The Drunken Botanist

Question 1

What are the three most famous fermented products of the agave plant?

Answer 1

tequila, mezcal, and pulque

Question 2

What was the first ancient drink to be made from agave?

Answer 2

pulque

Question 3

What is the name for agave in Mexico?

Answer 3

maguey

Question 4

How long has agave been cultivated, consumed, and even roasted in Mexico?

Answer 4

At least eight thousand years

Question 5

What is our earliest evidence for ancient Mexicans drinking pulque?

Answer 5

2,000 year old feces rehydrated and examined by botanist Eric Callen in the 1950s and murals dating to 200 AD at the pyramid in Cholula, Mexico.

Question 6

What is the name of the Aztecan goddess of the agave and in which famous Aztec Codex is she featured breastfeeding her drunken rabbit gods and what are the drunken rabbit gods called?

Answer 6

Mayahuel; Fejérváry-Mayer; Centzon Totochtin

Question 7

How is the sap of the agave extracted?

Answer 7

by irritating the emptied heart cavity of the stem of the flowering part of the agave as it is preparing for its decade blossom. A single agave can produce a gallon a day for months at a stretch yielding over 250 gallons in all until the sap runs dry and it crumples and dies, something it would have done regardless.

Question 8

How was the sap of the agave historically fermented?

Answer 8

In wooden barrels, pigskins, or goatskins. The fermentation was usually kickstarted with the help of the “mother”, sample from the previous batch. Fermentation takes less than a day thanks in part to the naturally occurring bacteria Zymomonas mobillis that live on the agave and on other tropical plants made into alcohol such as sugar cane, palms, and cacao but is unwelcome in brewing processes such as cider and beer. In modern times Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the common brewing yeast, along with the bacterium Leuconostoc mesenteroides, which grows on vegetables and also ferments pickles and sauerkraut, help with fermentation. The result is pulque.

Question 9

Describe pulque

Answer 9

A frothy fermentation, low in alcohol (4-6 percent alcohol by volume), slightly sour flavor, usually served fresh without preservatives and unpasteurized since the taste changes in a few days or with efforts to preserve. It was said by Spanish historian Francisco Lopez de Gomara in the sixteenth century, “There are no dead dogs, nor a bomb, that can clear a path as well as the smell of [pulque].”