MEXICO | THE FLAVORS
Worm your way through Mescal: a tasting tour in Mexico
On a mescal-tasting tour, accessories include a shot glass, a lime and an occasional moth larva.
IT'S all about the worm.
A scrum of tourists rushed the tasting bar of Mezcal Benevá's restaurant-distillery Rancho Zapata, just a few yards from the kilometer 42.5 marker on the Oaxaca-Istmo highway.
Eighteen-year-old Marisol Reyes had just given us a guided tour of the distillery, called a palenque in Spanish. She told us about the agave plants and how they're harvested and cooked. We watched a donkey drag a huge stone wheel round and round a track crushing agave pulp. We saw agave juice fermenting in copper vats, infusing the air with the smell of charcoal and burned sugar. We sampled young mescals and mescals aged six months in oak casks. We tried flavored versions, like cappuccino and passion fruit.
Now it was time to get on with it.
A woman behind the bar put a shot glass of youthful mescal in front of two tourists who were about the relative maturity of the liquor. One happened to be my stepson, Ben Shepard, who's in his early 20s. The woman fished out two pale worms — each about 1 1/2 inches long — from a jar and placed them on a wedge of lime.
The cameras came out. The crowd hushed. Ben's mother winced.
"Salud," the woman said.
They drank. They chomped down on the limes. They swallowed the worms.
Mescal tradition was maintained.
"How'd it taste?" I asked.
"Not bad," Ben said. "Bland."
I asked the barkeep if she ever eats the worms.
"Ay!" she exclaimed, "No!"
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