Austin Restaurant Nixta Taqueria Serves Mexican Fermented Drinks

An array of colourful fermented drinks sits on the tiled bar of East Austin Mexican restaurant Nixta Taqueria. There’s the shockingly pink colonche constructed from tuna — the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. There’s the earthy terracotta mesquite tea, constructed from floor mesquite pods, and the restaurant’s latest addition: the pulque-rita. A twist on the Tex-Mex cocktail staple, the milky drink has a refined yellow hue and a chile piquin-citrus salt rim. The bottom of the beverage is pulque — a conventional Mexican drink that dates again to the pre-Columbian period.

As the pinnacle of Nixta’s fermented beverage program, Andrés M. Garza’s precedence is two-fold: They wish to push folks out of their consolation zones by getting them to strive one thing they may not have heard of earlier than, however additionally they wish to educate them. As a result of whereas these drinks is likely to be brand-new to some prospects, the drinks have been round Texas and Mexico for hundreds of years. “These are drinks that have been made right here that aren’t anymore,” Garza says. “Working in fermentation at Nixta, it looks like my accountability to pay homage to that.”

Initially from Monterrey, Mexico, Garza moved to the Rio Grande Valley and later left to attend faculty in Austin. Their anthropology programs on the College of Texas at Austin sparked an curiosity within the culinary traditions of their native Northern Mexico and the Southwest. “I needed to know extra about what our ancestors have been consuming and ingesting,” they are saying. “All all through that area, there’s a wealthy historical past of fermented drinks going again 1000’s of years. Indigenous teams have been utilizing what was out there to them — mesquite, agave, prickly pear — and fermenting them as a result of it was wholesome, it gave them vitality.”

Whereas fermented merchandise like kombucha, kimchi, and miso have exploded in reputation lately, the follow of fermentation is one which people everywhere in the world have been partaking in for 1000’s of years. The method, which converts sugar to alcohol, is behind the creation of the whole lot from yogurt and pickles to wine and beer.

For Garza, it was like falling down a rabbit gap. The extra they discovered, the extra impressed they felt to make the recipes. Working at Nixta when it opened in 2019 solely invigorated their curiosity. Once they returned from a pandemic stint within the Rio Grande Valley in 2021 and have become the restaurant’s director of fermentation, they knew precisely the place they needed to start out: pulque.

Like tequila and mezcal, pulque comes from the agave plant, additionally known as maguey. However quite than being harvested from the slow-cooked piña or coronary heart of the plant, it’s constructed from aguamiel, its candy sap. Centuries earlier than the Spanish colonization of Mexico started in 1519, Indigenous teams all through the area collected aguamiel (which interprets to “honey water”) for medicinal functions and fermentation. The sap breaks down naturally, turning into a frothy, viscous beverage about as alcoholic as beer with a tartness much like kombucha.

The sanctity of agave to Mesoamerican teams meant that for a lot of the pre-Columbian period, pulque was handled with nice significance. It was featured in quite a few myths and legends associated to the Aztec goddess of maguey, Mayahuel, and was primarily reserved for the the Aristocracy throughout Aztec rule in what’s now Central Mexico. With the arrival of the Spanish, the pressured assimilation of the native folks meant that pulque, like quite a few sacred traditions, was divorced from its spiritual roots, although manufacturing continued into the late nineteenth century. As European beer grew to become well-liked within the twentieth century, the consumption of pulque waned, helped alongside by a profitable brewery-run smear marketing campaign.

Many pulque recipes have been handed down for generations and are nonetheless consumed as we speak, however one of many long-lasting impacts of Spanish colonization is the pressured disconnect between descendants of native Mexicans and their traditions. However for households like Garza’s, these ties have been severed, and so they’re now within the means of reconnecting with them. “I don’t have that passed-down data,” Garza says. “So I’ve to learn what these drinks tasted like, be taught the way it was finished, and I’ve been fortunate sufficient to journey again to Mexico and be taught from folks making it there.”

In latest many years, pulque has had a resurgence all through Central Mexico, the place pulquerías and road distributors usually provide it the standard means or combine it with contemporary fruit juice (guava, mango, pineapple, and many others.). As more and more well-liked as it’s in Mexico, pulque’s fast fermentation is generally in charge for why it hasn’t but hit it huge within the U.S. The drink has a brief shelf life, making it tough to ship into the nation except it’s pasteurized. “We’re the primary restaurant in Austin to hold pulque,” Garza says of Nixta. “That is the closest we will get to conventional pulque, however for me, it was simply essential to get folks entry to it, even when it’s barely completely different than what they could discover in Mexico.”

It’s a message that resonated with them. On a latest journey to Mexico Metropolis, Garza visited a pulque museum and noticed a show about bottled pulque that learn, “It doesn’t style the identical as a result of it’s not like pure pulque … nevertheless it does allow the Mexicans who’re distant to get nearer to residence.”

Nixta serves Pulque Octli Conejo Blanco, a bottled model from Hidalgo that now ships to Australia and Korea. Every bottle incorporates a white rabbit on its amber glass — a nod to the pre-Hispanic legend of the 400 rabbits, the divine kids of Mayahuel who represented the 400 states of consciousness that could possibly be achieved by imbibing in alcoholic drinks like pulque. It’s additionally tied to the assumption that it was mountain rabbits ingesting from the agave plant that allowed native Mexicans to find aguamiel.

Since Nixta started promoting it final November, pulque has turn out to be one of the vital well-liked drinks on the menu, significantly in pulque-ritas. “It’s the primary drink folks ask for,” Garza says with a smile. “Having 50 folks a day strive pulque, most of them for the primary time, it’s superb.”

Garza was apprehensive at first about taking a conventional beverage like pulque and utilizing it as the bottom for a margarita. From chai to kombucha, there’s an extended historical past of conventional meals and drinks turning into so well-liked in America that they turn out to be separated from their cultural context. Garza desires to satisfy folks the place they’re at, however not on the expense of muddying pulque’s origins. “I can already see how somebody might exoticize pulque,” Garza says. “Taking one thing just like the historical past of pulque as an Aztec drink and turning it into one thing just like the nectar of the Aztec gods, that data isn’t unsuitable, however when it’s being portrayed that means, you’re not doing the total historical past and other people justice. I’d love for it to have a resurgence right here that isn’t a development, however one thing linked to the neighborhood.”

Garza envisions a world through which pulque is appreciated on the identical degree as wine. “It is a drink that showcases our biodiversity, our historical past on this area. You pay $12 to $15 for a glass of wine, I feel it is best to pay about the identical for pulque if we’re attempting to respect it the identical means. However on the similar time, I need everybody to have entry to it.”

As with wine, pulque can differ wildly from area to area. The elevation in a specific a part of the nation can affect the style of the agave, and the strategy of fermentation or any herbs and roots cofermented with the aguamiel can add notes of sweetness or amp up the tart, lactic style. In Monterrey and Guadalajara, for instance, the drink tends to be thinner, partly due to various native kinds, but in addition due to the variations in elevation. “It’s all an expression of the land,” Garza says.

In the long run, Garza imagines a future the place extra folks really feel impressed to attach with the native vegetation of the area and make their very own fermented drinks. Garza and the crew are fermenting tepache (a drink made out of pineapple rinds), colonche, and mesquite tea in-house, a few of which can be found on the restaurant. And that is just the start. “Simply having pulque right here offers folks an concept. If extra locations have pulque and there’s a requirement for it, possibly folks will begin making it. It feels particular to reap these components and make one thing with it. It’s so rewarding.”