This week´s biggest travel story is that I went to Tequila! It is a little bit north of Guadalajara, and is the place where the popular drink is named after. There´s lots of touristy stuff related to this - including ridiculous looking vehicles to take people on tours, ranging from trains to barrels in shape. I didn´t go on them. What I did do though is take a tour of the first (and still functioning) Jose Cuervo factory, and also go to the Tequila museum where the above photo was taken. So much tequila, and no way of getting at it...
Tequila is produced only in certain regions around the country (by law) where the Blue Agave plant can be cultivated properly. The Blue Agave looks like a cactus, but is really a bulb, in the lily family. After 6 to 12 years of growth it is mature enough to be cut out of the ground and cut up as shown above. All the spikey bits are chopped off, and then the heart is cut in half for the baking. The heart is basically all starch, but once baked it becomes sugary sweet, like sugar cane.
After it becomes sugary sweet like sugar cane it is fermented, then distilled twice. It is then aged, either for a short time in lightly charred oak barrels (no more than a month) to make silver tequila, or up to three or more years in heavily charred oak barrels to make amber stuff, of the kind you would only drink straight.
After the tour of the factory I was (because I paid enough money - not that much though as Mexico is cheap) given a lesson on how the Tequila Masters taste Tequila. So don´t try and pull one over me - I know my stuff now. And I also now have developed a taste for Tequila, which was never there before. Damn capitilist pigs with their tours making me like Tequila.
The rest of the week I´ve been hanging with my sister really, and her boyfriend. That is because tomorrow I head to the beach (called San Blás) for a few days, returning on Thursday and flying to Canada on Friday. So don´t be surprised if you don´t here from me for a week. Tequila sunrise here I come!
