- 2 days ago
60 Minutes - Season 58 - Episode 14: Wood to Whiskey; The Tequila Heist; The Mezcaleros
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:01On this special edition of 60 Minutes Presents, Cheers!
00:07Tonight, we explore the fascinating life of the whiskey barrel,
00:11an ancient product that still plays a vital role in global commerce.
00:16Millions of new oak barrels are built in America every year,
00:20fired up and then filled with what will become bourbon through years of aging,
00:25as the wood delivers magic to the whiskey.
00:31This story involves a celebrity chef, a rock star,
00:35and a highway heist that even Hollywood couldn't dream up.
00:38Well, when the president of your company calls you, he says,
00:40you're not going to believe this, but you lost two truckloads of Santo Tequila.
00:45Lost.
00:46I said, wait, wait, wait, is this a hijacking?
00:48Not quite.
00:50International cyber criminals have found new ways to steal hundreds of millions of dollars of goods.
00:56It looks like a Costco in here. You've got everything.
00:58Yes.
01:02Artisanal mezcal resists machinery.
01:05The agave is roasted in underground pits for days.
01:09Then it's crushed by horse-drawn mill.
01:12The mash is fermented in wooden barrels and distilled twice in copper vats.
01:17No temperature dials or controls.
01:21Bubbles indicate the alcohol content.
01:24Who knows more about the process?
01:28I think he may know more, but I drink it more.
01:41Good evening. I'm Bill Whitaker.
01:44Welcome to 60 Minutes Presents.
01:46During this holiday season when there's no shortage of toasting,
01:50we thought we'd share a few stories about the spirits behind the cheers.
01:54We'll take you to Mexico to see how mezcal is made.
01:58And we'll bring you along as a tequila heist is investigated.
02:03But we begin with whiskey and one of its essential elements.
02:07If someone asked you to name a product that was first made 2,000 years ago,
02:12still looks and works as it always has, and still plays a vital role in global commerce,
02:19would you be stumped?
02:20It turns out the answer is the simple wooden barrel.
02:24Almost always made of oak, barrels have a long and fascinating history.
02:30First built and used by the Celts and Romans,
02:33they have held nearly every commodity over the centuries.
02:37Metal and plastic and cardboard long ago eclipsed barrels for the shipment of most items.
02:43But as we first reported earlier this year,
02:46when it comes to wine and whiskey, especially bourbon whiskey,
02:50the oak barrel still reigns, not just as a container,
02:55but for the magic that the wood gives to the whiskey.
03:01We were speaking with someone and they called a whiskey barrel a breathing time machine.
03:08I love that.
03:10Brad Boswell is the CEO of Independent Stave,
03:14the largest maker of wooden barrels in the world.
03:17Brad's great-grandfather founded the company in 1912 in Missouri.
03:22It now has operations worldwide.
03:25We met him in Kentucky.
03:27Most of our barrels would have useful lives of 50-plus years.
03:3150-plus years?
03:3350-plus years, yeah.
03:34Like, I'll go to different places and look at barrels at distilleries or wineries around the world,
03:39and I can see barrels that my grandfather made, you know, in the 1960s.
03:45I still see them.
03:48A barrel begins as a log from a white oak tree,
03:53fed into what's known as a stave mill,
03:56where it's cut into ever smaller pieces, staves,
04:00which are then arranged in huge Jenga-style stacks and seasoned outdoors for three to six months,
04:07before heading to a nearby cooperage where the barrels are built.
04:12There's no nails that will go here, no glue.
04:15Brad Boswell's newest cooperage produces thousands of barrels every day.
04:20How many of these go into a typical barrel?
04:23Typically between 28 and 32 staves per barrel.
04:27After a barrel is raised mostly by hand,
04:31it travels through a host of other steps and checks to make it ready to begin its life,
04:37including being toasted and then charred on the inside.
04:41Most of the barrels we make there are bespoke.
04:43We know exactly who this barrel's going to, which distiller.
04:46How about that?
04:47The demand for such a huge volume of barrels can be attributed mainly to one thing, bourbon.
04:56President Franklin Roosevelt in the 30s became more specific about what bourbon and whiskey should be.
05:02At that time he said, you know, bourbon should be in new charred oak barrels.
05:06So if it's not in one of these barrels, it's not bourbon.
05:09That's correct. Bourbon has to be aged in a new charred oak container.
05:16That rule, plus booming consumer demand for bourbon starting in the early 2000s, has been very good for the barrel
05:23business.
05:263.2 million new barrels were filled with whiskey last year in Kentucky alone.
05:33And more than 14 million full barrels are aging in the state in massive warehouses known as rickhouses.
