"A rich, inclusive portrait of one of the world's great drinks." —
Kirkus Reviews
Mezcal. In recent years, the oldest spirit in the Americas has been reinvented as a pricy positional good popular among booze connoisseurs and the mixologists who use it as a cocktail ingredient. Unlike most high–end distillates, most small–batch mezcal is typically produced by and for subsistence farming communities, often under challenging conditions. As Granville Greene spends time with
maestros mezcaleros
, who distill their drinks using local agaves and production techniques honed through generations, mezcal becomes a spirit of contradictions—both a liquid language celebrating village identity and craftsmanship, and a luxury export undergoing a gold–rush–style surge.
The Mezcal Rush
explores the complications that can arise when an artisanal product makes its way across borders.