In recent years, mezcal has experienced an extraordinary rise in popularity, transforming from an overlooked cousin of tequila to a premium spirit found in high-end cocktail bars and Michelin-starred restaurants. The transcript delves into the traditional production process of mezcal, highlighting the dedication of Mexican families, particularly the Hernandez brothers at Malde Amor distillery, who have been preserving artisanal methods for generations. Unlike tequila, most mezcal is made in small batches, roasted underground, and hand-crushed, reflecting a unique blend of cultural heritage and craftsmanship.

The resurgence of mezcal has significantly impacted the economy of Oaxaca, a region rich in indigenous cultures and traditions. Business ventures like the partnership between John Rexer, Gilberto Marquez, and the Hernandez brothers demonstrate the spirit's global impact while preserving its artisanal roots. Through mezcal tourism and expanding exports, Oaxaca sees economic growth, yet there is a concern for the sustainability of agave, as some indigenous and small-scale producers fear the rapid pace might compromise the environmental balance and traditional practices.

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. artisanal [ɑːrˈtɪzənəl] - (adjective) - Referring to products that are handcrafted, typically using traditional methods and techniques. - Synonyms: (craft, handmade, bespoke)

artisanal mezcal resists machinery.

2. palenque [pəˈleŋkeɪ] - (noun) - A traditional Mexican distillery where mezcal is produced, typically using artisanal methods. - Synonyms: (distillery, brewery, plant)

Today they run Malde Amor, one of Matatlan's largest distilleries, or palenques.

3. espadine [es-pah-DEEN] - (noun) - A type of agave plant that is commonly used for producing mezcal, known for its relatively fast maturation. - Synonyms: (agave, plant variety, cultivation)

Made from 100% espadine, a variety of agave that ripens the fastest.

4. denomination of origin [dɪˌnɒmɪˈneɪʃən əv ˈɔːrɪdʒɪn] - (noun) - A certification that a product possesses certain qualities due to its geographical origin. - Synonyms: (certification, designation, geographical indication)

Almost all of them for export, and every bottle is served, certified by the Mexican government, stamped with a hologram to mark denomination of origin.

5. emeritus [ɪˈmɛrɪtəs] - (adjective) - A title used to denote a retired person who retains their title as an honor. - Synonyms: (retired, honorary, distinguished)

Including their 87-year-old father, the Mescalero emeritus.

6. teotiao [teh-oh-TEE-oh] - (noun) - In Zapotec culture, a term for elder people, respected members of the community or leaders in the mezcal industry. - Synonyms: (elder, leader, patriarch)

Lalo's father, Teoteo, watched over.

7. intuition [ˌɪn.tuːˈɪʃ.ən] - (noun) - The ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. - Synonyms: (insight, instinct, perception)

Making artisanal mezcal is part science, part intuition.

8. funk [fʌŋk] - (noun) - A strong, unpleasant smell or mood. - Synonyms: (odor, aroma, smell)

And it comes with a funk.

9. germinate [ˈdʒɜːrmɪneɪt] - (verb) - To begin to grow or develop. - Synonyms: (sprout, grow, develop)

So Carno germinates the seeds from twelve varieties in her nursery.

10. revitalized [riːˈvaɪtəlaɪzd] - (adjective) - Brought new life and energy to something. - Synonyms: (reinvigorated, renewed, rejuvenated)

Both pillars of that economy, agriculture, and tourism, have been revitalized by the explosion in global demand for mezcal.

Mezcal producers preserve traditional methods as demand for liquor grows | 60 Minutes

For years, Mezcal sat in the shadow of its popular cousin, tequila, known for its worm and deemed too smoky for a spot on the same shelf as premium spirits. But not anymore. Once banned and later sold in plastic jugs for pennies, the handcrafted spirit has found its way into cocktail bars and Michelin starred restaurants. No other liquor has seen a greater increase in production in the past decade. Mezcal gets its name from the Aztec word for cooked agave, a thorny plant sacred to Mexico for thousands of years. The vast majority of mezcal is made in the southern state of Oaxaca, where family-owned distilleries dot the landscape. We went to meet the mescaleros as they labored to quench the world's thirst for mezcal.

Mescaleros harvest agave year-round, but it's no low-hanging fruit pried from the earth. The spikes are removed by machete, revealing the heart, the pina, which looks like a hundred-pound pineapple. Agave takes its sweet time to ripen, up to 30 years for some varieties. It grows in the valleys that run between the Sierra Madre mountains. Here in Oaxaca, the crossroads of indigenous and Spanish colonial cultures, the birthplace of Mezcal, and Santiago, Matatlan is its cradle. The Hernandez brothers, Armando and Alvaro, are fourth-generation Mescaleros from an indigenous Zapotec family. They learn the craft from their father, Silverio. Today they run Malde Amor, one of Matatlan's largest distilleries, or palenques.

