The glass arrives without ice, without a salt rim, without a wedge of lime. It’s a small, wide-mouthed clay cup called a copita, and what’s in it is the color of water and smells like the earth after rain, plus something older and wilder underneath that. The bartender says nothing. She’s done her job. Whatever happens next is between you and the agave.
That’s mezcal at its best — and it’s a very different animal from what most people think they’re ordering when they ask for it. The smoke is real, but it’s not the whole story. The complexity goes so much deeper than that, and once you understand what you’re looking at on the label and what’s actually in the bottle, you stop reaching for the lime entirely.
Continue reading
