Mexicans have made pulque from agave for centuries, but the viscous drink stopped being popularly appreciated in the early 1970s when pulque got a bad reputation. The number of producers, consumers and bars known as “pulquerías” decreased.
But now, the nutrient-rich beverage is reemerging among a new generation of Mexicans.
The Aztecs revered pulque, reserving it for the highest social classes and for the most important occasions.
Currently, pulque is available in numerous flavors and grades, and it is now possible to see both a couple of tattooed millennials sipping strawberry flavored pulque outside a hipster bar and farmworkers who produce it drinking it in the field.
But it is unlikely to appear on the shelves of a local liquor store.
For decades, attempts to bottle the white liquid have failed because it continues to ferment rapidly after being produced.
Pulque has long had the reputation of being the drink of poor farmworkers, and many assumed that it was produced under unhealthy conditions, something which people that like this drink argue is not true.
Antonio Gómez, a pulque producer from the community of Santiago Cuautlalpan in the municipality of Tepotzotlán, north of Mexico City, is among those who make the drink the old fashion way: hollowing out the pulpy heart of the agave plant and using a sort of siphon to extract the sugary liquid that is in that section of the plant. The liquid at this stage, known as “aguamiel,” has little or no alcohol content.
The liquid passes to plastic tanks for fermentation, which can take merely 12 hours. The incorporation of fruit juices, such as guava, mango, coconut, strawberry or pineapple, gives it flavor. With 6 percent alcohol content after fermentation, it is almost as strong as an average beer.
Gómez said that pulque was once served in some parts of Mexico in the morning, as well as for health reasons.
“Instead of drinking coffee, many ate tortillas with beans and pulque for breakfast,” he said. “Many people believe it to be medicine.”
Gómez said he is worried about the fields of agave that once were the livelihood of entire haciendas, as they are being destroyed to make way for homes and shopping centers.
In areas around Tepotzotlán, among the pulque aficionados there are farmers and urban residents who for the last three years have organized a type of pulque festival featuring food, horse rides, music, pulque drinking competitions and donkeys carrying wooden barrels filled with pulque.
Carlos Eladio Contreras, an organizer of the festival, said that it is a matter of rescuing traditions.
“Before pulque carried negative associations. People would say: ‘Oh no, they’re drinking pulque, they’re … low class?’ Something like that. Fortunately, young people are now worried about preserving the culture,” said Contreras.
Ricardo Gallardo León is a resident of Mexico City who drinks in the Las Duelistas pulquería, downtown.
“I like it because it’s something that we inherited from our ancestors, and I like it because my family also drinks it and it’s a custom we should not lose,” he said.
Small-scale artisanal producers complain that tax laws, health laws and commercial requirements come together to keep their pulque business small.
Jesús Hernández, another organizer of the pulque caravan, said that government requirements are almost impossible to meet, so he sells the drink in barrels placed in the back of his truck.
When he sees the cost of becoming a registered producer, Hernández whistles and says, “Man, if I had that much money, I wouldn’t be doing this, would I?”