05:42How many barrels are in this rickhouse?
05:4423,500 on six floors.
05:48Dan Calloway is the master blender for Bardstown Bourbon, a young but fast-growing Kentucky distillery.
05:55To make a great whiskey, you have to start with a great distillate, a clear spirit, but then the magic
06:01comes from the barrel.
06:02The fact that it's new charred oak, it's just incredible.
06:05So the barrel is crucial to your product?
06:09Absolutely. Depending who you talk to, some would say 50% of the flavor, maybe up to 70, 80%
06:14of the characters derived from that barrel.
06:16The rest of the flavor comes from what's known as the mash bill.
06:23Grains like corn and wheat and rye that are mixed with water and fermented with yeast.
06:29Despite bourbon having recently been threatened or hit with tariffs by other countries in retaliation for President Trump's tariffs,
06:39Bardstown's huge distillery is still producing enough new whiskey to fill more than 5,000 barrels a week.
06:48You take the clear liquid, which is basically what people call moonshine,
06:54goes through this process and comes out as this beautiful, brown, tasty liquid here. How does that happen?
07:01Yeah, so I always compare it to a seesaw, okay? So when it comes off the still, moonshine like you
07:08said, it's a seesaw that's out of balance.
07:10But every year that goes by of the barrel aging, the seesaw comes into balance.
07:16And what the barrel is bringing is caramel, vanilla, baking spice, all this rich, beautiful color.
07:23How can solid oak produce all those flavors and spices?
07:28Back where the barrels are built, Brad Boswell gave us a vivid lesson with a barrel that had just been
07:34toasted,
07:35a process that brings sugars in the wood to the surface.
07:39Smell that. Smell that. I mean...
07:43That does smell delicious.
07:44It's incredible.
07:45It really does. It's amazing.
07:47There's a reason why people still use oak barrels 2,000 years later.
07:50So when I'm sipping the bourbon, I'm sipping this barrel.
07:55That's right. Absolutely.
07:57After toasting, we and the barrels moved to the visually stunning char oven.
08:03So we'll see this barrel coming through right here.
08:06Oh, look at that.
08:07Yeah, so actually the inside of the barrel is on fire.
08:11So you just light the barrel on fire?
08:12Yep.
08:13Light the barrel on fire.
08:14And that teases out more and more of the flavors.
08:16And we call that an alligator char because the inside of the barrel actually looks like kind of an alligator's
08:22back.
08:22And you can see...
08:23We could see that blistering inside a newly charred barrel pulled off the line.
08:29I mean, people expect this to smell like a campfire.
08:32It smells more like a confectionery product.
08:34It does.
08:35I can smell the caramel and the vanilla.
08:37Yeah.
08:38What that barrel can give to the whiskey is evident in these glasses.
08:42So this is the same exact distillate that came off the still at the exact same time, went into a
08:48barrel four years later, and this we just kept in a glass bottle.
08:52It's also apparent in the taste.
08:55Well, here's the exact same.
08:55First, the white lightening.
08:57Wow, that gives a punch.
08:58Yes, it does.
08:59It does.
09:00And then the barrel-aged bourbon.
09:04Oh, big difference.
09:06Huge difference.
09:06Smooth.
09:07Oh, smooth.
09:08Some of that smooth comes from temperature swings in the rickhouses, according to Bardstown Bourbon's Dan Calloway.
09:16We want those swings.
09:18You know, when it gets really hot, things expand, lets the liquid in.
09:23When it gets cold, it contracts, and it's that natural progression of in-out that ages the bourbon so beautifully
09:31as the liquid interacts with the wood.
09:33As those barrels are aging whiskey for four, five, or six years, some savvy investors have figured out there's money
09:41to be made.
09:42Whiskey is an interesting asset in the sense that as it ages, it becomes more valuable.
09:49Chris Heller is co-founder of California-based Cordillera Investment Partners.
09:54So, explain to me how this works.
09:56You go up to a distiller and say, I want to buy those barrels filled with what will eventually become
10:05bourbon.
10:06So, that is exactly right.
10:08Heller and his partners buy thousands of newly filled barrels from distillers, pay to store them as the whiskey ages,
10:16then sell them to craft bourbon brands.
10:20What are your starting costs?
10:21Somewhere in the $600 to $1,000 range is sort of the price of what's called a new fill barrel
10:28of whiskey.
10:28At the end, what do you sell it for?
10:30It can be anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 by the end.
10:37That's a pretty good return on your investment.
10:40We really find it an interesting and compelling investment area.
10:45Nice way to say it, huh?
