Which Came First? Mexico's Famous Drink, or the Town That Distills It? David Leveille - PRI's The World
go to original May 28, 2014

Farmers harvest agave in the fields. (Betto Arcos)

Was the Mexican town of Tequila named after the Mexican drink or the drink named after the town?

To get the answer, Betto Arcos visited La Tequileña located in the town of Tequila. It's one of the oldest distilleries in Mexico.

That's where he found Sergio Mendoza, who says he comes from "a family of four generations dedicated to the business of cultivating the agave plant, the raw material for the production of this amazing spirit, tequila. It is a well-known fact that the blue agave, the raw material for tequila, has been harvested and cultivated for many, many centuries before the Spanish came.“

Mendoza describes Mexico's famous liquor this way: “When you drink tequila, it’s like drinking sunshine in a very literal sense. Because you're drinking 10 years of a plant receiving the heat of Mexico, very hot days, very cold nights, so it’s not that tequila is stronger, but it certainly has this much more energy than other spirits.”

Then Arcos asks him today's Geo Quiz — why is this drink called tequila?

Read the rest at PRI's The World

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