PULQUE

No Hangover - I'd like to try it. ...JB

Mexican Hipsters Make "Sour, Smelly and Slimy Aztec Brew" Trendy
That vivid headline came from NBCNews after GlobalPost reported that hipsters were taking over pulque. Only a few Mexico City bars sell the hip, increasingly popular drink (pronounced pool-kay). The weird thing about hipsters loving the drink, besides the fact that hipsters apparently exist in Mexico too, is that the description of the drink is repulsive.
Del Maguey describes pulque as "a milky, slightly foamy and somewhat viscous beverage made by fermenting (not distilling) the fresh sap of certain types of Maguey." Meanwhile, GlobalPost did not give the drink a much better review, depicting it as "the mildly sour, slightly slimy and gently fermented nectar of agave [which is the same thing as maguey]."
Pulque was originally popular amongst the poor. It comes as no surprise that hipsters are trying to chance what used to be a shameful poor man's drink into something that only hip kids know about.
"All kids," David Bravo, the bartender at Las Duelistas, a Mexico City dive bar, said of the bar's pulque drinkers. "Of every hundred people who come in now perhaps two or three are older."
At Las Duelistas, pulque runs at $1.65 a pint. According to GlobalPost, the drink is "nearly hangover-proof", which, from a drinker's perspective, makes the drink a steal.
Pulquerias are hard to find, making them even more alluring to hipsters. The prominence pulquerias in Mexican cities dwindled over the last century as beer became the drink of choice. Now, only a few dozen pulquerias exist in Mexico City.
"They treat pulque like a fad," Melly Leyva, a 46-year-old former pulqueria bartender, said. "They don't value it as part of our culture, our traditions. They don't know their history."
Aztecs used to enjoy pulque during both parties and religious events. According to Del Maguey, the drink goes as far back as 1,000 A.D.
"This is my roots," David Matute, a 33-year-old pulqueria veteran, explained. "Like 1,500 years ago, someone was feeling exactly like I do right now. The pulque has me."