10:51Whoever makes it, owns it, or ages it, when bourbon is emptied from a barrel after five or six years,
10:58that barrel's life is just beginning, and it's likely to travel the world.
11:05It's really interesting that when the burn barrel is freshly dumped, there's still around two gallons of actually bourbon trapped
11:12in that wood.
11:13That is just seeped into the wood.
11:15That is seeped into the wood.
11:15That is seeped into the wood.
11:15So then a lot of the secondary users actually look forward to putting their product into the barrel again for
11:23four, six, ten, a lot of scotches, twelve years, eighteen years.
11:26And it can pick up that American bourbon taste.
11:29Absolutely.
11:29Then it pulls out that sweet bourbon.
11:31That sweet taste in the wood makes used bourbon barrels very hot commodities.
11:37We really view our role in the industry as moving as many barrels from the original source to the next
11:44stopping point as fast as possible.
11:46Jess and Ben Lowski own Midwest Barrels.
11:50Their Kentucky warehouse is stacked to the rafters with empty barrels.
11:55So we're the next stop for the second use of that barrel.
11:58So in Kentucky here, we bring in barrels from all the major distilleries and then send them back out.
12:03These barrels will be shipped out and then refilled with something else.
12:07Correct. Yeah.
12:08So the idea is to get these barrels in here and out of here as quickly as possible.
12:12So we'll turn over this entire warehouse every two to three weeks.
12:16Probably 70 to 80 percent of our business is overseas.
12:19It started as a hobby.
12:21While Ben was finishing his PhD in Nebraska, he began buying barrels and selling them to local craft breweries.
12:30You said that a few barrels were a big order in the beginning.
12:35Yeah.
12:35Mm-hmm.
12:36What's a big order today?
12:3810,000.
12:3910,000.
12:40Yeah.
12:40Yeah.
12:41India and China and Scotland and Ireland are by far four biggest markets.
12:45The Kentucky Distillers Association says that the state exported more than $300 million worth of used barrels last year just
12:55to Scotland, where they'll be used to age Scotch whiskey for up to 40 years.
13:01Could you just tick off for me the different spirits that these barrels will hold?
13:08They start with bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, Scotch whiskey, tequila, rum, Pisco, Maine, Peru, Cachaca, Maine, Brazil will use these barrels.
13:20Beer.
13:20Beer uses them.
13:22These barrels, for sure, end up in China.
13:24A lot of these barrels end up in Japan.
13:26It's everywhere.
13:30Beautiful.
13:31Now, master blenders like Bardstown's Dan Callaway...
13:35This will be cast strength, direct from the barrel.
13:38...are bringing barrels back to Kentucky to do special finishes for their whiskeys.
13:44So this is the first of its kind.
13:46It is an American whiskey finished in Indian whiskey barrels.
13:54Okay?
13:55Indian whiskey is traditionally aged in a bourbon barrel.
13:59So the physical barrel has left Kentucky, gone to Bangalore, filled with barley, and then sent back here.
14:09Callaway finished this whiskey in those barrels for 17 months.
14:13My God, that's good.
14:16Yeah.
14:17One of Dan Callaway's newest creations, called Cathedral, may be his most miraculous yet.
14:25We sourced wood in the Loire Valley, the Bursay Forest, and this plot, this lot in the forest, was selected
14:34to repair Notre Dame after the fires.
14:38So most of the wood went there.
14:40We were fortunate to obtain six barrels made from that wood.
14:46And we picked our best stocks of Kentucky bourbon up to 19 years old.
14:53Filled the barrels.
14:55They aged for 14 months.
14:57You know how wild that is?
14:59Yeah.
14:59That the beams that restored Notre Dame come from the same forest as your casks.
15:06The same lot.
15:07That's a story to tell.
15:09Absolutely.
15:10And a whiskey to taste.
15:14Ah, it's nice.
15:18When Bardstown put that Cathedral bourbon on sale earlier this year, bottles sold out in near record time.
15:26Remember, they only made six barrels full.
15:29Now, on the secondary market, Cathedral is listed for as much as $2,000 a bottle.
15:45There is no shortage of unbelievable stories that start with tequila.
15:50And this is one of them.
15:51It involves a celebrity chef, a rock star, and a highway heist that even Hollywood couldn't dream up.
15:58Last year, two semi-trucks carrying more than a million dollars' worth of Santo Tequila, a brand founded by Food
16:06Network star Guy Fieri and former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar, disappeared on its way to the warehouse.
16:14If you're wondering how in the world that much tequila could just vanish, we did too.
16:19As Sharon Alfonsi first reported in October, it turns out international crime groups have found new ways to infiltrate the
16:28global supply chain online to steal hundreds of millions of dollars of goods.
