Those school-boy days of drinking shots in parking lots are gone, but my affection for Monte Alban Mezcal will live on and on. In the mezcal-geek bubble that Chava and I travel in, you don’t hear a lot of love for the first mezcal most of us ever tried. And, okay, I get it — it’s not exactly my go-to these days. But outside those circles? In the real world? Monte Alban is that best friend who can teach you right from wrong and take you from weak to strong. This golden-colored episode of Agave Road Trip is a love letter to Monte Alban — and it comes with a gusano in every download. Episode cover photo from Anna Bruce.

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.

This episode of Agave Road Trip is also brought to you by Duke’s Liquor Box. Duke’s Liquor Box has everything you want to drink, including a selection of New York spirits from their locals-only shelf. The only thing they don’t have? A guy named Duke. So don’t ask for Duke when you visit Duke’s Liquor Box at 114 Franklin in the heart of Greenpoint. You can also shop online at dukesliquorbox.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. 

Episode transcript

Lou Bank (00:00):

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 shortly.

Chava Periban (00:26):

Oh, wait, Lou, what the hell are you doing? What's that you're pouring into?

Lou Bank (00:30):

It's, you know, it's an old mustard jar. Connie loves mustard. So we have a ton of these old jars sitting around.

Chava Periban (00:36):

Are you crazy? But that's shaped all wrong, Lou!

Lou Bank (00:38):

It's got a bottom and four sides, Chava. What more does it need?

Chava Periban (00:43):

We've talked about this more than once, Lou. The shape of what you drink out significantly affects the flavors you experience from your mezcal or your agave spirit. Like, ah, how can you, how can you ruin this? Have you ever experienced it with a copita?

Lou Bank (00:58):

Of course I have. I used to have a house full of copitas and jicaras. The problem, Chava, is I gave them all away. I've got so many friends and they couldn't find copitas where they lived. So I helped them out

Chava Periban (01:09):

So generous, but there's this solution for that, Lou, for you and your friends, it's called MezcalForLife.com.

Lou Bank (01:16):

You can drink out of something called MezcalForLife.com?

Chava Periban (01:19):

Not yet, Lou, technology, hasn't gone that far, but it's a website and they sell copitas, vasas veladora, very traditional and fancy drinking vessels for traditional and fancy mezcal spirits. Or agave spirits.

Lou Bank (01:34):

So I can tell Connie to stop eating so much mustard?

Chava Periban (01:37):

Well, I don't know if that's actually a wise move, Lou

Lou Bank (01:40):

But it is a wise move to go to MezcalForLife.com and buy some new copitas.

Chava Periban (01:44):

Yes, joven, that's a very wise move

Lou Bank (01:46):

MezcalForLife.com can help you find the perfect drinking vessel for your perfect agave spirit, head to MezcalForLife.com and you can be set for next week's episode of Agave Road Trip, sponsored by MezcalForLife.com.

Lou Bank (02:01):

This episode of Agave Road Trip is also brought to you in part byJUST Egg. Chef Jose Andres calls JUST Egg “mind-blowing” and Bon Appetit says it’s “So Good I Feel Guilty Eating It.” What I say is, Thank you, JUST Egg, for giving me back the egg-on-burger experience. Several months into this pandemic, I had heart palpitations that led me to a cardiologist. My cardiologist, Steve — because the best cardiologists let you call them Steve — said I had to go on a vegan diet to get my cholesterol under control. Pairing JUST Egg with a plant-based burger, it's like nothing has changed — except my blood pressure. So when I say Agave Road Trip is brought to you in part by JUST Egg, what I mean is literally I am the part of Agave Road Trip that is brought to you by JUST Egg. Thank you, JUST Egg, for saving my heart.

