Amazing but true: the new highbrow spirits come from Mexico. In premium mescals and tequilas (not to be confused with the lower-end varieties Margaritas are made with), drinkers of the ’90s have found their hip digestif–a way to sip what they used to slam in college. Aged tequila and fine mescal are the only spirits with increasing sales in the United States; they shot up 20 percent in 1994. Once obscure tequilas like El Tesoro sold 300,000 cases last year, at $38 a bottle. They’re seeing their first growth spurts in Canada, Europe and Asia, and in celebrated joints like the Raffles Hotel bar in Singapore. Enticed by the boom, British distillers, including Guinness, recently acquired major shares in Cuervo, Sauza and Herradura, Mexico’s three major tequila producers.
The buzz is particularly strong over premium mescal, similar to tequila but widely considered a more interesting tipple. In June, California importers Carl Doumani and Pamela Hunter launched Encantado ($40 a bottle) and found demand fast in 28 states. “Mescal was once the drink of Mexico’s elite,” says Doumani, co-owner of the Stags’ Leap winery. “It just needed the right marketing here.” For example: dump the worm. Now San Francisco’s elegant Stars restaurant serves Encantado for $7 a glass. Chicago’s Rick Bayless, one of America’s hottest restaurateurs, is so fond of fine mescal he sometimes sends free rounds to customers. “It’s definitely an educational sell,” he says. “But the more they try it, the more mescal’s old, bad image fades away.” And because word is out that mescal packs a remarkably benign hangover, even the spritzer set buys it at U.S. department stores like Neiman Marcus.
Tree huggers prize mescal’s handmade quaintness. Most tequila is produced in central Mexico near Guadalajara, mescal in the mountainous southern state of Oaxaca, from different varieties of the agave plant–a cactusy crown of daggers that evokes the drinks’ hard-edged reputations. Even fine tequila has become a more industrial product, prone to nonnatural flavors; but mescal still epitomizes “artisanship,” says Oaxaca maestro Alberto Sanchez. The agave heart is baked for three days in a rock pit (for tequila it is steamed), then fermented and distilled in a centuries-old technique. Mescal’s handmade charm also means low supply: for now Encantado faces minimal competition, and will be lucky to put 10,000 cases out by Christmas. Then again, that kind of scarcity may be just the “right marketing” that has allowed mescal to worm its way into the cognac crowd.
