Tequila Archives
When we went to Tequila on Sunday, Sita noticed a book on display “taken from the new Town History Archive”. This was news to us. So we went back yesterday as it turns out they opened this archive about 6 months ago after months of painstaking cleaning, sorting and databasing of a huge amount of documents that had turned up in various unused rooms of government buildings around the town. Some were in pretty wretched states because of centuries of storage in dank, wormy cellars.
They make for interesting reading once you get your head around the handwriting, antiquated abbreviations and general damage. Added to that, they were big on saving paper and the writing from the other side tends to bleed through to the other. None the less it’s a minor miracle they’re legible at all… The lady in charge of the archive was incredibly helpful and spent a good few hours tellings us about the history of the archive, how to use the database and even read some of the documents to us. I’m currently uploading the video of her reading one of the documents to YouTube, check out my YouTube Channel to see if it’s there yet…
One document from 1705 or so was a letter signed by all the neighbours of a drunk landowner complaining about his behaviour and addiction to the aguardiente (firewater (probably from sugar cane rather than agaves)).
Another team of researchers are looking for evidence that Jose Cuervo isn’t the oldest tequila maker in the world after all, despite their slick promotional video’s claims… I hope they find it, they deserve to be taken down a notch or two…
Anyroad, long story short, there’s a wealth of info that’s going to help young Sita flesh out the remaining chapters of her PhD thesis, and we’ll probably be going back and donning latex gloves many more times. Which is a good thing and no mistake. At least they don’t make you wear hairnets.
After carne en su jugo, a torta ahogada and an on-the-house margarita in our favourite eatery we went round Columpio’s to drop off the photos and a few UK coins. They’d just finished cutting the tips off the agaves in their fields (which I think has to do with concentrating the sugars in the heart of the agave) and were in full swing roasting agave pias. The owner invited us in for drinks but we had to decline as it was getting late (past Atticus’s feeding time) and so we promised we’d be back again in the near future. “Qué Dios les bendiga” he wished us as we drove off through the beautiful agave-studded landscape…