cheers to small victories

Today was a day of small victories.

I paid the water bill at the corner market, and then went to a pasteleria and picked up some pastries for breakfast.

For lunch, Sergio and I hit up the friday food market and got some barbacoa tacos and some beso de angel nieves. Nieves are basically a poor man's ice cream, it's more like sorbet and you see it sold everywhere here.

I finished what I wanted to get done at work today and left a little after 4:30, the regular ending time on fridays.

I caught the bus straight home and reloaded my phone credit at the corner store. These convenience stores actually live up to their name.

Then, after becoming a wikipedia expert on mezcal, I set out to buy a bottle. My local grocery store didn't sell it, except a really really cheap version packaged with a bottle of Squirt. That's how you know you're getting the good stuff.

So I hiked back across Insurgentes to Superama, one of the nicer grocery stores in town. While not up to the standards set by AJs in Scottsdale or other luxury groceries, this is luxurious for Mexico City. Decent wine and craft beer selection, and a best bet for international food and toiletries. Incidentally, Superama is actually owned and run by Walmart, which has a huge presence here.

They had about six or seven varieties of mescal, ranging from close to 500 pesos a bottle to 110. I picked up a bottle that was just under 300, a little more expensive than the really good reposado tequila I usually stock in the freezer.

A gaggle of teenage moppets approached me with a bottle of vodka in the  checkout line and cheekily asked me to buy it for them. I turned them down.

Outside of Superama, there was a massive crowd of teenagers and early 20somethings waiting to get into Live in Color, a kind of trance music show where they spray you with neon paint. Lots of kids hopping around with white and neon tees and caps.

Anyway, I ate a little supper of beans to cushion the blow of the alcohol and cracked open the bottle of mescal.

The bottle I got was San Cosme, a brand specifically designed for export to Germany. Actually, "Oaxaca" and "Mexico" feature prominently on the bottle. However, it is from Oaxaca, the provenience of the best mescal.

I'm still a little unclear about the manufacturing differences between Tequila and Mezcal, so I'll probably have some boozy wikipedia time later tonight. One difference is the plant. Tequila is typically made from blue agave, while mescal is made from maguey, or the century plant, as it's known in the US. Hiking around Arizona, I've seen a lot of century plants.

Mescal is rougher than tequila. The flavors are smokier, more complex, somewhere between a really fine tequila and a good scotch whisky. The one I'm sipping now tastes a little leathery, a little sweet, a little vanilla. I'm not sure I like it better than my Centenario Reposado, but its definitely more fiery. You can sip a reposado tequila and it can be so smooth you almost forget it. Mescal says !Ay Cabron! every time you take a sip.

Anyway, tomorrow morning I'm off early for Taxco, to the southwest, the town known for cheap silver.