Mezcal Book Review

Travel Distilled reviews the book Mezcal by Emma Janzen and finds it an excellent guide to the making of Mezcal, meeting the people who make it, travelling through Oaxaca, and with a long collection of mezcal cocktails.

I recently reviewed the book The Mezcal Experience, a wonderful book about what is currently my favourite spirit. Could a new title, Mezcal by Emma Janzen, possibly compete?

The short answer is yes, absolutely. I devoured The Mezcal Experience from cover to cover, and the same applied here. Mezcal is a fascinating spirit which is only fairly recently starting to be appreciated. In part that is because it is genuinely an artisanal product. Words like artisanal and craft get thrown about all over the place, but mezcal is the real deal.

Mezcal has traditionally been made in small batches in towns and villages in certain parts of Mexico where agave plants grow abundantly. A small village might have one mezcal producer. A town might have a handful. In each case the mezcal produced would be different, depending on the terroir, but would go no further than the immediate vicinity.

It was only when curious travellers like Tom Bullock (author of The Mezcal Experience and a long-time campaigner for the drink) and Ron Cooper (founder of Del Maguey) discovered mezcal and started advocating for it in the US and UK markets, that mezcal began gradually to be known about outside Mexico. And even then, only in a limited way.

Mezcal Book Review

Emma Janzen’s book Mezcal came out in 2017, and the first thing you notice is the really handsome and stylish cover. It’s a simple cover, a mix of silver and green, a little like an agave, against a black background with a stylised drawing of an agave plant. Beautiful.

Inside, the book is equally stylish, as you can see from some of the spreads I’m including here. I’m not one who falls for style over substance, but when the book has the substance it’s lovely to see it presented in such a visually-attractive way.

Introduction

In the book’s enjoyable Introduction, the author points out the huge growth in interest in and sales of mezcal in the last decade or so.

“Mezcal sales in the United States grew by nearly 48 percent between 2007 and 2011, and exploded from a $10 million industry in 2005 to $126 million in 2015.”

Meeting People

What I like about the book is that the author gets out and about, meeting and talking to people who are heavily involved with mezcal. The first meeting is with Sylvia Philion and her partner Marco Ochoa who run Mezcaloteca, a mezcal bar in Oaxaca City. They’re an engaging and incredibly knowledgeable couple, and it’s an excellent way to introduce the reader to the world of mezcal, rather than simply having the author explain stuff to you.

Mezcal Distilleries

As well as meeting bar-owners and cocktail creators, the author gets out into the field and meets the mezcal makers themselves. One of the really great things about mezcal is that many of the makers are small-scale, and may be virtually a one-man business or a small family affair. This is why you get such exciting variety with mezcal, and not a lot of mass production. If it continues to grow, though, that may have to change.

Nuts and Bolts

Part Two of the book is called The Nuts and Bolts. This includes a description of the different species of agave that are used to make mezcal, their characteristics, and suggestions of a bottle or two to try that are made from that particular type of agave plant. That’s followed by an explanation of the mezcal-making process, and then a little about pechuga.

Pechuga

Pechuga is a drink you get when you infuse mezcal with fruits like apples or plums, with spices such as cinnamon or cloves, and other less common infusing ingredients… like chicken, rooster, turkey, duck, venison, rabbit, and even iguana. As with the rest of the book – and this is what makes it a cut above average – the author does this not by relaying facts to the reader, but by getting out there, meeting people who make pechuga (which is a special occasion drink), and sampling some for herself.

Mezcal in the Glass

So you’ve got your mezcal, and you know how to make it, what next? Part Three is In the Glass, how to find the right mezcal for you (basically by drinking as many types as you can find – I’m in), which glasses to use, what goes with it, and how to serve it and drink it at the table.

Mezcal Cocktails

Part Four is 80 pages of mezcal cocktails, most of them with a full-page colour photo that makes you want to make it immediately. They include such cocktails as a Mezcal Negroni and a Mezcal Old-Fashioned, showing that you should experiment by using mezcal where you might otherwise use a whiskey or other spirit. You can substitute mezcal in tequila cocktail recipes, and if you have your favourite margarita recipe, just try it with mezcal instead one time, see what you get.

What you get with this book is a terrific read, as the author takes us with her on a fun journey through the world of mezcal and the land that it hales from. And most importantly, meeting the people who have a passion for it.