"We make mezcal without hurry, meaning everything in its time. We don't add or do anything to speed up production, but we make it nonstop, 365 days a year, the entire day." Is it different from the way your father made it? "No. No, it's the same. We conserve all the traditions, everything we were taught, and everything is done by hand." Agave was first distilled here in the 1600s. Mexicans have been drinking mezcal at baptisms, funerals, and every occasion in between ever since. And let's clear this up early. Tequila is a type of mezcal made with blue agave, mostly in the state of Jalisco. But most tequila has been mass-produced, made by machines, since the seventies.

artisanal mezcal resists machinery. The agave is roasted in underground pits for days, then it's crushed by horse-drawn mill. The mash is fermented in wooden barrels and distilled twice in copper vats. No temperature dials or controls. Bubbles indicate the alcohol content. "Who knows more about the process? I think he may know more, but I drink it more." At Malde Amor, they offer Napa-style tours of their agave fields. Mezcal is now a half-billion dollar a year industry. But in the 1980s and nineties, Armando and Alvaro told us production of mezcal could barely support the family. "The price of mezcal was very low. It was miserable."

What was it? "Siete pesos un litro de Mezcal. Seven pesos for a liter of mezcal. Less than a dollar. And we were ten children. Sunday was the only day we could afford a cup of milk and a piece of bread. So we decided to go." Armando left Mexico first, alone, bound for California. Do you remember the day you left? "Yes. It was the 3 December 1992. I was twelve years old. I have children of my own now and I could never bring myself to let them cross the border alone. It was a sad goodbye, very painful to leave the family behind." How did you get there? "Like all migrants, with a coyote," smuggled across the border, Alvaro eventually joined him in Los Angeles.

They spent a decade working in bars and restaurants. When the plot twisted, artisanal became hip and Mezcal's popularity boomed, Alvaro began to dream about returning to the family business. "I had plans drawn up for the palenque and I showed Armando." Alvaro came in with the plan for his palenque and he spread it on the bed and said, "I'm going to do this." And I told him, "you're crazy. How are you going to make a living?" Armando was skeptical until he noticed shots of mezcal going for $10 each. He says he looked down at the label on a bottle one day and it was from their hometown.

And you finally told your brother "I told you so." So Armando and Alvaro went back home to ramp up the family palenque. Enter John Rexer and Gilberto Marquez of the Mezcal brand Illegal. Made from 100% espadine, a variety of agave that ripens the fastest. So how far out does the Ilegal agave go? "Is this all ilegal? Yeah, there's about 2500 plants per acre. There's about five acres out here." "There's a lot of espadine." Right. Today, Illegal is one of the top-selling mezcal brands. But it too started humbly.

Rexer, an expat New Yorker, was in search of a steady supply of mezcal to serve at a bar he owned in Guatemala. "I would take a bus up from Guatemala. It's a 24 hours bus ride. Along the way, you can pull a string in that bus and say, I want to stop here, walk to a village, wait until lights came on somewhere and say, hey, do you know anybody who makes good mezcal around here? And invariably someone would have an uncle, a brother, a cousin." "Tengo on tio." "Tengo on tio." See, that's exactly it. Everybody has an uncle.

As the name on the bottle suggests, Rexer's operation wasn't exactly legal. "Is it true that you once dressed like a priest to have to get this across a border?" "Listen, I went through twelve years of catholic school." "Me too." "I knew how to play the role." It was his friend Gilberto Marquez who introduced him to the Hernandez brothers. "And we rolled down here and it was very, very, very tiny. And they were making very small amounts." "And he asks me, do you have more of this mezcal? And we said, yes, we have 10,000 liters. And it took us like two years to make. And John says to us, I want it all." A sidebar. And this may go without saying that Rexer has swigged his fair share of mezcal.

"Excuse me, do you want a water?" "Yeah, no, take a break. You're good." "She's like, do I want a water? You know, there's an expression. The best mezcal is the one in front of you." "It's not entirely true. You don't want to cover it in smoke. You want to taste the agave." "A lot of people say they don't like mezcal because of the smoke. Obviously, you're in a smoky environment, right? When you dig up the pit oven, there's smoke everywhere. So there's a lot of early mezcals that came into the states that are heavy-smoked."

Has mezcal gotten a bad rap on that front? "I think in the early days it did. But people began to discover, no, the agaves have particularly unique flavors." Rexer asked brothers Armando and Alvaro to go into business, and he made a promise. If they could produce the mezcal, he'd sell it around the world. They'd been burned by false promises before, so they weighed his offer in their native language. "You spoke in Zapotec so he wouldn't understand." "I said to Alvaro, in Zapotec, do you believe him? And he said, I don't know, but we figured, let’s see. I said, listen, I'll pay you up front so that we can get started."

