Short Essays on Rural Oaxaca Mezcal Production - Part one, focus on Hilarino Olivera Cruz

The rural mezcal producers of Oaxaca to keep the tradition as pure as it was centuries ago. They pepper the villages and streets where tourists rarely venture out alone. Their actions are far from those of Beneva, Oro de Oaxaca, the brands of Chagoya family, and the few brands vying for the area of Manhattan sipping market .

Hilarino Olivera Cruz has a small Fábrica de mezcal (mezcal "factory"), near his native village of San LorenzoAlbarradas, about an hour and a quarter drive from the city of Oaxaca on the road to Hierve el Agua. But not him and his wife Maria Sara only produce mescal. You can not afford to distill only to land their modest working class life left. In the same premises in which they operate a small restaurant, El Tigre, without the benefit of electricity, the use of their daughter-in-law Alma, Maria Sara, a style of door to door selling Avon business, which may deserve$ 50 or $ 70 per month; Hilarino with his eldest son Claudio, Alma's husband, run a dump truck, and as is customary in most small-scale production and other cottage industry families, have their milpa fields prone , leading then to corn tortillas, tamales and how products are used to provide for personal consumption, and in the case of the Olivera family, also for the catering industry.

On the one hand, work as hard as mezcaleros Hilarino are not authorized to exportTrade, since they are not members of the regulatory COMERCAM as known, but the other are fighting for the job, maintain, or pure, traditional hands on nature of production, and to resist the corruption of their spirit through modern manufacturing methods, including the use of chemical additives ... for the good of all.

You can not Hilarino flogging his mezcal in downtown Oaxaca with the help of top-up, interestingly, smiling girls offering free tastings.Even if you meet him, when the tour bus to Mitla or Tlacolula Sunday and walked to a bar in order to cremas oak samples (sweet, mezcal-based products), jovens (UN aged mezcal) or what he represented by five añejos or ten years. The occasion provided photos rather strange, but close to reveal the true history of the tradition or the present reality of the struggle of rural producers.

Hilarino market is not tourism, butrather the people of Oaxaca, Mitla, which melts in the region closely and, of course, his community. This was the same as for his great-grandparents: "I remember he told me stories of my parents and grandparents as it really was then," Hilarino revealed. "They were farmers. They would harvest mainly wild agave known as Tobal. A convoy would try to help in maybe 10 or 15 mules or donkeys and an equal number of people. Cousins, aunts and uncles wouldorganize and take Mezcal, who wants a job in a ceramic container or metal, to the valley and mountains. Each animal would have brought three containers, one for each side and another at the top. My relatives were somewhere between a few days to two weeks are gone, often returning home with 2 or 3 less mules ... so that the road was difficult. Of course it is much easier now. "

Simple is a relative term. Then he took two or three dayspulverize the baked agave before fermentation, beating with a hammer in wood tree root. Now it is crushed by a horse or mule reluctantly wheels of a multi-ton limestone crosses for a few hours with a piece of the culture of skin type, or just talk with a stick ... and then it's time for the next batch.

Hilarino started learning to Mezcal, when he was older than seven years. From a situation of economic emergency, he moved with his family in Mexico City at the age11, and remained there for the next 15 years. After his return to Oaxaca some 14 years ago and has built its current location, adjacent to open restaurant Mezcal. First, his father worked the business with him, but about four years ago, the elder Oliver opened his own restaurant next to his son, and since then have been competitors of sorts. Hilarino explains: "But my father can not produce mezcal on his own, as I have with the equipment (clay and bricks with mecopper attachments, pine fermentation vats, lime wheel and ring for the crushing and animals), so that when a pile of agave he will pursue a process that we are arranging for him to use my production. "In fact, one of the brothers Hilarino does the same, the purchase and leasing of the facilities for the production of agave Hilarino of A, and then sell to their customers. Occasionally, some from the village make similar arrangements with him.

Hilarino about 500 liters of distilled waterMezcal a month. Its average selling price is about 5 liters. It has a few different places in which 5,000 plants with only the variety espadín cultivation of agave. At least 90% of espadín Mezcal is produced in the state, the rest mainly from wild varieties.

The Hilarino Agave fields is sufficient for its regular commercial service. But occasionally a client out-of-state demand a great quantity of mezcal, perhaps 800 to 1,000 liters.mature "If that happened," he confesses, "I have to go buy plants from a neighbor, I just can not harvest my agave when a special order, I come into the waiting 80-10 years for the plants in a given area are ready to be harvested. "but the finished product retains its quality and character, as is Hilarino producers, using their own equipment and particular recipe, and the agave, but not from its own fields, comes from the same San LorenzoAlbarradas microclimate.

E 'such cooperation between local producers, along with a voice that are necessary to ensure that small, still traditional production of quality wines is mescal. To this end, the association recently Hilarino ninety members, Fabric antes y Tradicional Mezcal of Oaxaca AC Expendedores logged. Its function, at least in the estimation of Hilarino, the nature of the craft sector is to receive, resist the trend towards greaterIndustrialization and the ability of the leading manufacturers in each ghost with additives, or prepared as a label mezcal, and for small-scale producers the opportunity to promote their products and exposed to a wider market.

But the reality is that the major producers and exporters of mezcal in Oaxaca, the mom and pop operations must be much more of the latter need the former. Why? Then the little boy will always continue to survive by selling his mezcal in his clubMarket, with the centuries old production technique as the exporter based on the age-old tradition for his marketing ... and is not alive for his innovations and 21 Century "improvements" held in production methods, but in the State Hilarinos.

yamahaguitars avatarmajor