The Mezcal Fair

The Mezcal Faire Part One

Then I went out into the rain again with my purple-flowered umbrella. I was in search of my classmates Nicole and Halo, who said they would be meeting at the Feria Nacional de Mezcal (the mezcal tasting) at 5 p.m. I didn't know that they had been in Mexico long enough to adopt the Mexican version of timekeeping...

I walked around for the longest time. I knew the Mezcal Fair was at at this certain park, but all I could find were hundreds of tiny booths selling food and clothing.


Booths in Parque El Llano

Meanwhile it was pouring and all the tarps covering the little booths were filling up with water. They were hanging down like balloons full of water, making it an obstacle course to get through the tiny aisles. You would brush against a tarp and a gallon of water would suddenly pour down all over the place. It made a great adventure.

I bought a woven purse and two little wallets from a weaver lady, because I needed a book bag. It is a gorgeous hand-woven purple thing with a nice zippered pocket and a flap and a long strap.

After about 45 minutes I finally located the entrance to the Fair. It was smack in the middle of all this, accessible only from one direction, and of course there were no signs pointing the way. That would have been too easy!

The fair itself was fenced off. I paid my 10 pesos (90 cents) to enter and walked around looking for the girls.


Mezcal fair ticket

I didn't find them but tasted about 5 mezcals (tiny tastes) before I decided that, if I wanted to make it home, I had better stop drinking so my feet would still work.

There were about 30 mezcal booths and they were each offering up to 10 different types of mezcal.

There regular and aged mezcal, there is the kind with the worm and then there are crema de mezcal - fruit flavors like coconut, passionfruit, and coffee.

They even have some called mezcal de pechuga, which is flavored with a chicken breast. I didn't ask whether it was raw or cooked. I didn't really want to know. It is supposed to be a big delicacy and is enormously expensive, about $100 a bottle.

I tried passionfruit (maracuya) and some red fruit thing, mango and coffee flavor. Personally I think I like it straight up better, as long as it is good. And there are plenty of very bad mezcals - some duplicate the flavor of gasoline almost exactly.

Then I made the long walk home, stopping at an internet cafe for a moment. I was delighted that the pouring rain stopped - only my feet were soaked - and that I once again successfully found my way back to the cozy home of the Rodriguez family.