THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

It seems like there is nothing new under the sun when to consider the latest trendy drink in Mexico is as old as the gods themselves. Pulque, was originally the nectar of the Aztec gods a thousand years ago. Now it is the hot new drink in town.

“It's got a great taste … and it's a natural product that doesn't have chemicals in it,” Ivan Alejandro Camarillo said, explaining pulque's appeal as he sipped it from a brightly colored plastic beaker. “It's also really mellow and doesn't make you crazy” like other drinks, he added.

The 19-year-old restaurant worker is among thousands of young Mexicans rediscovering the so-called “nectar of the gods” first made more than 1,000 years ago by the Aztec civilization of the country’s central highlands and drunk by priests in rituals, including human sacrifice.

Subsequently widely made in haciendas dotted across the central highlands, pulque became the staple tipple of Mexico's working class until, amid false rumors that it was made with excrement, it was gradually eclipsed with the advent of beer. A decade or so ago pulque slipped into what producers and pulquería owners feared could be a terminal decline — until it was rediscovered by a new generation of drinkers.

“Now it's all young people that come in,” said Noe Hernandez, Los Paseos' proprietor for the past 45 years, as he cast his eye over his youthful clientele sipping several varieties of pulque, some “cured” or mixed with fruit including guava and passion fruit that make the pungent drink more palatable. About half of the customers are “new faces,” he added.

The drink's popularity peaked in the late 1800s when there were some 1,100 pulquerías across the capital, according to some estimates, of which perhaps 80 to 100 have survived. Renewed demand in the past five or six years has reinvigorated some of the older bars, and led to a rash of start-ups in Mexico City's trendy Condesa and Roma neighborhoods, where the ancient drink is now served to a dance music beat.

The revival is also giving a boost to rural areas where pulque is produced, like the nearby state of Tlaxcala where emigration to find work is common.

At the historic Hacienda Xochuca, in Tlaxcala, manager Vicente Franquiz takes a growing number of visitors around the fields of hulking magueys, relatives of the blue agaves used to make tequila. Visitors to the estate founded in the 1800s are shown them the traditional techniques to gather the sap known as aguamiel (honey water) that is used to make pulque. He one day hopes to bring output back from the current 130 gallons a day to the 26-32,000 gallons that the estate produced in its heyday, although he finds himself battling a rumor that is endlessly repeated in Mexico that a cloth-wrapped bundle of excrement — dubbed a muneca (doll) — is added to the sap to kickstart fermentation.

“It's a complete lie … pulque has a 100 percent natural fermentation,” said Franquiz, standing beside softly fizzing tanks of fermenting juice in the cool interior of the tinacal, or brew house, at the hacienda. “When people come here, we show them that the myth isn't true. We give them the honey water to take to Mexico City, and then they see that it starts to ferment without adding anything at all.”

Is pulque the "Pabst beer" of Mexico? The growers should be so lucky.