The Mezcal Rush

"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.