Lou Bank (02:53):

This is Lou Bank, and before I ever went on any Agave Road Trips, I was taking daily trips on the G line, from Manhattan to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where I lived with a couple of my Marvel Comics coworkers. Where we lived then is about four blocks from where Duke’s Liquor Box is located now. Where was Duke’s in 1989? We sure could have used it. Back then, you couldn’t even find decent beer. But now? Man, now, if I were thirsty for something obscure, like, say, I dunno, a gin made with guava and passion fruit? I’d go to Duke’s Liquor Box. Haitian bitters? You thirsty for Haitian forest Bitters? Go to Duke’s. How about heirloom tomato eau-de-vie? I didn’t even know what that was in the 1980s. But Duke’s has that. Duke’s has small batch distilled gems like LA One Whiskey, or if you want to drink like a druid, grab a bottle of their (glen-da-lock) Pot Still Irish Whiskey, aged in Sustainably harvested, 140 Year Old Irish Oak barrels and ex Bourbon barrels. Or … what’s that you say? Does Duke’s have agave spirits? Well, of course they do! Duke’s Liquor Box prides itself on their selection of fine spirits & wines, so you’ll find rare, delicious treasures like Cinco Sentidos Tobala, Tosba Pechuga Mezcal, and Siembra Valles Ancestral Tequila Blanco. Duke’s Liquor Box has everything you want, including a selection of New York spirits from their locals-only shelf. The only thing they don’t have? … is a guy named Duke. So don’t ask for Duke when you visit Duke’s Liquor Box at 114 Franklin in the heart of Greenpoint. You can also shop online at dukesliquorbox.com

Music, Man (04:42):

[Award-winning theme song by Gabriel Oliveira and Marc Ricos]

Lou Bank (04:55):

I am Lou Bank.

New Speaker (04:57):

and I am Chava Peribán

Lou Bank (04:58):

And this is Agave Road Trip, the podcast that helps gringo bartenders better understand agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico. Now, Chava, we just wrapped up an episode where we talked about the bugs in the bottles and then you, like, you brought me toward one of the stories I've wanted to tell for a while in two different directions in the same episode. And I still didn't get to it.

New Speaker (05:23):

You were getting a red, you were starting to bubble a little bit. And I was like, poor Lou.

Lou Bank (05:31):

You saw the vein, that vein that Gordon Ramsay caused to come out on my forehead was coming out.

New Speaker (05:34):

It was palpitating strongly.

Lou Bank (05:36):

It was. so here's the thing I want to talk about is, I want to talk about Monte Alban Mezcal, the brand Monte Alban,

Chava Periban (05:44):

Which, if people do not know, Monte Alban is an archeological site in Oaxaca City. It's the inhabitants of the clouds. So it's very high up. They chopped flat a whole mountain to make their little city. So there were very, very, very infatuated by this piece of land, to the point where they spent so much time just flattening it out to live there and had an amazing view from the valley.

Lou Bank (06:08):

Right. But what I want to talk about is the brand Monte Alban Mezcal, which I think was the first mezcal actually exported legally into the USA.

Chava Periban (06:19):

You're suggesting there was a lot of mezcal imported illegally to the United States before Monte Alban?

Lou Bank (06:24):

Oh, I, yeah, I think, I think so. Actually I do think there were a lot of people crossing the border, particularly during prohibition with that stuff. But, but you know, that's neither here nor there. Like the first time you walked into a liquor store and you saw a bottle of mezcal, it was probably Monte Alban. Well, if you're my age, it was definitely Monte Alban. So the point is, it's this bottle of, as you put it, I think, was it gold or yellow? What color did you call it?

Chava Periban (06:49):

I call it a brown, golden-ish, yellowish thing

Lou Bank (06:55):

With the gusano — the little caterpillar — curled up at the bottom. It's been for sale in the USA, commercially, longer than any other brand. And I've had it and it's fine. It's passable. It's not interesting. And, you know, if you're going to make a cocktail and you want it to be smoky, I think it's usable for that. But you know, it's the way that now it's ostracized by the mezcal geeks — of which I used to consider myself one.

Chava Periban (07:31):

But now you're a contrarian. You're a contrarian mezcal geek.

Lou Bank (07:36):

Yes. So now, while it's nothing I necessarily want to drink, it drives me nuts when they just dismiss it out of hand and nobody talks about it unless it's in this derogatory way.

