876 Sotol. | November, 
assured me that it is not uncommon to find them measuring two 
feet or more in diameter and weighing as much as seventy-five 
pounds. All heads seem to be good for the purpose, even those 
with a growing stem are not spared, though they douttless con- 
tain less sugar, and the cutting is only suspended by the floods of 
the rainy season, from June to September, during which period 
the vinata is closed, and the mescal bibber constrained to reform, 
now also is the time to shift the establishment, if needs be, toa 
more abundant field of sotol. 
The oven in which the heads are baked is a circular pit about 
ten feet in diameter and depth, and lined with rough stones. Into 
it combustibles are thrown and a brisk fire kept up for one day; it 
is then cleaned, filled with heads and lastly covered with a roof 
of hay and earth well trodden down. In three days the baking 
is through; the heads are now chopped with hatchets and the 
fragments pounded into a coarse, shreddy pulp, which is thrown 
into vats four or five feet square, to undergo fermentation; in cold 
weather warm water is added, otherwise it does not appear to be 
necessary. During the first few days bare-legged men tread in 
the vats to stir and mix the pulp. In from six to ten days, accord- 
ing to season, the fermentation ceases and the contents of the 
vats, solid and liquid, are transferred to the still. The first liquor 
obtained, being richer in alcohol and possessing to a higher de- . 
gree the peculiar aroma of sotol mescal, is considered of better 
quality. The used-up leaves, still sweet to the taste, are fed ups 
with relish by the donkeys, hogs, dogs and chickens of the 
vinata. 
A rough calculation makes me estimate at one pint the quam 
tity of liquor obtained from one average head; the yield would 
doubtless be much greater if, instead of roughly pounding the 
baked heads, they were crushed into a fine pulp by appropriate 
machinery. A vinata in good running order will turn oy 
Mexican barrel a day (about twenty-eight gallons), sold at an 
average price of fifteen dollars, and retailing for thirty or forty 
cents a quart. The revenue laws of Mexico, exceedingly Severe 
on articles of prime necessity, are very lenient on the vinatas, 
which, if first-class, are only taxed fifty dollars a year. 
The liquor obtained from the sotol is limpid and color! 
Smell penetrating and its taste, sud generis, somewhat raw, P 
_ gent and bitter, but with a pleasant aroma not unlike the sm@O°" 
ess, tS , 
