Master this strange power! Sway others at will! This episode of Agave Road Trip shows you in just minutes how to use the mysterious power of Mezcal to influence the thoughts of others, control their desires, and make yourself master of every situation. Send no money now! Listen first and when you have this marvelous power at your command and you can work wonders, then decide what it is worth to you. You’ll make others love you; strengthen your own will-power; develop a magnetic personality; banish fear and worry; improve your memory; overcome bad habits; realize your ambitions; increase your salary. If you have an average active and intelligent mind, you can easily learn the secrets of Mezcal. Find out for yourself in this episode of Agave Road Trip!

This episode of Agave Road Trip is brought to you by MezcalForLife.com. What you drink out of is just as important as what you drink. MezcalForLife.com can help you find the perfect drinking vessel for your perfect agave spirit. Head to MezcalForLife.com now and you can be set for next week’s episode of Agave Road Trip, sponsored by MezcalForLife.com!

This episode of Agave Road Trip has also been brought to you by JUST Egg. Made from plants, JUST Egg has zero cholesterol, it's packed with clean, sustainable protein, and it cooks and tastes just like eggs. Chef Jose Andres calls JUST Egg “mind-blowing” and Bon Appetit says it’s “so good I feel guilty eating it.” For Road-trippers who operate a restaurant, you can get a sample for free. Head to ju.st/hrn.

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. 

Episode transcript

Lou Bank  (00:01):

Hey, Road-trippers, you have indeed reached Agave Road Trip, the podcast that helps gringo bartenders better understand agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico. But before we can take off on this week's road trip, we need to fill up the tank, which is code for pay the bills, which is code for run the commercials for the folks who are enabling us to go on these Agave Road Trips. So sit back and Chava, and I will circle back to you in a second.

Lou Bank  (00:27):

This episode of Agave Road Trip is brought to you by mezcalforlife.com. What you pour your mezcal from can be just as important as what you pour your mezcal into. Stick around after this episode to learn how mezcalforlife.com can help you find a beautiful storage vessel for your beautiful agave spirit, but for now, strap yourself in for another episode of Agave Road Trip.

The Actual Professionals (00:52):

[Agave Road Trip theme song]

Lou Bank  (01:05):

I am Lou Bank.

Chava Periban (01:06):

and I am Chava Periban.

Lou Bank  (01:08):

And this is Agave Road Trip, the podcast that is a masterclass about agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico. Welcome to the masterclass, Chava.

Chava Periban (01:20):

Why Lou, why do you have to do this to us? Masterclass? Really? Masterclass?

Lou Bank  (01:25):

Because everybody learns better in a masterclass, Chava.

Chava Periban (01:29):

That's the worst part between cheesy and pretentious.

Lou Bank  (01:33):

Exactly. This was my cheesy and pretentious voice. This is as cheesy and pretentious as I could get. I want to talk today about the idea of masterclasses in agave spirits and mezcal and whatever you want to call it.

Chava Periban (01:48):

Okay. But before we even go in there, you're okay with training, right? You're okay with educational programs that have as their main focus learning about agave spirits.

Lou Bank  (01:58):

Sure.

Chava Periban (01:59):

Because that's what we're doing right here right now. So why would you have a problem with the masterclass if it's just another educational effort?

Lou Bank  (02:06):

Well, so my problem is not with the education. It's not with classes, it's with this word "master" being before "class." It's the idea that somebody is going to come in and learn everything or that the person who's teaching the class knows everything about this category. And I just, I think that's silly.

Chava Periban (02:30):

Don't you think someone out there in this big wide world knows everything about agave spirits?

Lou Bank  (02:36):

No, absolutely not. I would say that the people I know who are the closest to what I would consider masters of this are also the people who were constantly telling me that they have so much to learn.

Chava Periban (02:52):

Yeah, but that's just like a phrase that people throw in there to make other people not feel very bad about their ignorance. And just to look a little bit humble, you know, like I've heard that all the time.

Lou Bank  (03:03):

Yeah. I get that. I believe that in most cases, but here, I truly believe that these people really mean it because, you know, it's— if we were talking about a masterclass on using a diffuser, let's say, to make mezcal or tequila or any, any kind of agave-based spirit, I think you can have a masterclass in that.

Chava Periban (03:30):

Right. Because there's some manual, right? There's the technical manual that teaches you how to use the diffuser in the proper way to have a good product.

Lou Bank  (03:38):

That's right. Yes. And that's the whole point to industrialization. It makes everything simple and things that are simple, you can master very easily

Chava Periban (03:47):

Well, I wouldn't go all the way to say simple, but they're very well framed. They can be crazily complex. Which most of them are — very complex — but they can be framed in a way that if you spend enough money and time you contain it in a way that you can reproduce the results in a very efficient and expectable way.

Lou Bank  (04:10):

Yes, yes. I would say exactly that. Whereas, you know, the communities that you and I like to spend our time in and the ones that we like to seek out and the ones that we know people in very well, we go here and things are done — not even so differently from community to community, though that's true — but even within a single community, from one palenque to the next, you can find incredible diversity in processes.

Chava Periban (04:36):

Okay, wait, wait, wait. But you know, there's this thing. And everybody does that in the mezcal context, they say, Maestro Mezcalero, that's master Mezcalero.

Lou Bank  (04:44):

Oh, that's interesting. I've always interpreted that as sort of a combination of teacher and master.

Chava Periban (04:51):

So you don't think that people use the "Maestro" to refer to this guy in a way like you're the all-encompassing sensei, you know, every little part, it's just someone that is more advanced in their knowledge and understanding of a specific way of producing? Maybe?

