On the mezcal hunt in Roma Norte

Lesley’s husband Crayton is filling in this week with a few posts.

There is a plant in Mexico called the maguey. (Americans sometimes call it a century plant.) It’s a variety of agave, a cousin to the blue agave from which tequila is made. But maguey and other agave family members produce their own special drink, called mezcal, with a sharper, smokier flavor than tequila.

While top-shelf tequila stopped being an oxymoron decades ago, mezcal has had an undeserved reputation as tequila’s redneck cousin. (This probably had something to do with some misunderstandings involving a worm.) This is starting to change as people discover mezcal’s world of flavors and tones.

At the end of the day, what you need to know about mezcal is that it tastes good and it will get you toasty.

Here in Mexico City, one of the best places to find a good variety of handcrafted mezcal is in the Colonia Roma Norte, where a cluster of businesses are doing a good job of promoting products from small distilleries, mostly from the state of Oaxaca to the south, but also from Guerrero, Michoacan, Tamaulipas and others. (Coyoacán, the beautiful Mexico City neighborhood to the south, is another mezcal lover’s paradise.)

Roma Norte is closer to me, though, and thus became the site of Mezcalapalooza (thanks, Leslie Limon!), an alcohol-tastic journey I took recently with friends Martin and John. Martin took all the photos you see in this post, and they are his and his alone, so no thieving!

We started our journey at La Botica, a tiny place designed to look like a hole-in-the-wall, with handwritten menus on corrugated cardboard.

La Botica has a huge variety of private-label mezcales from several types of agave, including espadín (made from a type of agave called Angustifolia) and papalote (from agave Cupreata). There are also several mezcales that are flavored during the distillation process with things like guava, banana, chicken breast (yes) and worm (yes).

We went with the chicken breast, along with a non-flavored variety called Serrano that was a mix from two agave plants and, to take it up a notch, a reposado, which is an aged mezcal. I generally like the roasted flavor of chicken-flavored mezcales (called “pechuga de pollo” in Spanish), and La Botica’s was no exception. But we all agreed the reposado was the best of the bunch, enjoyable and smooth with a hint of fig.

Mezcal consumption requires a chaser of orange slices dusted with red chili powder (it’s a mix of salt and ground red chiles, sometimes also mixed with ground-up caterpillar, the “worm” associated with the agave plant). Tasty and traditional. Some places will also offer up chapulines, or, as they’re known in English, toasted grasshoppers. Crunchy! I ordered some up in a bowl of queso fundido, which turned out to be only a so-so combination.

A nice light-colored beer like Corona is also a perfect chaser for mezcal. You can kind of see where this night is headed.

For our next stop, we didn’t have to move. La Botica is located next door to La Nacional, owned by the same folks. Since we were sitting at a patio table outside the two watering holes, our La Botica waiter just handed us off to a La Nacional waiter. One-stop shopping.

La Nacional is a full-service restaurant with a well-stocked bar and the longest list I’ve ever seen of Mexican microbrews. (Our old friend Tijuana beer was among several on the list.) But this is a mezcal post! We’ll save beer for another day.

I think I had tacos de arrachera here. The memory starts to get a little fuzzy around this point. But I did take notes on the mezcal! La Nacional has a long list, so we asked our waiter for recommendations. John’s Pelotón de la Muerte, a young Oaxacan mezcal, didn’t make much of an impression despite its name (“death platoon”). We thoroughly enjoyed Mezcal Murciélago, another young, or “blanco,” mezcal by Mezcales de Leyenda. It goes down very smooth for a young mezcal, but with plenty of smokiness. The big hit, though, was the reposado from Don Mateo de la Sierra, a distillery in the central state of Michoacán. Wow. Fragrant and ashy, with enough volume to let it roll around on your tongue for a little bit.

(And apparently Don Mateo has no online presence, so I can’t tell you where to buy it, other than at La Nacional. There are some references through the Googles about Don Mateo being part of the Mezcalero Union of Michoacán, which is apparently seeking a special designation for the mezcal grown in its state, just as tequila can only come from the state of Jalisco and a few other limited regions sanctioned by the Mexican government. The Michoacan mezcaleros want to call their stuff “Sïkua,” which is Purépecha for “mezcal.”)

