Your Chance to Taste Pulque*

The Oldest Agave Booze

First of all, no, we are not shipping fresh pulque. We’ve been known to be fans of exporting difficult products (do you guys remember the worm salt that Dalton had to get into the US in his own bag?), but we wouldn’t dare to ship the wildest ferment known to mankind unless we were playing some very elaborate prank. Yet, we still found a way for you, lovely agave nerds, to taste pulque in the spirit form. We’ll spend some time explaining the specifics of this approach, but before we go too far into that, let’s be very clear about what is in this box and let’s talk about the good-old basics of pulque.

What exactly is in this box? 

One of Melate’s most interesting side-by-side comparisons to date!

November: Pulquero agave -> Agua miel -> Pulque juice -> Distilled pulque juice

December: Pulquero agave -> Pulquero Mezcal (same general process as 99% mezcal)

A very very short history of pulque

Arguably, humans have been using agave for at least 10,000 years (we actually did a podcast episode about that with Marce Sandoval, an ethnogeneticist who is as agave-smart as it gets). Our ancestors used this plant for a multitude of things: textiles, medicine, construction, and then, one happy day, they realized that if they cooked the agave hearts, they could become edible, and, who knows how many years after, they discovered that if they carved a hole in the agave’s heart, and let it “bleed”, the sap would be sugary enough to be drank as is or could be fermented to create what we know today as pulque.

2) Extracting agua miel for drinking or to transport to an infinity fermentation vat where it turns to 3-10% ABV pulque.

In our mind (well, in Chava’s mind, who is writing this newsletter), there is no way in hell that pulque was exclusive to the fancier environments. Firstly, because you can’t control pulque production: if you have agaves in the middle of nowhere, you can produce it with very simple tools that are easy to hide. And secondly, because there is an extract of a letter from Hernán Cortés to Charles V (Cartas y Relaciones de Hernán Cortés al Rey Carlos V)  describing the Tenochitláns market and stating that pulque is right there, in the middle of the biggest Mexican market, for sale. Here is the exact quote:

“…honey is also extracted from the plant called maguey, which is superior to sweet or new wine; from the same plant they extract sugar and wine, which they also sell.”

Regardless of what was happening 500 years ago, as we all know, beer almost completely evaporated the consumption of pulque in Mexico arguing that it was a “dirty” drink: fermented with poop (which is absolutely false) and consumed by drunks and savages (which is only true if you spot the Melate team going through pitchers of pulque on a Monday).

Today, multiple projects are trying to revive pulque’s lost glory (we especially love this super cool book that is about to be published). It is not only part of Mexican heritage, but it also sports flavors and aromas we believe can rival those of the most celebrated “natural wine”. The biggest challenge with pulque, though, is that you have to travel to drink it. No one has found a way to stabilize it while keeping or enhancing its complexity. We would even claim that, when fermented to perfection, you have only 8 hours to consume it before it loses its peak deliciousness (though there are some exceptions in very cold areas that may allow pulque to stay pretty for longer).

So, in this mission of sharing pulque with those who can travel all the way to Morelos, Tlaxcala, Estado de México, Michoacán, or any of the regions where pulque is still customary, we decided to find a lovely expression of distilled pulque, an expression that could properly translate the wild flavors of this ferment into a spirit.

To this day, the Melate team has sampled about 40 different expressions of distilled pulque, and, in all honesty, until very recently, we hadn’t found anything that appealed to us. In our opinion, they were all rather flat and boring. There was a tiny presence of what we love in pulque, but it was like a far echo trying to reach us in the middle of a hectic city.

That was until we had the pleasure to sit down with Luis Vences and Zury Guindi at SOM, their Mexico City bar that is also a Mexican spirits temple. That first night, we probably went through a few dozen expressions, but when we hit the pulque spirits round, we were absolutely impressed with the strength and clarity of their Morelos variant (they do have expressions representing Hidalgo and Tlaxcala as well).

What they did differently from everyone else was to separate production into two fundamental areas: pulque production and distillation. This may sound like a simple thing, given that most mezcaleros are experts in farming, fermenting and distilling. But in the pulque world, “Tlachiqueros” (which is what is used to call those who scrape the agave hearts and ferment the aguamiel) have a very specialized mindset. They’ve been dedicated to fermentation for hundreds (thousands?) of years, and distillation is still a mystery to them.

Thinking about fermentable sugars from agave that can be achieved without cooking the “piñas” is quite exciting. Most of the wood, energy and expenses required for mezcal production are linked to this part of the process. Using agave’s own enzymes to break complex fructuose into yeast-friendly fructans surely sounds like a great way to save money and prevent a good chunk of emissions.

But the big question remains. Why are most distilled pulque expressions not very delicious? The answer may be rather complex, but at its very core, we just think that tlachiqueros are just not great distillers. As we argued previously, their highly specialized palates and minds are focused on a different target. Instead of trying to change their perspective, they should find partners who can distill their pulque, extracting and concentrating the best of it. And that is precisely what Don Alejo Dávila and Luis Vences decided to do.

In this month’s social media posts, we’ll talk more about the technical details of both parts of this story (fermentation and distillation), but we think this approach may be the beginning of a whole new category of agave spirits that offers flavors and aromas we’ve never experienced before. There is no steam, wood, or difusser, just the agave doing all the work and surrendering the most pristine fermentable agave sugars the world has ever seen. You don’t even have to add water to the fermentation tanks, so all you are tasting is the agave and its 15 years of fighting for survival.

The last bit of information we think is relevant in introducing this spirit is that the relationship between agaves pulqueros and humans, as we said earlier, goes back a long way. They are grown side by side with corn, squashes, beans, and other “milpa” related products, and they’ve even been “domesticated” in many subtle ways. For example, in an informal conversation, one researcher suggested that the lower thorn density on their leaves is no accident at all. Agaves dedicated to pulque may be the antithesis of the wild agave: a cultivar that is intensively human and shows us that we can reach a balance with nature that nourishes our desire for booze and our surroundings.

We really hope you enjoy this spirit and happy holidays!

Follow along throughout the month on facebook or instagram to get all the videos, fun facts, and conversations about this month’s feature. Some topics to look forward to include:

• This may be controversial, but, can humans totally replace water with pulque? We’ve heard of some theories about that.
• As we mentioned before, this is a very specialized fermentation. So we’ll listen more about the ways in which this living system is managed by the tlachiquero.
•  Plenty of technical specifics covering all the way from how to plant and deal with “pulque” agaves, to how to approach the distillation.

Quote of the Month

” I have a cousin, he is 95 years old and only drinks pulque. He has never drank water. Seriously, his blood is made out of pulque. “

– Alejo Dávila