16:34Guy Fieri got a crash course on this sophisticated high-tech theft after a sobering call from the president of
16:42his company.
16:44Well, when the president of your company calls and says, we have a problem, I'm, what's up?
16:49And he goes, you're not going to believe this, but we lost two truckloads of Santo Tequila.
16:54Lost.
16:55I said, elaborate on lost.
16:57He says, well, they disappeared.
17:00I said, well, wait, wait, wait, is this a hijacking?
17:02I said, are the drivers okay?
17:04I said, is this a, because all my mind goes to is goodfellas and, you know, that's what I'm thinking
17:08is happening.
17:09He said, no, no, no, no, the trucks, they were appropriated, but we don't know where they are.
17:15I'm like, it's not a needle in a haystack.
17:18I mean, this is a semi-tractor truck.
17:20My mind is swimming in exactly how do you lose, you know, that many thousands of bottles of tequila.
17:2824,000 bottles of tequila.
17:30Enough alcohol to fuel a lifetime of bad decisions.
17:35The tequila started out like every other Santo batch in western Mexico, where it was distilled and bottled.
17:44From there, it was trucked to the U.S.-Mexico border through customs and unloaded in Laredo, Texas.
17:52The next day, it was moved into two semi-trucks that were supposed to head to the Santo tequila warehouse
17:58in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
18:00When was the first indication something's not normal here?
18:05The product was due on Wednesday to our warehouse in Pennsylvania.
18:09And on Thursday morning, the logistics company told us there was a water pump cooler problem with the truck.
18:16It's just going to be a slight delay.
18:18Dan Butkus is the CEO of Santo Spirits.
18:22He told us, like many small businesses, Santo doesn't have their own delivery trucks.
18:28So they rely on a logistics company to hire trucking companies to ship their tequila.
18:34On Friday, two days after the shipment was supposed to arrive, the trucking company started sending more excuses about why
18:42it was late.
18:43Dan Butkus was informed that the truck was near Washington, D.C. with a water pump issue.
18:49The logistics company emailed him a video they received of a broken down semi with a note.
18:55Looks like the issue is bigger than he thought.
18:58Mechanics advise the truck will be fixed Saturday.
19:01He says he can deliver Sunday, but I know y'all are closed so he can be there first thing
19:06Monday.
19:07So the tequila is late, but you don't think anything's wrong because they're sending emails.
19:12Yeah, we don't think anything's wrong.
19:14We're a day or two behind delivery.
19:17And meanwhile, they track these with GPS.
19:19So someone's checking to make sure the truck is where it says it is.
19:24And on GPS, it looks like it's in D.C. where they say it is.
19:28Then on Monday, we get an email that the truck is close.
19:33GPS says it's within a couple miles of our warehouse in Lansdale.
19:38Can you let us know when it arrives?
19:40The tequila never arrived in Pennsylvania.
19:44Here's what happened.
19:45The logistics company that worked for Santo hired a trucking company to move the tequila from Texas to Pennsylvania.
19:52But then that trucking company outsourced the job to two other trucking companies who then hired drivers.
19:59The problem is those second trucking companies were fake with phony letterheads, email addresses and phone numbers to appear legitimate.
20:10It's a bit of a tractor trailer shell game called double brokering.
20:14It happens more than you might expect.
20:17Santo CEO Dan Butkus learned it was all part of an elaborate ruse set up to buy time and steal
20:24the tequila.
20:25So the email that came to you guys was fake.
20:30The picture was fake.
20:31The GPS was phony.
20:33The GPS signal was spoofed.
20:35They call it spoofed or emulated.
20:37The thieves had manipulated the GPS to make it look like the tequila was still on its way to Pennsylvania.
20:44This is the essence of real tequila.
20:49Making matters worse, Guy Fieri and Sammy Hagar had been heavily promoting a new special tequila ahead of last year's
20:56holiday season that took three and a half years to make and all of it was on those two missing
21:02trucks.
21:03It's not like we're sitting on huge reserves.
21:06So you can't just say, turn it up.
21:07We're going to keep making more.
21:08That's exactly what we couldn't do.
21:10And then you have to go back to the retailer and say, you're not going to believe this.
21:15How did this impact the business?
21:18No, it hurt.
21:19It hurt.
21:19It hurt bad.
21:20You know, here we are.
21:21We're coming right into the fourth quarter.
21:23We lose all the tequila.
21:24We can't fill the shelves.
21:26We had to lay off players, you know.
21:28And that's the hardest thing, knowing how many people are counting on you.
21:32So, yeah, it hurt all the way around.