Anyway! Where were we? Ah yes, we were several mezcales and beers in at this point. Mezcalapalooza was going great! We headed off (in the wrong direction) for our next location when I realized this would be a great time to introduce Martin to La Belga, a life-affirming place with a large variety of imported and microbrewed beer from all over. Check out that selection! It’s a rarity in Mexico.

[Note to expats: The folks at La Belga speak good English (and French, I believe), so if you don’t feel like stumbling through Spanish to get some good brew-ha-ha (though practice is important!), this is a good place to go. No matter what language you speak, the service is excellent. And this aside is reminding me that I should really do a lot more posting on Mexican microbrews. Consider that a promise, dear reader.]

Once we got properly oriented, we headed down the street to Red Fly, our final stop for the evening. The kooky decorations and the friendly staff were a photographer’s dream, so Martin cut loose. Here you go:

We ordered some food here, too. I think some quesadillas? Guys? The mezcal selection seemed to be pretty extensive here too, though our very nice waitress said they were out of a few things we wanted to try. Unlike at La Nacional, but like many places in Mexico City, the menu at Red Fly doesn’t tell you the brand names of the mezcales on its list, just the agave varieties from which they’re derived and the name of the master distiller and his or her location. I wasn’t quick-thinking enough at this point to ask our waitress if the mezcales we ordered had brand names.

Our favorite here was the espadín, an agave variety that’s become a favorite of mine. I’ve read that it’s probably the variety that tastes closest to tequila, and that seems right, but it’s still got that charred taste I love in a good mezcal. We also had something here called a mezcal rabioso, which literally means “raging.” No idea where it comes from, but it had an unusually earthy, almost grassy taste, a nice departure at this point in the evening. My three-maguey blend, suggested by our server, was decent but didn’t stand out.

We made it home safely thanks to John, who limited his intake and drove us home. Thanks, buddy. The mezcal was great, but the conversation was even better. We’re thinking of doing a rum tasting for our next adventure.

So, lessons learned:

1) Write things down! And not just if you’re going to be doing a Mezcalapalooza and thus might get a little forgetful. Just as wine lovers have their favorite grapes and blends, you’re going to find that you like certain agave varieties and blends better than others, and the addition of flavors like pechuga adds another level of complexity to the mix. (This is a good time to note that while it might seem that flavoring a mezcal is a way of watering it down or making it more palatable (you wouldn’t drink a flavored tequila, right?), it is part of the tradition and it’s fun, so don’t be snobby about it. Give it a whirl.) If you try a mezcal you like, make a note of the agave variety, any added flavors, the state of origin, the brand name or name of the distillery or the name of the master distiller (maestro mezcalillero), the age and any other piece of information you can get your hands on. This industry is still growing and taking form, and the more information you can arm yourself with, the better. There’s very little guidance available online.

2) Ask! Not every server is knowledgeable about mezcal, but you can get a sense pretty quickly of whether one knows his or her stuff. If not, ask to speak to whoever assembles the mezcal menu. It’s the best way to learn, and these people feel like underappreciated scholars, so they’re happy to help whenever someone shows real interest.

3) Don’t be intimidated by a long menu. You gotta start somewhere. Pick something on the list and start learning what you like.

4) Soak up the atmosphere. As you can see above, places that specialize in mezcal tend to be unassuming and laid-back, with a good sense of humor. That’s part of the fun.

5) If you’re not served orange slices or some sort of citrus, ask for them. And then go to a real place with servers who know what they’re doing.

INFO

La Botica
At the corner of Querétaro and Orizaba, Roma Norte (on the Orizaba side next to La Nacional)
Mon-Wed 5 p.m.-12 a.m.; Thurs-Sat 5 p.m.-2 a.m.
(La Botica also has two locations in La Condesa and one in the Zona Rosa, plus one in the city of Puebla and one in Madrid(!), according to our bartender. Check the Web site for details, though some of the location information is outdated there so it’s best to call ahead. A Polanco location opened and quickly closed, and the Roma location we went to just reopened after a long absence.)

La Nacional
At the corner of Querétaro and Orizaba, Roma Norte
Mon-Sun 4 p.m.-2 a.m.

La Belga
Querétaro 95, near the corner of Orizaba, Roma Norte. Right next to La Nacional.
Mon-Sat 12 p.m.-10 p.m.

Red Fly
Orizaba 145 between Querétaro and Zacatecas
Mon-Wed 2 p.m.-12 p.m.; Thurs-Sat 6 p.m.-2 a.m.

View a Google map of all four places