FINDING MEZCAL

Description

n this groundbreaking and deeply personal book, Ron Cooper, a leading voice in the mezcal artisan movement and the person largely responsible for popularizing the spirit in the United States, shares all he knows about this culturally rich and now enormously history. interested. It demands spirit, along with 40 recipes.

In 1990 artist Ron Cooper was collaborating with artisans in Oaxaca, Mexico, when he found mezcal or, as he likes to say, found it. This traditional spirit was virtually unknown in the United States at the time, and Cooper founded Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal to import it. Finding Mezcal tells Cooper’s love story with the spirit and the people who make it; his meteoric rise in popularity; and the delicate balance between sharing mezcal with the world and facilitating its preservation. Each chapter introduces a new mezcal, its producer, and its place of origin, while covering the methods of producing mezcal and the botany of the maguey plant (also known as agave), from which mezcal is distilled. With 40 recipes developed for Del Maguey by chefs and bartenders around the world, the book is copiously illustrated with photographs, as well as the artwork of Cooper and that of his friend Ken Price, who illustrated the now iconic Del Maguey labels.