There’s more to Mexican spirits than tequila

Bernal Díaz del Castillo wrote that he and his soldiers felt as if they were dreaming when they first beheld the Aztec empire; I felt a similar vertigo confronting the wall of agave spirits at the long-since-closed Los Angeles mezcalería Petty Cash. Agave spirits are distilled from the fermented heart, or piña, of the agave plant — a succulent, not a cactus.

Tequila from Jalisco is the best known, but it is just one way to distil agave, much as burgundy is only one style of French wine. There are hundreds of mezcals from wild agaves such as madrecuixe, arroqueño, tobalá and pulquero, some taking 25 years to mature, and other regional spirits that have barely reached European bars: sotól, raicilla, bacanora and pox made from maize, plus pechuga, whose ingredients can include poultry breasts.

This was at a time when much tequila in Britain came topped with red plastic sombreros.

United States, Los Angeles

mezcal, tequila, agave, piña, jalisco, sotól, raicilla, bacanora, pechuga, madrecuixe