What’s Heritage, Anyway?
According to our interview with Catalina Lopez Velasco, a maestra mezcalera in Yutanduchi de Guerrero, the traditional methods of making agave spirits in her community in Oaxaca’s Mixteca region only date back to the late 1990s, when a bunch of kids from university came to teach them how to turn the wild agaves growing all around them into spirits. So … why do they use such pre-industrial methods? Why didn’t they adopt modern ways of fermenting and distilling? This and more in this episode of Agave Road Trip!
Post-episode confusion!
Proving the point we make often in our podcasts — that it’s hard to nail down any hard-and-fast truths with regard to agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico — we heard after this episode aired a different story than what Catalina told us. Rion Toal (who has his own excellent, long-format, agave-centric podcast called “Maestros del Mezcal”) pointed us to this 2018 article in which he tells the story of Catalina’s husband, Lazaro Monjaraz … whose father used to make heritage agave spirits. So did they learn from Lazaro’s father? Or from the university kids? Was there or wasn’t there a tradition of making spirits from agave in this community? And who exactly was hiding in the grassy knoll?
… and now back to our regularly scheduled links!
The first time I wandered into her palenque, Catalina Lopez Velasco was single-handedly working six wood-fired steel-pot stills with clay condensers.
Catalina and her husband, Lozaro Monjaraz, own the Tierra Blanca palenque in Yutanduchi de Guerrero, Oaxaca.
Yutanduchi de Guerrero is in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca. Not an easy drive, and if you go, you’d best be prepared to sleep in your car. (Though every time I’ve gone, I’ve been the lucky recipient of hospitality from the locals.)
One of the wood-fired stills at the Tierra Blanca palenque.
Introducing Future Chava, who sometimes shows up with answers to questions we’re not prepared for during the taping.
