By Rodrigo Díaz
Photograph by Ángel Miquel
In the Central Valleys of the state of Oaxaca, in the municipality of Zimatlán de Álvarez, I spoke with Francisco Ortiz, founder of Tío Elpidio mezcal. The town is a quiet place, with a population of just over 20,000 inhabitants, where the wind blows warmly under the shade of what the locals call Cerro Viejo (Old Hill). It is said that originally a Spanish hacienda was settled here, which attracted people from nearby communities to work with small livestock. Like many families in search of work, Flora and Elpidio, my host’s grandparents, found themselves in this beautiful town of exquisite landscapes, where the sun envelops everything, as if under a golden aura.
Initially working in different crops and then making mezcal for other families, they learned to handle the agave with expertise until they obtained a high quality distillate. Two generations later, as a tribute to his ancestors—because as his grandmother told him making mezcal is a matter of tradition and culture—Francisco takes up again the tasks of his lineage to recognize and pay homage to his origins. Today they work in the Palenque «La Flor de Zimatlán,» a workshop, as Francisco and his people like to call it, where they make mezcal covering all the links of production: from the cultivation of the agave to the commercialization of the bottles, whose brand «Tío Elpidio,» is due to the habit of the locals of calling «uncle» to those who are loved and respected.
The key to the quality of the distillate is the good management of the agave, «That the plant has a good richness in all senses,» he tells me «when you are out of the field, you feel the need for the smell of the earth, the need for the warmth of the sun of the field, and that need has led us to focus on the production of agaves.»
On their land they cultivate different species of regional agaves such as espadín, tobalá, tobaziche, and barril whose flavor, as the mezcal connoisseur recognizes, has its organoleptic particularities and whose piñas, after being jimadas, are cooked in a conical oven underground for three or four days which softens them to be ground by hand with mallets that resemble logs in order to extract the juices from the interior to be later fermented in large wooden vats. The process continues with distillation—for ancestral mezcal, clay pots are used; for artisanal mezcal, copper stills.
Talking with its makers and perceiving the devotion they have for the plant, as well as seeing and understanding the process carried out by the master mezcal makers through a knowledge that goes from generation to generation, is truly magical. Being aware that the plant takes, depending on the species, more than 10 years to mature, and the care that must be taken to avoid pests and to ensure that its conditions are optimal is also a job that fosters patience and tolerance with the environment. These are considerations that one has to keep in mind when putting the spirit in one’s mouth remembering that, as Ortiz emphasized, it is a matter of tradition and culture. «Working in the field makes us not forget where we come from, where we are from, that gives us the fervent desire to pay homage and, in some way, to pay tribute to the land.»
That is why many phrases around mezcal have emerged and have become popular: «for everything bad, mezcal; for everything good, too,» «mezcal makes you magical,» and personally, I agree. Something about this drink makes the heart and mind connect in those who ingest it, awakening the desire to get fraternal and in the best way to share our impressions of what happens to us, what we think, what we feel—a social lubricant that catalyzes good community relations. «Mezcal was also used as a stomach remedy and as ‘cariñitos’ which are the gifts given in the community for parties where one is invited. Mezcal is not only liquor, it implies an approach. For those who believe in the gods, a rapprochement with the gods, a rapprochement with another dimension. It has happened to us that sometimes we have approached to talk to wolves and coyotes, it has brought us closer to other dimensions,» Francisco shares with us, verballizing in this way the respect and devotion they have in everything around their mezcal.
