Sotol is more than a liquor — it’s northern Mexican culture and history in a bottle

In Madera, a mountain town in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, Bienvenido Fernandez pours freshly distilled sotol between two cow horns. Today, sotol production is again legal and locals line up outside Fernandez’s vinata waiting to fill empty Coca-Cola bottles with his product, which tastes of eucalyptus, pine, moss and wet dirt — typical of sotoles made from plants grown in the forest regions of northern Mexico. The property belongs to the family of Alfredo Garza and has seen its fair share of sotol production over the years — Garza’s great-grandfather produced the spirit on the grounds after fighting Pancho Villa in the Mexican Civil War. “His father and grandfather produced sotol, so we’re talking about at least 100 years of tradition.” In reality, the history goes back even further — thousands of years — to indigenous peoples in northern Mexico and the southwestern United States who fermented the sotol plant to produce a low-alcohol beverage more akin to a beer. This is our history, and they need to approach it the right way.” There are a variety of opinions on the subject, but for Jacobo Jacquez, whose family has long been in the sotol business, it’s simple: “People died for this craft,” he says, citing the persecution of Mexican sotoleros throughout the 20th century.