Mezcal, Tequila's Country Cousin

[JJ_BPK]

A little light reading for your Monday morning commute..

Arturo Dozal didn’t care for alcoholic beverages until he tried mezcal.

“All the drinks I tried, they seemed terrible to me,” says Dozal, who opened a mezcal bar called Bósforo in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico last year. “But a good mezcal, you try it and it takes you to the cosmos. It’s like every mezcal has its own tiny ecosystem.”

Mezcal, a distilled Mexican spirit often stereotyped as tequila’s country cousin, is experiencing a boom in Mexico City, with several new mezcalerías catering to the city’s young hip set. Most of these bars focus on small-batch, artisanal varieties not available in the United States.

Mezcal is also finding an audience abroad. Bars specializing in mezcal, not tequila, recently opened in both Los Angeles and New York. Foreign exports of government-certified mezcal have grown 33 percent since 2005, according to SAGARPA, Mexico’s agriculture ministry.

“People used to think of mezcal as the Mexican souvenir with the sombrero and the worm,” says Angélica Cruz, SAGARPA sub-director of agribusiness. “That’s changing.”

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Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lif...#ixzz1Eb2WsrC8

[mark46th]

Sounds like that mason jar filled with a clear, fiery liquid that I traded a few C-Rat meals for on the commo FTX in Uwharrie in 1971. The guy that made it claimed to have been to Venus. I don't know about cosmic. In fact, I didn't know anything for a couple of days...

[Richard]

San Sebastian del Jalisco - Raicilla Nation!

Richard