Breaking: Mezcal given back to Mexico

In a stunning reversal of fifty years of policy the administration of AMLO has decreed that the nation of Mexico is giving the word mezcal back to the people of Mexico so that they can “reconquest the Mexican soul.” Sources within his administration are telling Mezcalistas that the decision was long debated and that, at first, advisors considered it as another idiosyncratic quirk, “just AMLO being AMLO” as one of them put it to us. But, over time the more profound implications of the policy emerged as administration figures like Gabriella Camara arguing that the moral dimensions of such a change were “just as profound as the message it would send to the nation.”

Technically we are told that this change will unfold over the coming months through a series of proposed legislation changes which will eliminate many of the regulations like NOM 070 and NOM 199 that have become famous over the past decade as the forces within the Mexican spirits world have fought for control over terminology and the nature of distilling within the country. What this means for the CRM, the semi-governmental body tasked with regulating the mezcal industry, is still up in the air. Sources tell us that the CRM could continue to operate in some form as a marketing arm for the industry and/or continue in its role validating chemical assays.

Notably no one is saying that this will make any change to the tequila industry. The CRT released an official comment immediately after news broke about the change to mezcal indicating that it certainly knew about this shift in advance and may even have had some hand in the negotiations. The CRT comment read in part “when Mao se Tung said ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ he could not have anticipated that the soul of Mexican distilling would be unleashed with such drama and effect. We foresee an explosion of growth and diversity in the Mexican distilling world which will only advance the global growth and enhance the global image of Mexican spirits.”