May 23rd we get up early, load the car and head to breakfast before hitting the road. We left Mazatlan at 9:00 am headed for Tequila, Mexico. We took toll roads because of the little adventure the other day. The tolls were very high between Mazatlan and Tequila. We arrived at Tequila at about 5:00 pm local time and while sitting at a stop light an intoxicated man walking across the street blew Russ a kiss and amazingly enough Russ blew one back. It took approximately 7 hours. We drove around and found our hotel. Hotel Dulce Maria is a very nice hotel. There was a paper under the glass of the night stand that stated all the prices of items from bed spread to bath mat. If you wipe your shoes or any other object with any one of these items you just bought it.

To view the photos click on the gallery link.

The town is a very cute town and is known for its tequila. We took a combination city, tequila factory, agave field tour. This tour was great. Our tour guide Jesus who is 19 years old was fantastic. We went to two different factories. During the tour we learned how the agave syrup from the agave plant was discovered. They tell it like this: The god sent down a lightning bolt that hit the blue agave plant and set fire to it and when the pineapple was discovered it had a sweet sticky substance they call candy. So then agave syrup was discovered. They say that when you drink tequila and act peculiar it is the god that has entered your body and making you act that way, and it is not you. Now we know why the intoxicated man blew Russ a kiss.

The first one was an old hacienda organic factory. This factory works only one month of the year and produces only enough tequila for family and clients. This factory produces flavored tequila along with regular tequila. They make tequila the old fashioned way. It starts with the agave plant. It takes 8 years before they can harvest the agave plant. The part of the plant they use is called the pineapple. They cut all the stems off to get to the pineapple. The stems are left behind to fertilize the soil. The pineapple is then taken to the factory and put into a brick oven and bakes for 25 - 40 hours. Then they are moved to the grinding machine where the juice and pulp are separated. The pulp is hauled away to a factory and made into cookies, fertilizer, paper, sofa stuffing and a multitude of other products. The juice is then fermented. It takes two weeks to ferment uncovered allowing the bees to add enzymes. Back in the day a dirty worker would take his clothes off and swim in the juice which helped the fermentation process. After the fermentation the juice is moved into the copper distillers which adds flavor. At this point the tequila is not drinkable and contains methanol and is about 5% alcohol. Drinking this will cause blindness, deafness and even death. So the juice is moved into the second distillation process. The second distillation will raise the alcohol content to 35 - 55 percentages depending on the recipe and the methanol is extracted. Now the tequila is drinkable, however not aged. It is then put into oak barrels for aging.

The second tequila factory uses chemicals in there process. The procedures are about the same except that they use stainless broilers and chemicals with the yeast to ferment in 40 hours. They check the juice every three hours for sugar content and temperature. If a tank goes bad the worker has to pay for it. The second factory is totally commercial. They make the raw tequila un-aged and the other factories buy their raw tequila and add their secrete ingredients and age and sell with their own label.

The interesting thing here is that Jose Curevo is made at a factory under a different name and is owned by Americans. When you take a tour of Jose Curevo they say welcome to ______(the factory name which I can not remember) and not welcome to Tequila like the others do. The owner of Jose Curevo had a big hacienda right in the middle of the factory grounds. His children only came around when they need or wanted something and he made note of this, so to get back at them, when he died he gave the keys to the owners of Sauza Tequila. So now the house is surrounded by Sauza Tequila property. Sauza is the largest producing tequila plant now in Tequila, Mexico.

Mezcal has the worm in it not tequila. There is a diference between Tequila and Mezcal. Tequila is made from the Blue Agave plant and Mezcal is made from a different verity of Agave not the Blue.

By international agreement all countries except Argentina recognized tequila as coming from Mexico only. All other products must have a different name.
Argentina makes its own alcohol called Tequila and is not even made from the Agave plant.

Now you know all that we have learned about tequila.

There are two churches in Tequila. One is late 1700's and the newest version is 1874. On the newest church, the bell was cracked so they sent the bell off for repair and it was never returned. It is a good thing that the church has more than one bell. Jesus told us that every night at 9:00 pm the priest gives out a blessing while the church bells are ringing and everyone stops what they are doing and turns to the church. We decided to walk around town and end up at the church square and watch life go by. Sure enough at 9:00 pm the bells rang out and everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to face the church, including us. While mom and I were walking around town we found this really nice hole in the wall clothing store. The clothing is high quality, and then we spotted some really nice high quality lace. The workmanship is antique. Of course the colors are perfect and mom took them off their hands.

We decided that from here are going back to Mazatlan for a night and then to Los Mochis for a night and back to Guaymas for a couple of days before heading to the states.