(say what now? What happened to brandy?)
Well my friends, looks like we’ll be here a while. Pour yourself a drink, it’s time for the latest installment of:
Online School of Cocktailory 
For drinking #alonetogether
Section 104: Daisies
Brandy is a catch-all term for spirits distilled from fruits like grapes or apples. Mezcal is a catch-all term for spirits like tequila distilled from agave. These 2 spirits share a section based on their similar usage in cocktail prep, not that the 2 taste the same or would taste good together.
El tequila viene 100% de agave (sabe bien) o mixto (es no bueno, no lo compres)
Tequila is made from Weber blue agave hearts, or piñas, from Jalisco mostly that are steamed in an oven and then distilled. Unaged blanco tequila is awesome with citrus cocktails like the ever famous Margarita. Resposado is barrel aged for 2 to 12 months and has just a kiss of barrel characters like vanilla & clove. Añejos spend 1 to 3 years sleeping in their barrels and have the spicier oak flavors that go with it. Delicioso as a Manhattan alt. Extra añejo is any time spent over 3 years in the barrel, but these are pretty pricey to be mixing in a cocktail.
Spirits labeled Mezcal as a style rather than describing the whole agave-based category, are usually from the state of Oaxaca, are unaged, and get their smoky flavor from its peasant heritage style of small-batch artisanal production. The piña is cooked in pits in the ground lined with volcanic rock and heated with mesquite charcoal, like making vegan barbacoa. Then it ferments and gets distilled but hangs on to it’s bbq smokey smell. Back in the 50’s when larvae from agave-eating caterpillars accidentally got bottled in some Mezcal, the producer thought it added a good flavor, but it’s essentially a marketing gimmick now. You can eat the bug, but umm gross, don’t. It does not make you hallucinate. There is no mescaline. That’s another marketing gimmick. The high from Mezcal is just that it’s bottled at a higher proof than other liquors. This lowers the evaporation temperature of the alcohol apparently so when you take a sip, a little poof of alcohol bursts into gas, making the drink more aromatic. Fun!
Bacanora from the Mexican state of Sonora is made the same way as Mezcal from Oaxaca. However Mezcal can be made from many agave plants, and Bacanora is made just from wild plants of agave Pacifica. It has the earthy barbacoa flavor without being as smoky.
Raicilla used to be known as Mexican moonshine, but Tequila producers in Jalisco state make it now too. Instead of blue agave, Raicilla is made from two different agave plants: lechuguilla and puta de mula. It is cooked like tequila, has a bit of smoke, and is sweeter and fruitier than most other mezcals.
Sotol is a related spirit, but isn’t made from agave at all. It’s made from a succulent called desert spoon mainly in the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Durango and Coahuila. It’s cooked the same way as Mezcal, and has a similar earthy flavor but less smokey.
(Mezcal facts credited to Thomas Henry Strenk’s 2017 article “What’s the Difference” and from the Pensador Mezcal website, since my book was a little light on facts this week)
Experiment time!! It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Margarita night 
It’s not so much an experiment as it is, having a margarita. If you feel like buying a bunch of different mezcals to compare them, by all means go for it, but I’m not a big fan so I’m just going headfirst into this cocktail:
Start by rubbing a lime wedge along half the rim of an old fashioned glass about a 1/2″ down and not on the inside of the glass. Then evenly roll the wet part in pink or kosher salt. Put 1 large ice cube in the glass. Shake the following ingredients with ice and strain into your prepared glass:
2 oz. 100% agave blanco tequila
3/4 oz. Cointreau
3/4 oz. fresh lime juice
1/4 oz. simple syrup (more or less per your preference for sweetness)
Garnish with your lime wedge on the non-salted part of the rim and send me a pic 
Cheers!
Jet Tries 
Ok, in the name of science, I give you:
1. Olmeca Altos Plata Tequila
2. 1800 Resposado Tequila Reserva
3. Luminar Añejo Mezcal
1 smells and tastes fruity, tiny hint of barrel, followed by that old familiar tequila burn when you try to resume breathing.
2 smells like an old wood dresser, fairly smooth to drink, but smells like a yard fire and burns to swallow.
3 this mezcal is not as bad as I remember them being in college, but I wouldn’t drink it plain on purpose. It smells kinda woody/fruity if you can get past the acetone bbq smell. The taste is pretty mellow, and not much burn afterbreath compared to the others. But that smell man: needs to be drown in margarita fixins.
Stay tuned for more questionable cocktails from a drinking mom.
Turned them into leftover mini-margaritas.
1. yum, normal.
2. like drinking in Harry Potter’s closet under the stairs. Eu de mothballs.
3. Not bad really. Like a woodsy campfire margarita. I kinda like this riff. Might do it again. Since all my tasters are all sad and empty now.