"You´ll find out why when you try this," Kaiser said. "Distilled three times. It´s really smooth."

Kaiser is a trim, handsome German who must be pushing 70. A professional hotel manager, a few years ago he opened his own boutique hotel on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. "After a lifetime of running other people´s inns, I thought it was time I got one of my own," he told me. Last year was quite a trial for the man, but he prefers to forget about that, look toward the future and rave about mescal.

Tequila is a form of mescal, Kaiser went on to explain, just as cognac is a form of brandy. By law, tequila must be made from blue agave grown in Jalisco or one of its neighboring states.

Tequila has enjoyed an enormous popularity in recent years. The way I see it, now prosperous individuals who have fond memories of tequila from their college days are sipping it again. They have been buying more expensive brands that simply did not exist a few years ago. These are the same people who started out in Fairfield Inns but now book rooms at a JW Marriott.

"Mescal is where the future is," Kaiser declared. He already had half a dozen bottles on the table and we had been taking sips of each. He poured our shots sparingly. "It packs a wallop." No "vallop." Kaiser has mastered American English, although he speaks it with a Henry Kissenger growl. Labels said 76 proof.

"To begin with," Kaiser said, "mescal is handmade."

That might not be quite an accurate description. But, as I was to find out, mescal, unlike tequila, is not mass produced. It is Oaxaca´s answer to mountain dew, made at home with loving care.

Oaxaca state, that is. The state is a bit larger than Belgium and the Netherlands combined. Out toward Mitla and beyond is where most Mescal is produced. Mitla is famous for its pre-Columbian ruins. Most tours stop at a mescal distillery on the way back into the city.

"My idea is to organize mescal tours and take people to several distilleries, show people what most tourists never see," Kaiser said. "It would be like Napa Valley or the wine country in France."

There are subtle differences in mescal, differences connoisseurs will want to learn about, he believes.

Like tequila, mescal is made from agave, a squat vegetable with broad, sword-like leaves that grows in arid areas and sometimes is referred to as the century plant. Actually, it does not wait a century to bloom, but shoots forth a flowered stalk when it reaches maturity after about 10 years. Mescal distillers harvest it just before full maturity, hacking off the leaves and digging up the core (the piña) from the ground.

These agave cores are carefully baked in a circular pit dug in the earth. This takes two or three days. The cooked cores, once cool, are crushed by a millstone often drawn by a donkey.

"That´s what I mean by handmade," Kaiser explained.

There are at least half a dozen types of agave from which mescal juice is extracted. Purists can spend an evening debating the merits of espadín compared to tobala, but I am not one to join in. I cannot tell a burgundy from Bordeaux. And it might be argued the distilling makes all the difference.

Distilling was introduced by the Spanish. Before the arrival of the conquistadors, the juice was simply fermented into pulque, which to me is a noxious form of beer. Fermentation still takes place, traditionally in huge wooden vats, but now the pulque is poured into 25-gallon ceramic pots and distilled.

Then it may be distilled again, and sometimes even a third time. Some of it is then aged for as much as six months. This is where globalization comes in.

"White mescal is what people drink here," Kaiser said. "It is fire water for machos. Matured mescal costs twice as much, maybe a dollar a bottle in a village. At my age, I prefer aged mescal, which is placed in oak barrels for about six months. It is not really as authentic, but it can be much smoother."

The worm, I learned, is optional. Experts say it imparts a subtle flavor. The worm, actually a butterfly larvae that grows from eggs laid in agave plants, sometimes is served as a condiment along with mescal. "It´s like peanuts," Kaiser said. "Here people eat grasshoppers. You´ll get used to it."

I never did, although the next day we visited several distilleries in several frankly grubby hamlets. Sanitation appeared not to be a priority, although, I suppose, triple distillation takes care of any bugs. All I remember about that was being told that when shopping I should ask for "single village" mescal. "It´s like single malt whiskey, but better," Kaiser told me. "When it comes from a single village, you know it was not adulterated."

Jimmbudd1@aol.com