Don’t Call It Vegan Pechuga

Consider pechuga. It’s a subcategory of mezcal with close ties to celebration culture across the Mexican distilling tradition, famously made by suspending a basket of food products above an active still. This sometimes includes mole or spice blends, and it has always included raw protein, like turkey or chicken breast (the word “pechuga” means “breast” in Spanish) in the mix. Deer, quail, and rabbit sometimes show up, too, as do iguana, snake and even lobster. 

Pechuga is controversial in the mezcal world. And now an emerging subcategory of the subcategory is coming on strong, growing in popularity and helping to redefine—and perhaps complicate—the wider pechuga paradigm. It goes by many names: “destilado con,” “agave spirit with natural flavors,” and even, controversially, “vegan pechuga” (more on that term in a moment). This is a manner of distilling mezcal alongside a chef’s kitchen of flavors and botanicals, fruits and nuts and spices, while omitting the protein entirely. Unless you count the horse-drawn tahona employed by some palenques, no animals were harmed in the making of this product. 

“10 years ago destilado con was unheard of in the United States,” says Fred Sanchez, who imports mezcal as Cultura Maguey and represents the brands Agua del Sol and Yuku Savi. Today there are more than 50 destilado con bottlings commercially available across the U.S. market, and it seems like all the top mezcal producers are getting into the game. There’s vanilla and Papalométl agave distilled by Fabiola Torres Monfil at Zinacantan, delicious “ponche de frutas” Christmas punch from the Parada family at Rey Campero and outstanding Espadin distilled with cactus fruit by Alejandrina & Nicolas Hernandez Aragón for Rezpiral, plus dozens more, including multiple bottles distilled with all the flowers and fragrant herbs of the Dia de Los Muertos ofrenda from Pal’alma, Cuish, Bozal and 5 Sentidos.

It was one of these Day of the Dead bottles that first jumped out and grabbed me, served neat after dinner at the (now temporary closed) Brooklyn fine dining restaurant Ilis. One sip and I was blown away: it was the precise sensation of drinking liquid incense, heavy with flower petal oils and the suspended psychotropic matter of departed souls. The bottle came from Pal’alma, the Mexico City-based mezcal label and tasting room founded by Erick Rodriguez. He’s been working on an ongoing series of annual destilado con releases in Mexico since 2012—today counting more than 30 in total—and started bringing sample bottles across the border for agave spirit events like Mexico in a Bottle shortly thereafter. 

I’m hesitant to ascribe a “patient zero” status to any one purveyor of destilado con, and traditions like the medicinal infusion of Sonora mountain agave distillate (Bacanora) with the local uvalama shrub appear to go back generations. (Uvalama is technically a drupe and related genetically to coffee cherry; Bacanora Mazot has a bottling that tastes wonderful served alongside espresso.) But Rodriguez and Pal’alma undoubtedly helped popularize the practice and own considerable claim on helping launch the vogue for this style of mezcal. “I started this trend,” Rodriguez says, in no uncertain terms, “and at first people accused me of breaking tradition, but now everyone is doing it.” 

Fifteen years on from Pal’alma’s first primal yawls towards creating the genre, the “destliado con” mezcal subgenre can be found from Sonora to Oaxaca, Puebla to Guerrero, as open-minded and enterprising mezcaleros and mezcaleras embrace the flavor possibilities of the style. No two producers make their juice the same way, and destilado con as a category is home to a broad cross section of techniques and interpretations. The finished products themselves range from light whisperings of flavor to bold, unmistakable expressions of fruits, herbs and culture. Some distillers suspend fruits and vegetables above the still, the same as they might hang meat for pechuga; others submerge their additions in mesh or cloth, or else add flavor components directly into the still. This total immersion style is the method Pal’alma prefers: all of their destilado con offerings, including huitlacoche, tamarindo and the extraordinary Ofrenda and Limpia Almas bottlings are made by the same mezcalero, based in Puebla, whose name Rodriguez declined to divulge.  

Now, about that term: “vegan pechuga.” It’s divisive—no one in the agave space is opinionless on the topic—and arrives at the discourse with considerable baggage. I first heard it used across the counter at SF Tequila Shop, one of the best agave bottle shops in the country, in conversation with Scott Jeffrey, who helps manage the shop’s vast catalogue and busy web store alongside founder Amandip “Moose” Singh Malhi. “It’s not a perfect term, for sure,” says Jeffrey, “but I think it makes sense to a lot of people, because it makes it clear you’re omitting the ingredient that most people notice first.” It’s worth noting that Jeffrey is a practicing vegan; for him, destilado con or “vegan pechuga” or whatever you call it offers a layer of inclusion and accessibility in line with his own dietary practice. But for others it’s a major eye roll—nearly everyone I spoke to for this article expressed a level of dissatisfaction with the term. “It’s not a term the mezcaleros use,” says Rodriguez. “It means we don’t have the language yet to describe what we have.”