Few spirits are more mysterious than mezcal. An outlaw’s drink of ill repute, mezcal, like tequila, is made from pure maguey—or agave—liquor. Unfortunately, limited distribution and lax regulation that allowed nasty chemical cocktails to pass themselves off as mescal have given the liquor a bad rep. And then there’s the ubiquitous worm: Introduced into bottles as a marketing gambit in the 1950s, it offers no demonstrable hallucinogenic properties, despite popular perception.