21:34Did you think you were being targeted?
21:36Well, there's a side of me that still says, yeah, it wasn't a truckload of screwdrivers.
21:44You know, it wasn't a truckload of baskets.
21:47They were coming across the border.
21:48Someone knew what it was.
21:51And tequila is a hot commodity.
21:54That's why Keith Lewis was called in.
21:56He's a former cop who runs operations for CargoNet, a company that works with law enforcement to solve these kinds
22:04of crimes.
22:05Lewis says last year, U.S. businesses lost more than $230 million of goods to physical heists and those engineered
22:14online.
22:15Let's start with the tequila case.
22:17How common is something like that?
22:19It happens multiple times a day.
22:22How does all of this impact consumers and the prices they pay?
22:26100% falls back on the consumer shoulders.
22:28100%.
22:29We pay at the pump for this.
22:30We pay at the grocery store at the point of sale.
22:33Lewis started investigating and began to piece together how the tequila heist was pulled off.
22:39He says the criminals created fake online profiles of trucking companies, bid on jobs they suspected might be valuable, and
22:47hired unsuspecting drivers online.
22:50Then, instead of sending the drivers to the Santa warehouse in Pennsylvania, the criminals redirected them to deliver the shipment
22:58into their hands.
22:59And instead of taking it to the destination that was on the bill of lading, they told them to take
23:05that load to Los Angeles.
23:07And the drivers are not in on this.
23:09The driver that picked it up has no idea that he's committing a crime.
23:13He thinks he's taking a legitimate load to a legitimate place.
23:16Yes.
23:17Doing his job.
23:17Doing his job.
23:18And he's being directed instead by criminals.
23:21Correct.
23:22Once investigators determined how the tequila was diverted to California, they tried to figure out who did it.
23:29But that was tougher, because unlike the kind of cargo theft you typically think of, like this, with guys in
23:36mass breaking into trucks with bolt cutters, there was no suspect description or fingerprints.
23:42Lewis says the tequila heist was orchestrated entirely online.
23:48You're saying that these folks don't even need to be in the same country sometimes.
23:52No, and we've tracked them to over 40 different countries around the world.
23:55And investigators say the tequila heist had all the characteristics of a criminal gang operating out of Armenia, 7,000
24:05miles from the U.S.-Mexico border where the tequila was last seen.
24:10Keith Lewis says that kind of theft, where criminals remotely redirect cargo to steal it, has spiked 1,200%
24:19in the last four years.
24:21If you think about online dating, for example, you can be anywhere in the world and set up a date
24:27with someone.
24:28It's the same thing in the supply chain.
24:30You can be anywhere in the world, go online, and book that load.
24:34And we don't do business face-to-face anymore.
24:36We don't have the hand-to-hand transactions.
24:38We're doing business by PDF file, by rate confirmations.
24:42We book that load with this individual.
24:44We've never met him.
24:45And bam, you have a million-dollar load of electronics going down the road, hopefully to the right destination, or
24:51maybe it's not.
24:52It's become a global threat to our supply chain.
24:57Nowhere is that threat higher than California.
25:01Last year, California had more goods stolen from trucks, trains, and by cyber criminals than any other state.
25:10That's because California's ports and highways make it a favorite target and hiding place for cargo thieves.
25:17To respond, the Los Angeles Police Department created a special unit to tackle all kinds of cargo theft.
25:25We were allowed to tag along with them one morning in August.
25:30Before dawn, officers swarmed this block in southeast Los Angeles, where they suspected a shipment of rifles stolen from a
25:38train were being hidden.
25:40They found the rifles, but also stacks of stolen sneakers, piles of power tools, and designer clothes.
25:50They've also recovered pallets of protein shakes, energy drinks, and vitamins.
25:57Typically, it all ends up in an LAPD warehouse until the rightful owner can claim it.
26:03It looks like a Costco in here. You've got everything.
26:06Yes. This is from a major manufacturer.
26:08Alan Hamilton is the chief of detectives at the LAPD.
26:12He told us all this had been recovered by the cargo theft unit just a week earlier.
26:17So we've got beer here that was stolen. We've got washing machines. We've got large appliances. You see the Sub
26:23-Zero back there.
26:24These are high-end appliances.
26:26Some of these are very high-end, high-priced computers.
26:29The technology will be turned back around and sold for like 30 to 40 percent on the dollar.
26:34The LAPD says the stolen swag is typically sold online or in stores, including this one, to unsuspecting customers.
26:44In August, they busted two hardware stores stocked with stolen goods, $4.5 million worth.
26:51What's the value of all the goods that you've recovered over the last year?