Lou Bank  (05:06):

You know, I think that's exactly right. You just blew my mind, Chava. So I would say that, most of the people I think of when I think of people who could be masters are the people by and large who make these spirits. And I would say that they absolutely are masters of their processes, the processes in their community, the processes that have existed for generations within their family. But if you take that same Maestro Meszcalero — take him or her out of that home community and go just two hours away, I think that person sees things that they don't fully understand.

Chava Periban (05:48):

Like clay distillation. Take a guy that has always done copper distillation and introduce him to a clay still, and they're going to be like, I don't want to work with this. Right? Most of the times they refuse to even work with these new technologies. And it's in big part because for them it's very alien. Like they don't even know why people will use something like that, right?

Lou Bank  (06:11):

And vice versa. I think you give somebody who's used to clay, give them the copper still, that's going to throw them. You throw in the stainless steel still as well. I think all of this stuff changes so many of these tiny little things that these men and women have to figure out by using their hands and their sense of smell and listening. I think that there's a whole different definition in each of these palenques as to what it means to master this process. So, as a result, I don't think you can have a class where you sit down... You know, I've had friends take these classes, they spent thousands of dollars, $5,000, and they spent weeks in Mexico,, to get to be like a fourth level "mezcalier," I think it's called,

Chava Periban (07:00):

Oh, that's such an unfortunate term by the way. But anyway, keep on.

Lou Bank  (07:04):

I know a few people who have done it and everyone who's done it has spoken very highly of the process, and even said it was very rigorous. I got this great anecdote from one of them who said that he, like,me, was sort of a juvenile delinquent. And so he learned very early on that you had to suck up to your teacher in order to get by, right? Like be a friend with your teacher and the teacher will help you through the work you did not do. And so he spent the entire week sucking up to this teacher of the class, the "master." And then, he had to take this test. And in the end he thought, you know, this teacher will help me with the test. But they switched out the person who was overseeing the test, he was not the teacher, and the person was like, "I don't know you, I'm not helping you with anything." And that was, he said, that was very intentional on the part of the people who put together the school. So, you know, I'm not even saying that everybody who teaches a masterclass goes into it with bad intentions. What I am saying is I think the name is very misleading. And I think it's contrary to the very idea of these spirits, because if you can master it— you can master things that are industrial, as I said earlier, but mastering something that's done by hand? So differently from one place to the next? I don't think it's possible. I think that the masterclass in mezcal is, "You can't master it."

Chava Periban (08:40):

Yeah. And I think that's what we love so much about agave spirits, because I think they have a set of values that are different to many other products, not only spirits, but I will say that they're very different in their value set, and the mindset of the producers is so different, too many other things. It's more a collaboration with nature than mastering it. I think that a really good that agave spirits producer has the capacity to understand his or her surroundings and understand the kind of yeast that may be happening as a result of the weather that year, or the kind of mutations the agave had due to the conditions they had to grow in, or the worms that attacked it, or the plagues that it had to survive, and therefore, more than putting these things in closed, easily defined containers and mapping every little part of it for it to taste the way that they want, they just have to collaborate with nature.

Lou Bank  (09:34):

Oh, that is a really interesting way to look at this. You know, so often when I think of how the spirits come out at the end tasting the way they do, I think it's entirely the hand of the maker, it's all the little decisions, the 400 decisions that we talk about, that he or she has made. But you know, I think this is a really interesting point that in essence nature becomes the coauthor with that mezcalero or mezcalera. And that actually is a collaboration and that suggests even more skill on the part of that mezcalero.

Chava Periban (10:11):

Yeah. Because you have to be understanding all the things around you that ... most of them are impossible to measure. With the metrics they have and the equipment they have access to, they have to be able to, just through experience, understand when is it going to rain, how the rain is going to affect things, what to do when it doesn't rain. As somebody said, if everything goes right, it's really easy to make agave spirits. The situation is that—

Lou Bank  (10:42):

You know, you called me out when I said it was really easy to do industrial distillation, like a diffuser, I'm calling you out. Even when everything is right, it's not easy to make these spirits.

Chava Periban (10:50):

Yeah. No, it's it's .. it's terrifying. It's always terrifying. You never go to make agave spirits and are not terrified that everything's gonna just ... not happen.

Lou Bank  (11:01):

You really think there's terror. I don't think there's terror. I don't think there's anything that scares most of these people. You and I might be terrified. I think they're fine.

Chava Periban (11:12):

Yes. I'm thinking for myself. Yeah, absolutely. I'm speaking of the feelings I had, when I was producing agave spirits. I was always like—

Lou Bank  (11:20):

Oh! Interesting. You were going back to your time at Sombra.

Chava Periban (11:23):

Yes, at Sombra. And I remember just like, starting the cooking of the agave and i couldn't sleep. I couldn't, because you know, we have thrown 10 tons of beautiful agaves into the oven. Forget about how much they cost. They were just beautiful things that you don't want to ruin. And, yeah. It's hard to sleep for a couple of nights.

Lou Bank  (11:55):

Well, there you go. There's your masterclass. Just go and start running a palenque in Mexico.

Chava Periban (12:01):

Yeah. And I think that's the thing, why it's impossible to do a masterclass. It's all about long, long experience paths. It takes forever. And I think there's no way to reduce that. There's no life hack to it. And I think that should be the conclusion of this episode, Lou, because we're running out of time.

Lou Bank  (12:22):

And I think you've run out of things to say, okay, Chava, I'm good with that. I'm going to call this masterclass on agave spirits a wrap, Chava.