THAT'S one of my eye-opening learning on my short visit to Mexico where tequila originates from. "That's very American because they want to get drunk fast," said Jose, our host and guide from Coca-Cola Femsa said, when we asked about how the body shot way of drinking tequila came to be.
Tequila, he said, is sipped all throughout your meal or while socializing. They even have the Banderas or Mexican Flag cocktail made of a shot glass of lime juice (to represent the green stripe on the Mexican flag), one shot glass of tequila (to represent the white stripe in the middle, and one shot glass of sangrita (to represent the red stripe).
Sangrita is a mix of juices that can include orange, lime, sometimes tomato juice, and dashes of hot sauce and chili powder. As Jose explained, the lime is to make you salivate and appreciate the taste and texture of the 100 person Agave drink more. Remember: Do. Not. Chug. It. Down.
Take a sip of the lime to activate your taste buds, then sip that 100 percent Agave (and nothing of that cheap tequila you are forced to drink in bars, complete with that eeeky licking of the back of your hand or somebody else's body), and then sip the Sangrita to cleanse the palate. The word is sip, not chase, not chug.
Mexicans do chug down tequila, but very young tequila, not the more expensive and smoother reposado (aged) or anejo (old), and you see this among the very young crowd (little money, lots of party-party).
That some tequila has a worm in the bottle is a misconception, as well. The one with the worm is mescal. Both are made from the agave cactus, the only difference is the technique and the variety of agave used.
Tequila is made from just one variety, the agave tequilana (blue agave); mescal is made from 28 varieties of agave (including blue agave), and that is where the technique comes in such that mescal has a smoky flavor and tastes a bit sweeter than tequila. These are served with your meals if you so want, or you can hang out with friends and carry out normal conversations while sipping your poison.
I enjoyed sipping mescal followed by biting into a slice of orange topped with chili powder, I also enjoyed sipping the Banderas, and even sipped mescal in a half-gourd. I could get used to it, except that, these high-grade ones are pretty expensive in our part of the world.