26:57So just for instance, in 2024, the Los Angeles Police Department cargo theft unit alone, $42.8 million in recovery
27:05just in the city of Los Angeles.
27:08And it was that unit that cracked open the case of the missing tequila.
27:13Detectives tracked down one of the drivers who picked up the tequila in Texas.
27:17He'd moved on to other jobs, but told investigators he was directed, by what he thought was a legitimate trucking
27:24company,
27:25to leave the shipment at this industrial site in the San Fernando Valley.
27:30That information ultimately led police to this warehouse in Southeast LA and 11,000 bottles of Santo tequila.
27:38Guy Fieri told us the thieves and that second truck of tequila were never found.
27:44It feels like a movie plot.
27:45You know, the celebrity chef, the rock star, the small tequila company, you know, it all comes together.
27:52The special shipment.
27:54Did you think they were going to find it?
27:56Gosh, no.
27:57They found it when?
27:59Three weeks after, I'll say.
28:01So by then, who knows what's happened to it, who knows what condition it's in, so forth.
28:07I'm just thinking this is all going to go down the drain.
28:10But after an inspection of the recovered bottles,
28:14Santo was able to put it back in stores and take a shot at a happy ending.
28:20There's a lot of companies that this has happened to, but they don't want to talk about it.
28:25Why did you decide to speak about what happened?
28:28It's not a thing I want to go and brag about, like, hey, we got ripped off.
28:32Yeah.
28:32You know, that's not fun.
28:34But if it can happen to us with what I believe were pretty strong measures and security and awareness and,
28:41you know, communication and, you know, the way we do business.
28:44And to get ripped off for two full semi truckloads of tequila in today's age, then everybody's vulnerable.
28:57Have a news tip to send to 60 Minutes?
29:00Learn how you can send information to our journalists securely at 60MinutesOvertime.com.
29:15For years, Mezcal sat in the shadow of its popular cousin tequila,
29:20known for its worm and deemed too smoky for a spot on the same shelf as premium spirits.
29:26But not anymore.
29:28Once banned and later sold in plastic jugs for pennies,
29:32the handcrafted spirit has found its way into cocktail bars and Michelin-starred restaurants.
29:38As we first told you last year, no other liquor has seen a greater increase in production in the past
29:45decade.
29:45Mezcal gets its name from the Aztec word for cooked agave, a thorny plant sacred to Mexico for thousands of
29:53years.
29:54The vast majority of Mezcal is made in the southern state of Oaxaca, where family owned distilleries dot the landscape.
30:02Cecilia Vega went to meet the Mezcaleros as they labor to quench the world's thirst for Mezcal.
30:14Mezcaleros harvest agave year-round, but it's no low-hanging fruit.
30:20Pried from the earth, the spikes are removed by machete, revealing the heart, the piña, which looks like a hundred
30:27-pound pineapple.
30:28Agave takes its sweet time to ripen, up to 30 years for some varieties.
30:35It grows in the valleys that run between the Sierra Madre Mountains, here in Oaxaca.
30:43The crossroads of indigenous and Spanish colonial cultures.
30:47The birthplace of Mezcal.
30:50And Santiago Matatlan is its cradle.
30:54The Hernandez brothers, Armando and Álvaro, are fourth-generation Mezcaleros from an indigenous Zapotec family.
31:01They learn the craft from their father, Silverio.
31:04Today they run Mal de Amor, one of Matatlan's largest distilleries, or palenques.
31:13We make Mezcal without hurry, meaning everything in its time.
31:19We don't add or do anything to speed up production, but we make it non-stop, 365 days a year,
31:26the entire day.
31:27Is it different from the way your father made it?
31:30No, it's the same.
31:34We conserve all the traditions, everything we were taught, and everything is done by hand.
31:39Agave was first distilled here in the 1600s.
31:43Mexicans have been drinking Mezcal at baptisms, funerals, and every occasion in between ever since.
31:50And let's clear this up early.
31:52Tequila is a type of Mezcal, made with blue agave, mostly in the state of Jalisco.
31:58But most tequila has been mass-produced, made by machines since the 70s.
32:05Artisanal Mezcal resists machinery.
32:07The agave is roasted in underground pits for days, then it's crushed by horse-drawn mill.
32:15The mash is fermented in wooden barrels and distilled twice in copper vats.
32:20No temperature dials or controls.
32:23Bubbles indicate the alcohol content.
32:27Who knows more about the process?
32:31I think he may know more, but I drink it more.
32:40At Mal de Amor, they offer Napa-style tours of their agave fields.
32:46Mezcal is now a half-billion-dollar-a-year industry.
