The room is the drink
In Tokyo, the drink is the drink. In Mexico City, the room is the drink. You cannot separate one from the other. The music is too loud. The people are too close. The bartender is yelling something to someone at the end of the bar. Someone is arguing about football. Someone else is crying about a breakup they had six months ago. The mezcal arrives. You drink it. Somebody you have never met asks what you are drinking and orders the same thing, and by the time the second round comes you are friends, or at least you are pretending to be, and it does not matter which.
Mezcal is not tequila
This is the single most important thing to understand about Mexican drinking culture, and it is the thing most foreigners get wrong.
Tequila is a specific kind of mezcal — made from one specific variety of agave (blue Weber), in specific regions, with specific rules. Mezcal is the broader category. It can be made from dozens of different agaves. It is roasted in underground pits, which is why it tastes smoky. It is made in Oaxaca, Puebla, Michoacán, Guerrero, Durango. It is not a trend. It is older than tequila. It is older than Spain's arrival in Mexico.
If you are in Mexico City and someone offers you mezcal, they are not offering you a shot. They are offering you a drink you are supposed to sip. Slowly. With salt, maybe, if the mezcal is rough. With orange and worm salt, if you are in the right place. With nothing at all, if the mezcal is good.
The new wave
Mexico City's cocktail scene has become one of the most interesting in the world in the last fifteen years. Bars like Limantour, which opened in 2008 and put Mexico City on the global cocktail map, do things with mezcal and tequila that nobody in London or New York was doing at the time. They took the spirits seriously. They took the techniques seriously. They took the city seriously.
But the scene did not replace the old bars. It sits next to them. You can drink a world-class cocktail at one address and a plastic cup of pulque at another, five minutes away, and both feel like Mexico City. This is what makes the city different from everywhere else. Nothing gets replaced. Everything gets added.
The bartender
A Mexico City bartender will not be quiet like a Tokyo bartender. A Mexico City bartender will not spend fifteen minutes on your ice. A Mexico City bartender will make your drink in forty seconds and then start talking to you about politics, or about a mezcal you should try, or about how the last customer was an idiot. This is not unprofessional. This is hospitality in a different language.
The job of a Mexico City bartender is not to serve you a drink. It is to make you feel like you are at a party you were not invited to but somehow ended up at anyway.
So what
If you want to understand Mexican drinking, do not start with tequila. Start with mezcal. Order it in a place that has no cocktail menu. Sip it. Do not shoot it. Do not rush it. Do not ask for lime and salt unless you are told to.
Then order another. Stay. The room will do the rest.
