The Story of Raicilla (Mexican Moonshine)
On my way to Tenacatita Beach from La Manzanilla, my taxi driver asked me if I wanted to take a tour of the distillery. I thought he was taking me to a tequila tasting room, but when we approached the place, I saw the sign and I realized that that this was not a tequila tasting room but a Raicilla distillery (whatever that was). I learned later that Raicilla was a less processed, more organic relative of Tequila.
A docent by the name of Tony led the tour. Native of the New Mexican highlands, Tony was quite an interesting character – as a snowbird, he lived half of the year in Tenacatita, returning home to New Mexico during the hot summer months. Wearing a flowery Hawaiian shirt, with his dark swarthy looks he could have passed for an Indian chief, a Samoan or a Hawaiian. In fact, his mother was a Native American Indian and his father was a Spaniard.
Tony rattled off the history of Raicilla - it seems that the Native Aztec Indians were the originators of this potent concoction, and the Spanish conquistadors and their descendants pirated the basic recipe to jumpstart the large scale production of tequila. Tequila is produced in large factories and is highly processed - many additives are added to the final product. Raicilla on the other hand is a homemade product and consists of all natural ingredients - it has a taste similar to Tequila but is a lot smoother. For a long time it was considered moonshine or bootleg liquor; not too long ago, the production of Raicilla became a legitimate business and some of the former bootleggers in Jalisco formed a collective to produce and market it. According to Tony, drinking Raicilla gives a man a lot of power, strength and feelings of euphoria without any hangover. Very interesting - too bad I didn’t buy a bottle or two.