32:49But in the 1980s and 90s, Armando and Álvaro told us production of Mezcal could barely support the family.
32:58The price of Mezcal was very low. It was miserable.
33:02What was it?
33:04Seven pesos for a liter of Mezcal.
33:07Less than a dollar.
33:10And we were ten children.
33:12Sunday was the only day we could afford a cup of milk and a piece of bread.
33:17So we decided to go.
33:19Armando left Mexico first, alone, bound for California.
33:24Do you remember the day you left?
33:27Yes.
33:28It was the 3rd of December, 1992.
33:30I was 12 years old.
33:35I have children of my own now, and I could never bring myself to let them cross the border alone.
33:40It was a sad goodbye.
33:43Very painful to leave the family behind.
33:46How did you get there?
33:50Like all migrants, with a coyote smuggled across the border.
33:54Álvaro eventually joined him in Los Angeles.
33:57They spent a decade working in bars and restaurants.
34:00When the plot twisted, artisanal became hip, and Mezcal's popularity boomed.
34:06Álvaro began to dream about returning to the family business.
34:09I had plans drawn up for the palenque, and I showed Armando.
34:19Álvaro came in with the plan for his palenque, and he spread it on the bed and said,
34:22I'm going to do this.
34:25And I told him, you're crazy.
34:27How are you going to make a living?
34:29Álvaro was skeptical, until he noticed shots of Mezcal going for $10 each.
34:34He says he looked down at the label on a bottle one day, and it was from their hometown.
34:40And you finally told your brother I told you so.
34:42Te dije, te dije tanto.
34:45So Armando and Álvaro went back home to ramp up the family palenque.
34:50Enter John Rexer and Gilberto Marquez of the Mezcal brand Illegal,
34:55made from 100% espadín, a variety of agave that ripens the fastest.
35:01So how far out does the Illegal go?
35:05I mean, is this all Illegal?
35:07Yeah.
35:08There's about 2,500 plants per acre.
35:12There's about five acres out here.
35:13There's a lot of espadín, right?
35:15Today, Illegal is one of the top-selling Mezcal brands.
35:19But it, too, started humbly.
35:22Rexer, an expat New Yorker, was in search of a steady supply of Mezcal
35:26to serve at a bar he owned in Guatemala.
35:28I would take a bus up from Guatemala.
35:31It's a 24-hour bus ride.
35:32Along the way, you can pull a string in that bus and say, I want to stop here,
35:37walk to a village, wait until lights came on somewhere,
35:40and say, hey, do you know anybody who makes good Mezcal around here?
35:43And invariably, someone would have an uncle, a brother, a cousin.
35:47Tengo un tío.
35:48Tengo un tío.
35:49Si.
35:49That's exactly it.
35:51Everybody has an uncle.
35:52As the name on the bottle suggests, Rexer's operation wasn't exactly legal.
35:58Is it true that you once dressed like a priest to have to get this across a border?
36:02Uh, listen, I went through 12 years of Catholic school.
36:06Me, too.
36:06I knew how to play the role.
36:08It was his friend, Gilberto Marquez, who introduced him to the Hernandez brothers.
36:13And we rolled down here, and it was very, very, very tiny, and they were making very small amounts.
36:21And he asks me, do you have more of this Mezcal?
36:24And we said, yes.
36:26We have 10,000 liters.
36:27And it took us like two years to make.
36:31And John says to us, I want it all.
36:34A sidebar, and this may go without saying, but Rexer has swigged his fair share of Mezcal.
36:41Excuse me.
36:42Do you want a water?
36:43Yeah, no, take a break.
36:44You're good.
36:45Just like, do I want a water?
36:48You know, there's an expression, the best Mezcal is the one in front of you.
36:50It's not entirely true.
36:51You don't want to cover it in smoke.
36:54You want to taste the agave.
36:55A lot of people say they don't like Mezcal because of the smoke.
36:59Obviously, you're in a smoky environment, right?
37:01When you dig up the pit oven, there's smoke everywhere.
37:03So there's a lot of early Mezcals that came into the States that are heavy smoked.
37:08Has Mezcal gotten a bad rap on that front?
37:10I think in the early days, it did.
37:12But people began to discover, no, the agaves have particular unique flavors.
37:17Rexer asked brothers Armando and Alvaro to go into business.
37:20And he made a promise. If they could produce the Mezcal, he'd sell it around the world.
37:26They'd been burned by false promises before, so they weighed his offer in their native language.
37:32You spoke in Zapotec so he wouldn't understand.
37:36I said to Alvaro, in Zapotec, do you believe him?
37:39And he said, I don't know.
