Different places ask for different drinks, even certain music styles, in my opinion, need specific booze pairings. And even though I am always the first to complain when I can't find delicious complex spirits in the middle of the night. I am starting to understand that calibrating which booze is served on a dancefloor is a important as the stage and lights design. Without further adieu, please welcome Roberto Ávila, and his many insights on how to create accurate booze experiences.

There are so many reasons why people may start a mezcal brand. Some do it for the money, some for love and some others because the craft has been in their families for generations. But regardless of how you started, nobody, to my understanding, has found a perfect formula to maintain exceptional quality while still paying the bills. Without further adieu please welcome Sergio Garnier, from Ultramundo Mezcal, and his rather atypical approach to owning a mezcal brand.

Like many agricultural products, agaves have developed a complex relationship with humans over millennia. Some agaves were chosen to make rope, others to extract pulque and maybe the luckiest of them all to create mezcal. But there've been many other more subtle ways in which people have chosen their favorite agaves to deal with. In this conversation with Fabio Raya we talk about the agaves that were favored in Brazil versus those that we decided to love in Mexico.

For a while I was not sure if I wanted to publish this episode. But I think there are quite a few things hiding in the middle of this conversation that somehow relate to the clash of cultures within mezcal. Without further adieu please welcome Dalton Kreiss and his impressive affection for dogs.

This episode is not about a new religion, so don't you worry. This episode is about trying to better understand some of the people in the tequila, mezcal and agave spirits multiverse that I would say have a very clear and unmovable set of ideas of how these categories should behave. So I decided to do an episode, with my good friend Jon Darby. I've referred to him before as one of the worst purists in the business, but he knows I say with affection. Without further adieu please welcome Jon and his intense and tender love for mezcalito.

I've been thinking so much about the things that are so close to us, so ubiquitous, that we decide to erase them completely. Octavio Paz, our literature nobel prize, explores this intensively in his famous book "The Labyrinth of Solitude". He talks about "Ningunear", which is the act of making someone, no one. We've done this to so many Mexican products. but a group that I believe has been ninguneado like no other, are the thousands of traditional herbs that are still used today for making delicious infusions. Without further adieu please welcome Monica Favila, and her love for all glorious herbs and teas.

Having a conversation with Vinik is never a straight line. We always allocates the unexpected crevices, he finds ways of expanding what may seem bland and inoffensive. He may even be a spy, considering his very avid interest on maps, borders and the rivers that run through them. But the most important thing, is that he is a rather entertaining human to share conversations and mezcalitos. Without further adieu, please welcome Vinik Jure, and his aggressively eclectic mind.

Welcome to the longest episode I've ever recorded. And usually I would say this as a warning, but while listening to it I realized that this conversation touched on so many things that I believe are critical not only to cacao but to all Mexican craft, including agave spirits. Without further adieu please welcome Jose Lopez Ganem and his poignant perspective on how we can create a slightly better world through cacao.

There are a multitude of different names that people use to call agave spirits around Mexico. The most prominent ones are obviously Tequila and Mezcal. But if you travel a bit more you'll find names like Tepe, Ixcateco, Minero, Bacanora, Raicilla and so on and so on. Tuxca is one of those names. But I find that currently there is a good amount of misinformation about the origin and history of such a name. So I decided to invite Edwin, who is currently making his doctoral thesis about historical tabernas, to give us a little bit more insights into what Tuxca really means. Please welcome Edwin Mayoral, and his passion for vino de cocos y vino de mezcal.

I've always been fascinated about how things travel and get to be transformed. One of my favorite stories on the matter is how Jose Luis Borges decided to learn Icelandic just to have access to language that has been frozen in time within a very cold and isolated island (excuse the pun). Mexico is the complete opposite, both our language and our culture has traveled and has been transformed in a multitude of ways. In today's world, in which a big part of having a restaurant or a bar is being able to "play" and engage with the ingredients and techniques of over cultures, I like to think of this as a "Translate and Expand" approach. I had been wanting for a long time to interview someone that had a good deal of experience doing such a thing and having Matthias Inglemann as an invitee was a strike of luck that I very grateful for. Hope you enjoy this episode!