On a mezcal crawl through L.A.
BY GILLIAN FERGUSON >>> On a balmy morning in late March, the dining room at Guelaguetza, the Lopez family’s Oaxacan restaurant in Koreatown, was humming to life as regulars nursed half-finished cups of cafecito and plates of chilaquiles de mole. At 11 a.m., the bar was mostly empty save for Ulises Torrentera, who raised a glass of mezcal and proposed a toast. “After the first shot of mezcal,” he said in Spanish, “life starts.”
In the world of agave aficionados, Torrentera looms larger than life. When Bricia Lopez, the daughter-turned-doyenne of Guelaguetza, spots him leaning against the bar she squeals, unleashing hugs, kisses and a prolonged, “Como estaaaaaaa?”
Lopez first met Torrentera in Oaxaca City, where he is known as the author of two influential texts on mezcal and the co-owner of the mezcaleria In Situ with his partner Sandra Ortiz Brenna.
“You can’t really speak of mezcal in Oaxaca without knowing Ulises,” Lopez says, and you can’t speak of mezcal without speaking of the state of Oaxaca, where mezcal is as essential as mole. “My family has been making mezcal forever,” Lopez adds, “but it wasn’t until I met Ulises that I started seeing it like wine, with different agaves and flavor profiles. I think everybody knows there are Cabs and Merlots, but most people don’t know there are mexicanas and tobaziches, and he was the person who opened my eyes.”
Once demonized as the drink of Mexico’s rural poor, mezcal — which in simplest terms is a distillate of agave that has been produced in Mexico for centuries — has become what one L.A. bartender dubbed “the hipster’s Cognac.” Unlike tequila, which can only be made with blue agave, mezcal can be made with more than 40 varietals, lending the category a spectrum of flavors. The mezcal boom north of the border parallels the popularity of modern Mexican restaurants and a surge of interest in regional Mexican cuisine; in the last decade, dedicated mezcalerias have popped up in every major city in America.
Los Angeles has seen its own mezcal renaissance, and today Torrentera and Ortiz Brenna, along with Oaxaca-born L.A. restaurateur Ivan Vasquez, are embarking on a five-stop mezcal crawl across the city to survey the popularity and growth of Mexico’s national spirit in the most Mexican city in America. So Guelaguetza, which stocks more than 50 expressions of mezcal and might as well serve as the Oaxacan consulate in Southern California, is the obvious place to start.
The first pour is distilled from tepeztate, a type of agave that can take 20 to 30 years to reach maturity before harvest. Torrentera takes a sip and identifies it as from Santiago Matatlán, a town outside of Oaxaca City where dozens of brands have clustered their palenques, or distilleries. “Each village has the print of the terroir, and Matatlán is less complex than other regions,” says Torrentera. “That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but other regions are more herbal and
taste of the endemic fruits and vegetables.”
Walter Manzke’s Petty Cash is the next stop, and the bar is stacked five shelves high with mezcal. To the uninitiated, the variety is overwhelming, but for Torrentera and Vasquez, a vast selection of brands, representing multiple agaves, regions and styles, is the first sign of a good mezcaleria. They settle on an ensemble, or blend, of tepeztate and espadin.
At the third stop, Madre, Vasquez’s 7,000-square-foot love letter to Oaxacan food and drink in Torrance, the 265-bottle mezcal menu is organized by type of agave. Beneath each bottle Vasquez lists the who, where and how of its production. He aims to meet every maestro mezcalero represented on the menu, and at his El Nopal in Palms — the fourth stop — his mission is much the same.
“My chef tells me I’m going crazy on the mezcal,” Vasquez says, “but this is the history of Mexico. It’s me. I want to educate people to understand what they’re drinking.”
The fact that one can spend a day zigzagging across the city tasting different expressions of mezcal demonstrates the industry’s growth in Los Angeles. (Had the day’s crawl veered downtown, it might have stopped for a flight at Las Perlas, or for a tamale and a mezcal at chef Ray Garcia’s Broken Spanish, which pours at least 100 bottles by the glass.)
On the way to Scopa in Venice, the last stop, where Pablo Moix and Steve Livigni have amassed an extensive selection of mezcals, Torrentera questions whether the exposure and popularity north of the border is a good thing.
“Mezcal está de moda,” says Torrentera, who bottles his own under the brand name Farolito. “And there are people who drink it because it’s in style, and people who drink it to get to know the drink, and that should be the reason why it’s popular, not because it’s cool.”
It ‘wasn’t until I met Ulises that I started seeing [mezcal] like wine .... ’ — Bricia Lopez, of Guelaguetza, on Ulises Torrentera, pictured