37:41But we figured, let's see.
37:43I said, listen, I'll pay you up front so that we can get started.
37:49Two days later, we had the deposit in our account for all 10,000 liters.
37:53He said, each month, I'll keep making deposits.
37:56So we made more, 500 liters, 1,000, 2,000.
38:01And it grew like that.
38:03Now their partnership produces 3,000 bottles of Mezcal a day, almost all of them for export.
38:10And every bottle is certified by the Mexican government, stamped with a hologram to mark denomination of origin, like champagne
38:18or cognac.
38:20We'd heard there are rules about how to drink this artisanal Mezcal.
38:24The good stuff isn't for shots or diluting in cocktails.
38:28It's for sipping.
38:29So we asked Marquez, the former bartender who now promotes illegal.
38:35Favorite way to drink it?
38:36Spicy margarita.
38:37Oh, wait a second.
38:39I thought you weren't supposed to drink Mezcal in a margarita.
38:41You do want to enjoy Mezcal neat.
38:43But there's nothing wrong with having it in a cocktail, especially if we're trying to get folks to try it
38:49for the first time.
38:50It's an introduction to Mezcal.
38:52Marquez poured us a Joven, the colorless Mezcal you'll find in most bottles.
38:57This is 100% espadín.
38:59So Joven means young.
39:01Joven means young, unaged.
39:03Salud.
39:07This one tastes spicy to me.
39:10So smoke is not the first thing that you taste?
39:12It's definitely there, but I would not call this smoky.
39:15Yes.
39:16Aging Mezcal is a Mexican tradition.
39:19Illegal does it in American oak, the same way bourbon is made.
39:23So this is the Añejo, and this is age 15 months.
39:27Color's definitely darker.
39:29Yep.
39:32Wow.
39:33So good.
39:34How would you drink this one?
39:36Absolutely neat.
39:37100%.
39:37Has anyone ever said to you, hey, what's a gringo like you doing?
39:42In a place like this?
39:44Selling Oaxaca?
39:44Oaxacan Mezcal?
39:45Yes.
39:46I've gotten pushback over the years.
39:47You're a foreigner.
39:48But I'm someone who fell in love with the rhythm and the pace of Oaxaca and fell in love with
39:54Mezcal.
39:55He's no longer the only foreigner in this partnership.
39:58Bacardi, the largest privately held global spirits company, acquired Illegal last year in a deal worth a reported $100 million.
40:08When we started to grow the brand, one of the questions I asked myself was, how do you fall in
40:14love with something and then not destroy the thing you fell in love with by making it grow?
40:18Can you do that with an international conglomerate like Bacardi?
40:22I think it's a great question because it's not just the beautiful liquor, but it's certain things that we're trying
40:27to preserve and believe in.
40:28This is a family business. We have to respect the artisanal production. We can never let this become industrial.
40:34What does the deal with Bacardi mean for you?
40:39What's going to change is many people's lives in this community.
40:43It's a benefit for the whole community.
40:46The Palenque now employs 100 people from Matatlan and beyond, including their 87-year-old father, the Mezcalero Emeritus.
40:56Armando and Alvaro translated from Zapotec to Spanish.
41:00We asked what Senor Hernandez thought of his son's Mezcal.
41:04Does it live up to the family name?
41:09That's why I drink it. If not, I wouldn't drink it.
41:13The Hernandez brothers are expanding the family Palenque. Construction is already underway.
41:19So if there's the American dream, is this the Mexican dream?
41:26It's the Mexican dream. It's something we never imagined.
41:31We are sad to report Silverio Hernandez, patriarch of the Hernandez family, died in March.
41:38His sons say his legacy will live on in every drop of their Mezcal.
41:53I'm Bill Whitaker. Thanks for joining us.
41:56We'll be back next week with an all-new edition of 60 Minutes.
41:59Happy New Year.
42:05Go to the ends of the earth.
42:08We'll hit the heights.
42:09A great adventure together.
42:11And reach for the stars.
42:12Star power.
42:13I like it.
42:14So cool.
42:15But wait, there's more.
42:17Experience thought-provoking.
42:18Something that's undeniable.
42:20With mindfulness.
42:21Innovative.
42:22Magical.
42:23It's like being a child.
42:24And truly original reporting.
42:26God, you do your research.
42:27I tell a good story.
42:28Because there's always something new under the sun.
42:31On CBS Sunday morning.
42:36To be moderator of Face the Nation means bringing the most powerful stakeholders to the table.
42:41Why doesn't he tell Republicans, come into my office, let's hammer this thing out?
42:45Margaret, it's a totally fair question.
Comments