the Cuban short sleeved shirt, evolved from the <em>barong tagalog,</em> which was brought to the Americas on the galleon trade. Eventually it leads to the now obscure legend that the origin of tequila and mescal was, similarly, an innovation of a concept imported from the Philippines. In more recent times, we all know that Thai jasmine rice was cultivated by agriculturists from Thailand who learned their trade in the 1960s from IRRI in Los Baños.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/ancx/food-n-drink/2018/09/1mezcal.jpeg"/><figcaption>Ramirez carrying a baked agave plant.</figcaption></figure></div><p>So as ridiculous as it sounds at first blush, the claim has some plausibility. It’s widely accepted that pre-Hispanic Mexicans drank a hard sweet liquor made from fermented agave called pulque. It’s also widely accepted that the Spanish conquistadores brought the first alembic stills to Mexico, which were then  used to distill pulque, transforming it into what we now know as mezcal. It’s also true that Spanish galleons brought all kinds of products to Mexico from the Philippines, which was an active trading center  where you could find all kinds of products from Chinese porcelain, to Malayan jewelry, and even alembic stills from the Middle East.  </p><ul class="op-related-articles">	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/food-drink/features/09/18/18/the-truth-about-mezcalwith-or-without-the-worm-in-the-bottle">How to drink mezcal—with or without the worm in the bottle</a></li></ul><div><strong>While the world was chilling, we were already distilling</strong></div><p>Here’s where the history gets murky: those first alembic stills to arrive in Mexico supposedly didn’t come from Spain but were brought by the Spanish galleon trade from the Philippines. The story goes that while our fellow colonial subjects in the Western hemisphere were swilling their pulque, we indios were already actively distilling fermented coconut liquor into <em>lambanog</em>. One fine day, in the midst of our mutual colonial subjugation, a galleon arrived in Acapulco from the Philippines carrying with it an unspecified number of indio crewmen.  Having endured so much hardship on the months’ long journey, some of the crewmen decided to settle in Mexico, and brought with them their worldly belongings, including an old alembic still.  After settling into their new homes, it didn’t take the indios long to discover pulque.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/ancx/food-n-drink/2018/09/4mezcal.jpeg"/><figcaption>Mezcalero Felix Angeles, whose family has been making mezcal for generations, wondering why we came all the way from Asia to visit his palenque.</figcaption></figure></div><p>After all, if your worldly belongings included a pot still, it would’ve just been a matter of time before you tried the local libation.  Supposedly, they had the bright idea of distilling it, and as a result produced the world’s first bottle of small batch mezcal.  Perhaps as a way to ease their assimilation into their new communities, the indios shared not just the mezcal, but also the secrets of distillation.  And that, they say, was the beginning of the single greatest Filipino contribution to global culture.</p><div> </div><div><strong>The Indio Mezcalero: fact or fiction</strong></div><p>I had serious doubts about that story.  But on my most recent trip to Mexico, I was in a mezcal bar in the historical center of the town of Puebla sampling their offerings. As I became acquainted with the bartender, I told him I was from the Philippines and he brought out a bottle of small batch mezcal. On the label was a blurb that said the mezcal was distilled in a Filipino still. It turns out that alembic stills were sometimes referred to in Mexico as Filipino stills. That’s when I first entertained the possibility that the legend of the ancient Filipino mezcaleros might be true.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/ancx/food-n-drink/2018/09/7mezcal.jpeg"/><figcaption>Ramirez explaining the process of mezcal-making</figcaption></figure></div><p>So here I was in Santa Catalina Minas, the Romanee Conti of the mezcal world, looking for evidence of mezcal’s Filipino origins.  Aside from three fellow mezcal enthusiasts Ces, Monique, and Mark, I was guided by Tomas Ramirez, a native Oaxacan who specializes in mezcal tours. Tomas also helped translate my broken Spanish to the locals. Tomas said he had never heard the legend of the ancient Filipino mezcaleros, but the skeptic in me said it may have been painful to acknowledge that his poor backward Filipino cousins may have actually invented the drink that was responsible for so much national pride.   </p><ul class="op-related-articles">	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/food-drink/restaurants/08/29/18/chino-arrives-fresh-from-hong-kong-to-bring-its-mexican-flavors-with-japanese-touches-to-the-bgc-neighborhood">Chino in Manila: Mexican flavors with Japanese touches</a></li></ul><div><strong>Methods to your Mezcal</strong></div><p>Tomas took us to two small artisanal distilleries (known locally as palenques).  Both made small batches of different varietals. Like all artisanal producers, they baked the raw agave in earthen pits dug into the ground and crushed the cooked agave under a large stone wheel. The pulp was then allowed to ferment in large wooden vats. Once fermented, the liquid was distilled at least twice and sometimes thrice, in copper stills, producing mezcal. The mezcal was stored in their garages in large plastic drums where it could be poured into glass bottles and labeled by hand when sold. Most of the people working in these palenques were in their early twenties and were guided and mentored by an older mezcalero, maybe in his fifties or sixties. No one I asked had heard of the legend of the ancient Filipino mezcaleros.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/ancx/food-n-drink/2018/09/2mezcal.jpeg"/><figcaption>A fermentation vat. </figcaption></figure></div><p>The third Palenque was different. It was owned by Felix Angeles whose family has been making mezcal in the ancestral way for generations. Ancestral mezcal is different from— and is less common than— artisanal mezcal. Ancestral mezcal can only be made from clay stills and can only be crushed in large wooden mills using wooden mallets. Angeles’ palenque had a dilapidated pick-up parked in front of a small barn and an open air workplace covered by a corrugated tin roof. Inside the barn were large plastic containers filled with different varietals. Like everyone else we visited, he had mezcal made from espadin, the most common varietal. But he also had varietals of less common mezcals, some of which are only found in the wild.  We sampled arroquenos, madre cuixes, tepeztates, tobasiches, barrils, and a few more whose names escape you after you’ve been drinking since 9:30 in the morning.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/ancx/food-n-drink/2018/09/3mezcal.jpeg"/><figcaption>A clay pot still not often used today by mezcaleros who mostly use copper stills.</figcaption></figure></div><p>What distinguishes mezcal from tequila is that it has a smoky taste, quite similar to a smoky whisky but without the peatiness. It also has a wider range of flavors than tequila, which is made from a single agave, the blue agave. Some bottles were smokier than others and in some varietals you’d get more of the vegetal notes. Some mezcal “experts” will detect notes of herbs, flowers, grass, and even peppers. And when its infused with breast meat from a rabbit, a chicken, or even an Iberico pig, it takes on a meaty and sometimes gamey flavor that blows your palate up.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/ancx/food-n-drink/2018/09/5mezcal.jpeg"/><figcaption>After brewing, the mezcal is stored in big plastic jars like this one, and left in a garage. </figcaption></figure></div><p>All of this is true, and there is a lot of crazy flavor in each varietal that is a true joy to explore as you sip it. But generally mezcal lovers don’t fetishize their drink the way wine or whiskey lovers do.  Maybe because at some point, the alcohol kicks in and you suddenly find yourself enveloped in a general sense of active joy. Then it stops being about the complex tasting notes and just about having a good, happy time. Noon was more than an hour away and by the time we had a shot of Señor Angeles tepeztate mezcal, we were well into the don’t-give-a-shit-about-the-tasting-notes-anymore phase and were just telling each other stupid funny stories. So here’s my funny stupid story to close this piece: in my increasingly drunken haze, I bought several bottles of different varietals and completely forgot to ask about the legend of the ancient Filipino mezcaleros. But what the fuck. The mezcal was amazing and I was happy.</p><div><em>All photographs by Ricky Carandang.</em></div><figure class="op-interactive"><iframe height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WBt7DUi8H4I?enablejsapi=1" width="560"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more in <a href="//www.iwantv.com.ph/">iWantv</a> or <a href="//tfc.tv/">TFC.tv</a></div>

<p>The story goes that mezcal was not created by Mexicans but was actually invented by Filipinos. As ridiculous as it sounds at first blush, the claim has some plausibility.</p>

The story goes that mezcal was not created by Mexicans but was actually invented by Filipinos. As ridiculous as it sounds at first blush, the claim has some plausibility.