"Two days later, we had the deposit in our account for all 10,000 liters. He said, each month I'll keep making deposits. So we made more. 500 liters, 1000, 2000. And it grew like that now; their partnership produces 3000 bottles of mezcal a day, almost all of them for export. And every bottle is certified by the Mexican government, stamped with a hologram to mark denomination of origin, like champagne or cognac." We'd heard there are rules about how to drink this artisanal mezcal. The good stuff isn't for shots or diluting in cocktails. It's for sipping.

So we asked Marquez, the former bartender who now promotes Illegal favorite way to drink it? "Spicy margarita." "Oh, wait a second. I thought you weren't supposed to drink mezcal in a margarita." "You do want to enjoy mezcal meat, but there's nothing wrong with having it in a cocktail, especially if we're trying to get folks to try it for the first time. It's an introduction to mezcal." Marquez poured us a hoven, the colorless mezcal you'll find in most bottles. "This is 100% espadine, so Joven means young." "Joven means young, unaged. Salud." "This one tastes spicy to me, so smoke is not the first thing that you taste. It's definitely there, but I would not call this smoky."

Yes. Aging mezcal is a Mexican tradition. Illegal does it in American oak, the same way bourbon is made. "So this is the Anejo. And this is aged?" "15 months. Color is definitely darker." "Yep." "Wow. So good." How would you drink this one? "Absolutely neat. 100%. Has anyone ever said to you, hey, what's a gringo like you doing in a place selling Oaxaca? Mezcal." "Yes. I've gotten pushback over the years. You're a foreigner. But I'm someone who fell in love with the rhythm and the pace of Oaxaca and fell in love with mezcal." He's no longer the only foreigner in this partnership.

Bacardi, the largest privately held global spirits company, acquired Illegal last year in a deal worth a reported $100 million. "When we started to grow the brand, one of the questions I asked myself was, how do you fall in love with something and then not destroy the thing you fell in love with by making it grow. Can you do that with an international conglomerate like Bacardi?" "I think it's a great question because it's not just the beautiful liquor, but it's certain things that we're trying to preserve and believe in. This is a family business. We have to respect the artisanal production. We can never let this become industrial."

What does the deal with Bacardi mean for you? "What's going to change is many people's lives in this community, it's a benefit for the whole community." The palenque now employs 100 people from Matatlan and beyond, including their 87-year-old father, the Mescalero emeritus, Armando and Alvaro. Translated from Zapotec to Spanish. We asked what Senor Hernandez thought of his son's mezcal. Does it live up to the family name? "See, that's why I drink it. If not, I wouldn't drink it." The Hernandez brothers are expanding. The family palenque construction is already underway.

So if there's the American dream, is this the Mexican dream? "It's the Mexican dream. It’s something we never imagined." When we come back, how mezcal tourism in Oaxaca is helping to fuel the economy, even as some producers fear it's all moving a bit too fast. Oaxaca, a diverse patch of 4 million people on the southwest curl of Mexico's tail, may be one of the country's poorest states, but it boasts one of the fastest-growing economies. Both pillars of that economy, agriculture, and tourism, have been revitalized by the explosion in global demand for mezcal.

Tens of thousands of Oaxacan families produce mezcal for a living, mostly in small, handcrafted batches. The deeper you travel into Oaxaca's countryside, the harder mescaleros cling to their ancestral methods, and the louder they'll tell you there's a price to pay for this mezcal boom. The story will continue in a moment. Insulated by peaks and valleys, Oaxaca has its rugged terrain to thank for its diversity. The Zapotec people flourished here for nearly a thousand years, their ancestral capital preserved at Monte Alban. Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, Oaxaca is home to 16 different indigenous groups, more than anywhere else in the country.

The state capital, Oaxaca city, is a technicolor hub of markets and vendors, with its 16th-century cathedral, Santo Domingo de Guzman, towering over the stone streets on the coast. Puerto Escondido, the hidden port, draws surfers from around the world who come to ride a massive break in the Pacific called the Mexican pipeline. Then there's the food. Oaxaca is called the land of seven moles, after its rich stew made with dozens of ingredients to wash it all down. Hundreds of varieties of small-batch mezcal, many made from wild agave.

The most sought-after stuff is crafted deep in Oaxaca's rural communities and has tourists venturing out there. At the Real Minero distillery, or palenque, we met John Douglas, a bar owner who makes regular trips down from bourbon country, Kentucky. So what gives? "It's delicious. And there's a story behind it. About flavor, about people, about histories, about, geez, how exactly is this made? How many bottles do you bring home? Gosh, you're not the TSA, are you? Here."