Chava Periban (07:50):

Yeah. Like in, this is what mezcal shouldn't be. Right? It's basically this safe punching bag. If you want to look cool and be like, I know a thing about mezcal, I'm just going to punch at Monte Alban.

Lou Bank (08:03):

Yeah, and I ended up including Monte Alban in an article of my twenty-five suggested mezcals in Forbes magazine. And the point that I made there -- though it was edited in a weird way -- is, to me, Monte Alban Mezcal is sort of the PBR of mezcals. Does that make sense to you?

Chava Periban (08:26):

Well, I did not ever have PBR, so I don't have a connection to that. I'll say in beer terms, it's probably like the Tecate of Mexico.

Lou Bank (08:35):

There you go.

New Speaker (08:36):

Where Tecate was like, nobody will drink that. And now it's like the coolest thing you can drink.

Lou Bank (08:41):

There's no way that *nobody* would drink it or it wouldn't have survived, is my point, right?

Chava Periban (08:46):

Yeah. Like construction workers, maybe?

Lou Bank (08:49):

And Hey, you know what? Construction workers, real human beings with real palates. I'm not the one to say that they're wrong.

Chava Periban (08:56):

Dude, have you ever eaten in a Mexican construction site? Have you had a taco of chicharrón with avocado with those guys? Man, Pujol? You have so much to learn.

Lou Bank (09:06):

I actually don't like chicharrón, but yes. There's another story to tell at some point where my friend Bruce Costa and I were traveling through rural Mexico together and we stopped at a construction site and there was a tent where they were serving food and it was delicious, but I, you know, I won't go into, because it's going to derail me. But so my point is, while I wouldn't drink Monte Alban on a regular basis, I would certainly try it in a cocktail or if somebody offered it to me. But more importantly, you know, I think it's important for gringo bartenders to be open to the idea that there's a reason the gusano became this marketing tool, whether it started that way or not. It Became this marketing tool to get people interested in drinking this particular beverage. And I think it can still be used that way and can then be used to bring people along to some more, let's say, refined versions of mezcal. But I think there are things that Monte Alban could do that would absolutely cause them to get more attention. I'm friends with — and if I said her name she'd get so angry at me, 'cause she doesn't want people to know that she's connected to Monte Alban, which I think is hilarious. I've been lobbying her to let me be the brand manager for Monte Alban. I will have fun with Monte Alban and I will have the world have fun with Monte Alban. They have the little airline-size bottles and then they've got like the 375ml and then they've got the 750ml size. Right? She was telling me that they've got this room at the distillery, the factory where they make Monte Alban. And that room is just for the gusanos and they've got like a giant tub of the little gusanos -- the ones that go inside the airline bottles. And then a bigger ... it's like the three bears, they got the mama, the papa, and the baby bear tubs full of the equivalent-sized size gusanos. You want to dive into that tub, right?

Chava Periban (11:13):

Are you kidding me? I wouldn't get out of that room ever. I will just become the equivalent of a vegetarian, but just like a gusano-arian, like I'll just eat—

Lou Bank (11:24):

Actually, I'm going to derail a little bit because this is really curious to me. You know, I always hear in Oaxaca how the gusano is considered a delicacy. But I've only seen it served in a fancy way at a restaurant in Puebla. And it was delicious. It was like eating the best French fry. My question to you is, did you grow up eating these? And did you like eating them?

Chava Periban (11:46):

Always a very expensive plate. If you went to a fancy place, like El Cardenal, where politicians go, it was always like a 200 pesos a taco.

Lou Bank (12:00):

Oh, you eat it as a taco?

Chava Periban (12:02):

Sometimes a taco with guacamole, sometimes just by themselves. The best gusanos I've had yet have been in Oaxaca. And they sold them to me in Tupperware with an apple inside. So they were all alive, they were eating this apple. And I just put it in a clay pan and roasted them really slowly. And I cannot start describing the smell. My house smelled like heaven for a whole week. And each one of those gusanos was a crazy explosion of flavor in my mouth. There's few things on this planet that I enjoy more than a slowly roasted fresh gusano, it's just, it's way beyond.

