The Mezcal with the Chicken — Pechuga!
Maybe you’ve heard stories of a weird mezcal that is made with chicken. Maybe you’ve heard that it’s tied to celebratory rituals. Maybe you’ve heard that it’s precious and rare. Maybe all of that is right and maybe all of that is wrong. Maybe you’ll get the straight answer in this episode of Agave Road Trip! Or maybe not.
This episode of Agave Road Trip is brought to you by Flask Fine Wines. Flask Fine Wines offers nationwide shipping of fine wines and spirits, including vintage spirits and heritage agave spirits. Learn more, and get your next bottle, at flaskfinewines.com
Agave Road Trip is a podcast that helps gringo bartenders better understand agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico. It’s hosted by Lou Bank and Chava Periban.
There is no legal definition for pechuga. According to NOM-070, the document that defines what mezcal is, if you distill a mezcal with additional ingredients, you can call it “Destilado con…” (i.e. distilled with…) and then name some of the ingredients added during distillation. So why don’t we see more uncertified “pechugas” on the market in the USA?
I don’t get it. So many mezcal geeks are opposed to drinking wood-aged mezcal on the grounds that it masks the flavor. But those same people are crazy for pechugas … which are distilled with fruits and nuts and spices and protein … which do the exact same thing.
As Chava pointed out, there’s a history in Mexico of adding fruit to alcohol — for instance, curados are pulque that’s been cured with fruit. This is a sweet, sweet pitcher of a chicozapote curado at El Mexicano in Mexico City: Regina 27 in Centro Historico. Chava also mentions mistela, which apparently is pox distilled with fruits. But google mistela and you get a different alcohol from Spain … which kinda tells you where the idea came from, right?
The chocolate bon bons that Chef Mike Bagale made at Alinea using the spent fruits from a pechuga distillation by Eduardo Angeles of Lalocura.
