March 29, 2019

Both mezcal and tequila are Mexican spirits made from the agave plant. However, while not all mezcal is tequila, all tequila is mezcal.

Answer: True.

While many think mezcal is a type of tequila, the opposite is true. Any distilled spirit made from the agave plant is considered mezcal (the name itself comes from the Aztec word mexcalli, or "cooked agave"). Tequila, however, must specifically be made from the blue agave plant.

Taste of Oakville 2022

“It’s hard to talk about flavor. Tasting something is such a direct neural jolt; words will always seem clumsy and vague. ‘Spicy’ does not begin to express the riot of electrical fires sparking through your skull after you eat a Thai chile. ‘Sour’ hardly touches the way a fresh lemon grips your whole consciousness and squeezes until it weeps.

So we turn to metaphor. Elderflower kombucha is a bottled Scandinavian summer: mild, light, yellow, easy. Coconut water is a Caribbean afternoon. Chianti, as any sommelier will tell you, is the blood of a mortally wounded Vespa. … Coca-Cola is all the gallons of lighter fluid harvested from discarded Bics in the aftermath of a Bruce Springsteen concert.”

—René Redzepi and David Zilber in The Noma Guide to Fermentation (Artisan 2018)

Both mezcal and tequila are Mexican spirits made from the agave plant. However, while not all mezcal is tequila, all tequila is mezcal.

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