After another hostel breakfast, we headed back out onto the road. This time, heading inland to Tequila. While waiting at a red light, we bought a coconut snack off a guy selling them from car to car (something we\u2019ve been wanted to do since arriving in Mexico).<\/p>\n
We arrived in Tequila after our most expensive day of tolls yet, 803 pesos (or $45) for the convenience of being on the nicer \u201ccuota\u201d highways. The drive in was very scenic, first passing through lush jungle and then vast fields of blue agave.<\/p>\n
The streets of Tequila were very lively, due to it being a Sunday. It was by far the most tourists we\u2019d seen since arriving in Mexico. There was store upon store of souvenir shop, selling miniature wooden tequila barrels, sombreros, obsidian objects (from the nearby volcano), and Tequila themed mugs and drinkware. Andrew had a margarita and Viki a horchata from street vendors. Dinner was in the central market, where we had 5 tacos each for 10 pesos a taco (around $0.50 each). Finally, we wandered back to the van and slept on a narrow side-street.<\/p>\n
The main attraction of Tequila for us was a distillery tour, which were all finished when we arrived at 5pm last night. So after having a breakfast of eggs with chilaquiles, beans, and cheese, we walked over to Casa Sauza for a tour (better sounding than the tour by the monolithic competitor, Cuervo).<\/p>\n
The tour first took us to the agave fields on a tour bus. Each distillery had it\u2019s own tour bus, huge trolley busses shaped ridiculously, like a jalapeno chili, a bottle of tequila, and a giant tequila barrel. In the fields we practiced planting our own agave plants and saw how the leaves were cut off with a \u201ctonga de suedra\u201d (mother-in-law\u2019s tongue) to reveal the heart of the agave, or \u201cpineapple\u201d.<\/p>\n
Moving on to the distillery, we walked through and learned of the two branches and five categories of tequila. For the two branches, tequila is either 100% agave (more expensive) or a mix of at least 51% agave plus other sugars (like corn syrup or cane sugar). For the five categories, we have a spectrum of agings in barrels, from blanco\/silver (not aged), joven\/gold (had flavourings or colourings added), reposada (aged 2-11 months), a\u00f1ejo (aged at least 1 year), and extra-a\u00f1ejo (aged more than 3 years). All agings take place in imported American oak barrels (since it\u2019s illegal to cut down oaks in Mexico). We also learned that Mezcal is the term for an alcoholic beverage made from agave plants and Tequila is a subset, that has to have been made in one of five specific Mexican provinces, be from one particular species of agave \u2013 \u201cblue agave\u201d, and conform to the requirements of the regulator of the Designation of Origin.<\/p>\n
Andrew bought a bottle of Cava de Oro a\u00f1ejo tequila, which seems to be a craft distillery just in Mexico. We also tasted the extra a\u00f1ejo, which was very sweet and smooth. For lunch we went back to the market and tried birria for the first time (a flavourful goat soup served with tortillas). Finally we drove off, stopped for dinner by the road for sopes and tostadas, and are now parked outside of an Oxxo gas station store for the night.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Day 12 \u2013 Mazatlan to Tequila After another hostel breakfast, we headed back out onto the road. This time, heading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":702,"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions\/702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/thetravellingpear\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}