The agave roast is a smoky, well-choreographed ballet. Everyone knows their part and in charge. Graciela Angel Escareno, a Mescalera with a reputation as a leader in the industry. Her family has been making mezcal since it was more bootleg than above board. And your grandmother sold mezcal from the back of a burro. "El Pro. So my great-grandfather produced the mezcal, and my great-grandmother sold it. And why did she sell it? Because nobody inspected the women at the time. She made a special knock at the door, opened the door, and the woman with the donkey takes out her mezcal, opens her store."

Careno's family distills in clay pots 11,000 liters of mezcal a year. Some 8000 bottles. Many go for upwards of $100. Making artisanal mezcal is part science, part intuition, and it comes with a funk. "Hi, mosquitos." Which we saw and smelled inside Careno's fermentation room. "Right now, it's not too fermented. You can put your mouth here and try it." "Very bitter." "Yes. And you can taste the alcohol." "It tastes like beer." "Yeah." Careno showed us how. She knows when it's ready for the next step.

"Si. Yo pongo mi oido quezcucha. If I put my ear to it. Listen." "It's like a stomach." "It is like a stomach." "Oh, wow." How much time left for this? "I think maybe another four days. This is where the flavor comes. This is your magic." 3 hours south of Oaxaca City, at the Perez family palenque, we met Lalo Perez, a fifth-generation mescalero. "That's the next generation." Holding his hand, the whole family had just pulled an all-nighter, tending the fire for their roast, a community ritual. "Neighbors came by in the morning to help stack the pinas, and Lalo's father, Teoteo, watched over."

How was the roast last night? "Alas, ho cho la. Around eight in the morning, we finally started stacking the pinas." We joked about being beat from the night before, but Lalo says making mezcal doesn't feel like work. "From the moment I go out into the countryside to harvest agave, I feel like I want to taste it already." "You're smiling when you tell me this." "It's the joy that mezcal brings me. If you drink five glasses, it brings you even more joy." Lalo walked us through his agave varieties with names like Madre, Cuische, and Tepestate, he told us, each gives a unique taste.

Herbal, mineral, earthy. Dioteo insisted we taste for ourselves and led us to his private stash, where he keeps his prized batches. "Muy de ferente." "Si, muy de ferente." "Wow. Te pestate is the winner." Lalo has taken over most of the manual labor from his dad. Using wooden mallets to crush the roasted agave, he distills batches of about 250 bottles at a time. But here's the thing. Mezcal produced by the Perez family can't technically be called mezcal.

It is made in the right region using the right methods to qualify for denomination of origin. But Lalo told us he doesn't bother with the bureaucracy of getting it certified by government-approved regulators. "You don't put the word mezcal on your bottles to sell." "Does that bother you?" "On the contrary. To certify it, they practically tell you how to make your mezcal. An inspector comes and tells you don't crush with wooden mallets. Water it down so that it'll pass lab tests, and then I'll certify it so you can sell it."

"We don't need a government certifier to come and tell us how to make mezcal." There's no doubt in your mind that what's inside your bottles is mezcal. "See, it is mezcal." Maybe so, but Cinco Centidos, the brand that bottles the Perez family's product for export, has to label the uncertified mezcal distilled agave in bars around the world; that's become a selling point. Small batch enthusiasts clamor for obscure, limited-run bottles, and mezcal, by any other name, still smells as sweet.

Graciela Careno chose to drop the denomination of origin two years ago. Her main focus now is her plants. "Once you harvest agave, that's it. This is not like grapes. The crop does not grow back each year. You can only benefit from it once in its lifetime, and it takes 30 years to give you its best." If mezcaleros obsess over their agave, it's because they're trying to avoid repeating tequila's mistakes. Overplanting of blue agave used in tequila has rendered that plant more susceptible to disease, Careno says. She worries the same could happen to Mezcal's workhorse variety, espadine.

"It's like tequila, only with mezcal, we plant espadine, only espadine. The irony is, on the world market, what people want most is not espadine it's wild agave." But wild agave has its own problems. As production of mezcal has increased 700% from ten years ago, some species of agave are vanishing. So Careno germinates the seeds from twelve varieties in her nursery. How concerned are you about the future of the agave plant in Oaxaca? "Where do I start? On the one hand, we have economic success because this spirit that came from our community is now served in the most famous bars in the world."

"That makes me happy and proud as a Mexican and Oaxacan. What worries me is the environmental cost, the cultural cost, because it will not be free. So I think the crossroads right now is recognizing that we need to slow down a little." Careno told us. Mezcal is a reminder to take a moment. So that's what we did. "Later, I'll tell you the percentage of alcohol because these are not low-grade." "Oh, really?" "How many am I going to be?" "No, the main point is not to get drunk. It's to enjoy it." "One bottle and enjoy it."

Artisan Mezcal, Oaxaca Culture, Traditional Distilleries, Economics, Global, Inspiration, 60 Minutes