Does the water matter in Mezcal and Tequila?
Okay, so, first … yes, of course, water matters. Without water, there can’t be Mezcal or Tequila, both because you need it to make the spirits but more importantly, people make these spirits and without water, there are no people. With that out of the way … evolutionary biologist and frequent Roadtripper Daniel Moen checked in to ask, Why does water matter in Tequila and Mezcal? I immediately went to my old trope: About half the bottle or more is water. But then he followed up with, The water you're consuming when you drink Mezcal, that fifty percent is actually distilled water. And distilled water, by definition, is neutral. So … why does it matter? Or does it not? We wade into the issue in this episode of Agave Road Trip!
Agave Road Trip is a critically acclaimed, award-winning podcast that helps gringx bartenders better understand agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico. This episode is hosted by Lou Bank with special guest Linda Sullivan of seynasecreto with wisdom from Daniel Mohn, Eduardo Angeles of Lalocura, and Ari Marks and Michael Schallau of is/was Brewing.
Episode Notes
Thanks to Miguel Dimayuga Meneses for the cover photo of El Choforo working on the well project in Atempa, Guerrero — a project funded by SACRED Agave through a grant from 818 Tequila.
Shout outs this episode to Fiji water, Felipe Camarena of G4 Tequila, and the bio-digester project of Serafin Morales Cruz of Mezcal Alarii!
Episode Post-Script
Daniel Moen checked in after the episode with this:
Hey Lou! I appreciated your episode about "why does water matter in agave spirits?" I was happy to hear it come out, as we had talked about it a while ago. Your conclusion about how the water can only really matter in the fermentation—honestly, that's the only thing I could come up with, as well. I do wonder, however, how important it ends up being. Your buddy Mike's comment about how small amounts of minerals can drastically affect water's texture, that's absolutely the case. The fancy spring waters often have dissolved solids in the neighborhood of 35 parts per million (that's like 35 bits of minerals to 999,965 bits of water) and most people can easily perceive how differently that tastes from distilled water.
But that sort of presumes that we're starting with only a *very clean* substrate and comparing the addition of either distilled water or spring water, and saying the latter makes the yeast happier. It could, particularly when you're making beer and you get to choose whether you ferment with distilled water or spring water. On the other hand, in the "lack of control is what's interesting" world of agave spirits, I kind of figure that whatever water a producer adds to the tank, it's probably not neutral. And I wonder, how many minerals also get in the fermentation vat just from dust or dirt or carbon on the roasted piñas? Or residual tepache/mosto that dried in the fermentation vat, only to be revived by adding more water when fermenting again? It just seems that the water type or quality has to play such a small part, at least relative to beer or coffee or even whisky diluted with water, when you're actually consuming the water in question.
Anyway, there's probably no way to ever know what's going on. You could do experiments—and I've seen palenqueros talk about their experiments, as well as seen Maguey Melate bottle two different distillates with supposedly only the fermentation water differing—yet all these cases are just single replicates, and so many things beyond the water type probably differ between those two batches. (I'm guessing that differences in ABV alone probably suffice to explain different impressions in most such comparisons.) You'd really need to do a large-scale, controlled experiment, with many replicates ... which is never going to happen. I expect.Ultimately, the mezcaleros will still be making delicious spirits regardless of whether science can tell us how they do it. And so many, like Lalo, are constantly tinkering, which is wonderful. So, maybe much ado about nothing. Yet I wanted to write to thank you for addressing this curiosity of mine. I remain a skeptic, but I appreciate a deep dive on it. I'm also sure there will still be many, many people who will say, "It's 50% water!", or "It was fermented with swamp water. .. maybe that's why it tastes like a swamp!" (I honestly saw this once.) But maybe your episode will make them think twice. :)
All the best,
Daniel