"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 highend distillates, most smallbatch 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 contradictionsboth a liquid language celebrating village identity and craftsmanship, and a luxury export undergoing a goldrushstyle surge. The Mezcal Rush explores the complications that can arise when an artisanal product makes its way across borders.