Mexico Didn't Drink That Many Agave Spirits Until Recently

Following the establishment of the Denomination of Origin for tequila in 1974, the tequila industry has been booming. According to data from the Consejo Regulador del Tequila, production of the Blue Weber agave spirit has increased some 495 percent. Bottles of the Mexican spirit can be found at bars all over the world. Its popularity is such that Mexican drinking has become synonymous with the spirit. So much so that the average American consumer might assume that Mexicans have always loved tequila. The reality, though, is that domestic consumption of agave spirits in Mexico has historically been regional and relatively insignificant compared to other beverages and spirits. The modern boom in agave spirits globally has similarly increased consumption of the homegrown spirits in Mexico itself.

We do not have a clear data point for when agave spirits finally became the spirit of choice for the majority of Mexicans, but it occurred relatively recently, likely after 1980. The 1974 formalization of tequila’s Denomination of Origin is a good indication that the spirit had reached a critical point of commercial production and success. But if Mexico itself was not an avid consumer of agave spirits prior to this period, what spirit was the country drinking? For most of its history, the answer to this question has been sugarcane rum.

The prominence of sugarcane spirits within Mexico predates the country’s independence. The Spanish government outlawed distillation in New Spain for much of the 1700s, but haciendas growing sugarcane commonly circumvented the law to produce an illicit rum called chinguirito. By the end of the century, the ban had been lifted and legalized rum was being produced commercially. Meanwhile, mezcal and tequila were still largely regional spirits traded only to nearby cities or mining communities like Guadalajara and Zacatecas.

While agave spirits did become increasingly commercialized over the course of the 19th century, especially in Jalisco for tequila and San Luis Potosí mezcal, rum was still king. The Statistical Yearbook of the Mexican Republic (Anuario estadistíco de la República Mexicana) for the years 1888 to 1893, for example, shows that 442,688 barrels of sugarcane spirits were produced. Over the same period, only 18,844 of spirits from “apple, pulque, mezcal, grape, or any other material” were produced and only 58,888 barrels of tequila were distilled. The country was awash in rum. Agave spirits, while available, were a modest offering.

"The country was awash in rum. Agave spirits, while available, were a modest offering."

The outlook for mezcal and tequila began to change following the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910. In addition to its far-reaching political and economic implications, the Revolution was also a cultural one. In the wake of the Revolution, tequila emerged as a proud beverage tied to a revived Mexican sense of nationalism. And, as Mexico entered its Golden Age of Cinema in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the cantina was a common setting where caballitos of tequila were nonchalantly thrown back by macho cowboys. The popular imagery of the hard-nosed charro (Mexican cowboy) drinking tequila in a saloon-doored cantina helped to inform the world’s ideas about drinking in Mexico.

The reality of the Mexican cantina, though, paints a different picture. Tequila and mezcal, while present, were not the most popular spirits for the majority of the 1900s at the cantina. Rum and grape brandy vied for popularity in the basic cocktails of the day. Highballs (sometimes written haibols) were common, but the most famous drink was the Cuba Libre. The rum-and-coke combination was so popular during the 1900s that the Mexican novelist José Agustín coined the term “Cubadicto” for a certain kind of cantina regular in his 1986 novel Cerca del fuego. Tequila did enter the cantina cocktail culture, though, with drinks like the 1930 invention of the Bertha and the 1940 invention of the Changuirongo, or Coke and tequila. Many Mexican cantina goers also preferred coñac, which referred to domestic grape brandies. Well over three quarters of the grapes grown in Mexico in the late 1900s were destined to be distilled into brandy.

The data supports the idea that agave spirits were consumed in only modest quantities until more recently. The Statistical Yearbook of Foreign Trade of the United Mexican States (Anuario Estadistico de Comercio Exterior de Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos) of 1974 indicates that exports of tequila amounted to around 89 million pesos versus around 93 million pesos of other alcoholic beverage with more than 23 percent alcohol by volume. In 1995, tequila production was at just under 68 million liters, 45 million of which were for the export market. This leaves only about one quarter of a liter of tequila per capita for Mexico’s 92 million population figure at the time. Again, a relatively modest level of consumption.

And far more Mexican-made agave spirits are consumed outside of the country than domestically. That is, year after year, more agave spirits are exported than are consumed in Mexico. This makes sense given the size of the market outside of Mexico, but we can see that domestic consumption of agave spirits has increased significantly as global consumption has also increased. According to COMERCAM data, Mexico consumed only 270,426 liters of mezcal in 2011. At its peak in 2022, domestic consumption had grown to 6,230,378 liters, a 2203 percent increase in just a decade. Similarly, Mexico consumed around 22.5 million liters of tequila domestically in 1995. That figure has increased to over 113 million liters in 2026.

In effect, the global boom in agave spirits has also been occurring within Mexico itself. Mexico has long had access to agave spirits (where other countries did not), but they were not the drink of choice until relatively recently. So next time you watch a spaghetti Western and see a Mexican gunslinger having a drink, know that, more likely than not, he would have been drinking rum not tequila.

Read more about the history of Mexican Drinking in Nicholas Stevens’s new book, The Complete Guide to Mexican Beverages, published by Bloomsbury and found at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Tagged agave spirits, tequila, mezcal, rum, Mexico, spirits history