Mezcal Distillery and Rug Factory

On the afternoon of Day 4 of our trip to Oaxaca, we left the town of San Pablo de Mitla to head to a Mezcal factory.  Mezcal is the drink similar to tequila but often with the worm in the bottle.  This place used a different agave plant than the distilleries in Tequila. Instead of blue agave, they used sword agave which is quite similar.

the worms gathered from the agave plant

a display of various kinds of agave plants -- the largest one in the centre of the photo is the type used to make Mezcal at this distillery

agave pinas read to be roasted

The pinas are roasted in pit with a wood fire that is covered in sand for slow and smokey roasting.

mashing the roasted pinas with a stone pulled by a horse

pina mash

the wood-fired still

learning about the different aging of the mezcal

Sprinke the salt on the base of the thumb and lick it. Follow this with a byte if the orange. Then drink the mezcal. It was very smoky flavoured due to the original baking by a wood fire.

A large lily decorating the mantle -- it's not artificial!!!

Our next stop was Teotitlan del Valle to visit a rug factory.  Like the textile factory we visited in the morning, all the rugs were woven on hand-operated looms.  The dyes used to colour the wool were all organic taken from the plants and vegetation in the area.  They used a variety of wool from sheep, alpaca, etc.

colour samples

carding the raw wool aligns the fibers

spinning the wool into yarn

pomegranates for coloring

white indicates area of parasite in cactus

using the parasite to create colour

adding limestone to change colour

resulting colour after limestone added

sample of the 2 colours produced from grinding the parasite

samples of some of the rug patterns

a gallery of rugs for sale

The rugs in this shop were relatively high priced but were in line with the workmanship and quality.

Our final stop on Day 4 was to visit the largest tree in Mexico. El Árbol del Tule (Spanish for The Tree of Tule) is located in the town center of Santa María del Tule.

one of the gnarly formations on the trunk

You definitely can't put your arms around this trunk...it is huge

a close-up of the leaves

 The street leading to the tree was decorated with topiary.

Meep-meep

 

Back to the hotel after a full day of touring!!!