Why Does Tequila Have A Worm In It
Camila Farah
Tequila was flooding the american market and mezcal needed a way to stand out.
It is mezcal or mescal. Likely you ve wondered what s up with the worm. The credit here goes to the amount of tequila or mezcal a person consumes. These larva are known to infest maguey and agave salmiana.
Well there is a larva in most of the bottles of mezcal. The worm does not give you hallucinations and it is not an aphrodisiac. But it is pronounced mescal. Meanwhile it s said the normas oficiales mexicanas the mexican standards authority actually prohibits adding insects or larvae to tequila.
To do so they added a worm in the bottom of the bottle. The truth is there isn t one. This is why all tequila comes from jalisco. Since the main ingredients within both tequila and mescal are agave plants the alcohol is prone to these tiny worm creatures that use these plants as their main habitat.
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Whether you ve ever been challenged to eat the worm in the bottom of a tequila bottle yourself or simply watched someone else do it you might be wondering what the deal is with the worm in the first place. The worm is never found in tequila says heriberto oviedo the tequilier like a sommelier for tequila at the cantina beach restaurant at the ritz carlton in key biscayne fl. It didn t matter that mexicans never had mezcal with a worm. In bottles sold in the us a moth called gusano de maguey was added.
So no you ll never see a worm at the bottom of a. However when the agave worm is discovered during the process of producing tequila it is actually a very bad sign. This particular agave plant grows in jalisco mexico. But if you re looking for the truth about the worm in your tequila i have some sobering news for you.
You see at the time tequila was flooding the us market and mezcal companies were desperately trying to differentiate themselves. The red worm is typically considered tastier. Some think the worm in the bottle started as a marketing ploy to get people to drink more mezcal in the 1940s and 1950s. The larva is usually either a gusano rojo red worm or a chinicuil maguey worm the caterpillar of the comadia redtenbacheri moth.
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