Lou Bank (12:42):

It gets us back to that previous episode, right? Having a gusano, it doesn't have to be a bad gusano. Can you imagine if every bottle of mezcal had this beautiful, apple-raised gusano in it? What would that taste like?

Chava Periban (12:56):

Well, Monte Alban have to have a substrate of what the worms are eating and it's most likely apples. There's a reason why they use apples. They like it, it's easy to get, and you have to purge the agave from the gusano because the agave makes it bitter. So that's why you have to give the apple to them. So they just poop out the agave and they're full with this sweet substrate, instead.

Lou Bank (13:24):

Funny. So, okay. So now let's get back to the Monte Alban story. So I'm trying to convince my friend that I should be the brand manager for Monte Alban and my key idea was ... when I was growing up there was this cereal, Cap'n Crunch, have you ever heard of Cap'n Crunch?

Chava Periban (13:44):

It's a cereal kind of thing?

Lou Bank (13:46):

Yeah. Okay. So it's a cereal, but iCap'n Crunch is the base, and then you had all of these different kinds, like Peanut Butter Crunch or, or ... you know, I don't know, but there was one in particular called Crunchberries, right? Like you had the Cap'n Crunch, these little brownish-beige pillows, and then you had these giant monstrous purple-y fake berries, crunchberries. And several years ago they came out with Oops! All Crunchberries, which was very exciting. Even as an adult. All I wanted was a bowl full of crunch berries as a kid. And as an adult, I actually got there. And so I'm trying to convince my friend that Monte Alban needs to release like a tiny bottle that just Oops! All Gusanos.

Chava Periban (14:40):

That'd be awesome.

Lou Bank (14:42):

Since the geek market is already ignoring you, have fun, poke fun at them, and then you get more attention, sort of like you're playing along with the joke, right?

Chava Periban (14:55):

Yeah, and also, you get the chance to do a lot of the things that these other guys can't.

Lou Bank (15:00):

What do you mean?

Chava Periban (15:00):

Well, like all these other producers are trying to preserve a very specific image and a very specific process and whatnot.

Lou Bank (15:09):

Right -- which is super important. Don't get me wrong.

Chava Periban (15:12):

Yeah, no, no, absolutely. Please keep doing that. Keep doing that. But these guys just have the open playfield to do whatever the heck they want.

Lou Bank (15:21):

Right. What can Monte Alban do to damage their reputation any further? Right? And I'll say this too. Like what, what nobody realizes is sort of what you had said earlier about Tecate. "No, nobody drinks it." You'd be shocked.

Chava Periban (15:33):

It would be more Carte Blanca, actually. Tecate was not the best example.

Lou Bank (15:39):

but somebody does drink it, is the point, right? The truth is while we don't recognize it — by we, I mean, those of us in this mezcal-geek bubble — while we don't recognize it, a lot of people are buying Monte Alban.

Chava Periban (15:51):

a lot of people are drinking Cuervo, man. Like, you know, it's a thing. And I do not personally know anybody that drinks Cuervo, but that just means there's a lot more people drinking Cuervo in the world than not.

Lou Bank (16:05):

So, yeah, if you haven't had Monte Alban, give it a try and keep an open mind. You're probably not gonna like it. But as a gringo bartender, it's not about what you like, it's about what your customers might like.

Chava Periban (16:19):

And also if I can vouch for it, you can have a good party just drinking Monte Alban shots. If you want to have a crazy party, like you're graduating or something. I will use it as a great trick, you know, just bring a bottle of Monte Alban, get some shots out of it and see how you feel the next day.

Lou Bank (16:40):

I'm so going to send this particular episode to my friend so we can maybe at least get one ad out of Monte Alban.

Chava Periban (16:47):

Let's get them.

Lou Bank (16:47):

Okay. Catch you next episode, when we really will try to catch up with our friends Damian and Raquel.