How to Drink Tequila?
There is the macho ritual of placing a pinch of salt on the back of the hand between thumb and forefinger, licking the salt, chucking a shot of tequila down your throat, then sucking a lime. A lemon is an acceptable substitute. Pour a shot of tequila. Lick the space between the thumb and the index finger on your left hand, then sprinkle this area with salt. Taking care not to spill the salt, hold a lime wedge in the same hand. Pick up the shot glass in your right hand. Lick the salt, down the tequila in one, suck the lime then slam down your empty glass. Some drinkers manage the salt, lime and tequila in the same hand, but this takes practice. It should be served in a caballito which is a narrow shot glass.
For a slight variation on the standard slammer, take a glass of tequila mixed with sparkling wine or fizzy pop (usually lemonade, 7 Up or fizzy bitter lemon mixer), cover the glass with your hand and slam it down on a table. As the mixture foams up, bring the glass to your lips and swallow like mad. The very decadent substitute champagne for sparkling wine.
The civilised way is in a cocktail, with the margarita the most popular: three parts tequila, two parts fresh lime juice (not Rose's) and one part triple sec, shaken over ice and served in a glass with a salted rim. Urban legend has it that Margarita was the girlfriend of a Mexican barman, killed by a stray bullet in a bar-room brawl. A likely story, given the romantic and violent reputation of Mexicans.
Some bars provide the personal services of tequila girls who wander around dressed like Mexican bandits with tequila and sparkling wine where their six-shooters should be. Shot glasses replace bullets in their gun belts, and they slam and mix on demand.

Tequila Blends
Blanco or Plato: 100% agave tequila that is unaged,untreated with additives and bottled within 60 days.
Dorado: (Gold) usually just refers to it's caramel coloring.
Reposado: 100% agave, "rested" tequila that has been stored in oak between two months and one year.
Anejo: 100% agave, aged tequila that has been stored in oak at least one year but no more than 5.
Mixto blanco: mixto tequila that is unaged.
Mixto reposado: mixto tequila that has been stored in oak between two months and one year.
Mixto anejo: aged mixto tequila that has been stored in oak at least one year.
Joven abocado: mixto tequila that has been treated with additives to achieve an effect similar to aging

Tequlia blanco, the original version, is colourless while tequila reposado (gold) is aged in oak barrels for up to 12 months. Tequila anejo has longer ageing. Mencal is another agave-distilled spirit but with a different style from tequila.

Developing a Taste For Tequila
The best way to become a discriminating tequila drinker is to try as many different brands as possible. Compare the contrast of them in terms of their appearance, bouquet, viscosity and flavour. Few tequilas taste of only one thing; most are a complex blend of flavours and taste. They may taste sweet, earthy, woody, smooth or even smoky. It is a good idea to taste a new tequila against a familiar brand to give a standard for comparison.

How is Tequila Made?
Tequila is made from the agave plant, a native plant of mexico. The person in charge of deciding when the plant is ripe is called a "jimador". The jimador's job is to clear out the core with a knife and bring it to a distillery. At the distillery the cores are then crushed and juiced with a stone wheel and then dumped into a wood vat which enhances the flavor. Each distiller has yeast which reacts with the sugar in the juices to create alcohol. The juices can ferment from 30-48 hours in the vats and later are distilled twice. making 70 proof alcohol on the first distillation and 110 proof alcohol on the second.

NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana)
In order to preserve tequila's integrity and protect their national treasure, the Mexican government formulated NORMAS in the 1970s to establish and govern tequila standards of production. By law, tequila must meet the following criteria:
• it must be made from 100 percent natural ingredients
• it must be produced with no less than 38 percent alcohol by bolum (ABV)
• it must be made from blue agave grown and harvested only in the Mexican states of Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacan, Nayarit or Tamaulipas
• the fermented agave juice must be distilled twice and the finished product must result from the agave juice processing
• the final product must be produced form no less than 51 percent reduced sugars from the blue agave
• it must be labeled with 'hecho en Mexico' (made in Mexico), 'NOM' (Norma Official Mexicana), the producer's four digit registration and identification number and the tequila's age (resposado, anejo, blanco, oro).
The Mexican governing agent of tequila dictates that, tequilas distilled from 100% Blue Agave must be labeled 100%. Most of the premium brands are bottled in Mexico.
A lot of the tequila produced in the United States is mixed with cane alcohol to produce the cheaper priced 51% Agave Tequilas.

The State of Jalisco
The central-western state of Jalisco, Mexico is bounded by the states of Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato, Colima and Michoacan, with a Pacific coastline extension of some 280 kms. Guadalajara city is the capital city of the State of Jalisco with the city of Tequila at the heart of Jalisco's tequila producing region. The district's first tequila factory was established in 1600.
The Mexican National Tequila Fair is held every year in Tequila from November 30 to December 12. It includes parades, charreadas (Mexican rodeos), cock fights, serenades with mariachis, firework displays and of course Tequila in aplenty.

Agave Shortage
Since the late 1990s, tequila has moved to the front of the shelf as one of the world's most popular alcoholic drinks. Behind the scenes, however, the trend is threatening tropical dry forests of Mexico.The key to preventing that may lie in a bottle of mezcal, a close cousin to tequila, which is produced in limited quantities and is gaining ground as new premium alcohol.Tequila is made from the fermented sap of a certain agave plant that is grown on plantations in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. When the popularity of tequila rose in recent years, commercial growers of the plant were caught short.Seven years ago, faced with an apparent overproduction of the plant, they had turned their fields over to other crops. Because it takes eight to ten years for the agave plant to mature, the sudden rise in demand for tequila met with a shortage of the drink's essential ingredient.To make up for the shortfall, tequila producers have turned to tropical dry forests in other regions of the country, such as the state of Guerrero. They pay peasant farmers a premium for other varieties of agave (also known as maguey) that grow wild in the forest and use them as a supplement for their tequila."This has been very dangerous for biodiversity," said Catarina Illsley Granich, a researcher at the Group for Environmental Studies in Mexico City. "If you take too many plants out, you wipe out a population. The species can become extinct very quickly."Conservationists have come up with a plan that would reduce harvesting of the wild agave plant to more sustainable levels, thus sparing the forests from the ravages of the tequila shortage. The plan would also provide a better quality of life for indigenous people who have cultivated the plant for centuries and used it to make mezcal for local consumption.

Tequila has a bizarre and extreme quality that is missing from the other major spirits. Distilled from the root of the maguey or Blue Agave, a cactus like plant which actually belongs to the amaryllis family, it is Mexico's contribution to the greatest drinks of the world.
In the late 19th century the commercial cultivation of agaves in Mexico had begun and by the 1870s there were about a dozen distilleries. The United States was the first, and is still the most important export market for tequila, but it was not until the mid-sixties that tequila burst upon the rest of the world. By the seventies the demand had led to a need for regulations to define tequila produced in the state of Jalisco. Tequila has been described as having a smooth sharpness.

The Blue Agave was discovered in the Central State of Jalisco, Mexico, by the Tiquila Indians (a faction of the Toltecs). It was in 1902 that a scientist (Dr Weber) realized the differences in the plants and after tasting the end product, named the plant after himself.