BOOK / LONG LIVE PULQUE! Juan Escalona

KITCHEN / PHOTOGRAPHY

Pulque is a fermented beverage born of resilience. This book is a journey through its identity and nature. Each chapter links a region to a key theme: fermentation, natural history, tinacales (fermented agave fermentation rooms), or tensions, accompanied by ideal recipes to pair with pulque.

¡Que viva el pulque! (Long Live Pulque!) is a text that nurtures and ferments ideas for understanding the folk science of pulque and its cultural production system. It also serves as a vehicle that leads us to the protagonists, the tlachiqueros, who produce this beverage and, through their activities, preserve and give life to the agricultural and cultural knowledge of their communities and our country. The book is divided into six parts: 1. What is Pulque?, 2. The Maguey Plant, 3. The Invisible Life of Pulque (Pulque Microbiology), 4. The Tinacal (Pulque Production Facility), 5. Tensions Surrounding Pulque, and 6. Pulque at Home: A Handbook. The book includes a glossary of terms, as well as diagrams that illustrate, both as infographics and imaginative scenarios, the world of pulque in both rural and urban settings. It also contains recipes created by the author for cooking at home.

Written by Juan Escalona and edited by María Álvarez, designed by Taller e+e, with the participation of César I. Ojeda, illustration by Lucia Sarabia and Aldo Domínguez, photography by Ana Lorenzana, and prologue by Michael Snyder, this book is an archive, recipe book and manual for inhabiting pulque as a living beverage.

Pulque exists thanks to the people who produce it, but also to those who consume it. For it to live on, we must spread knowledge about it.

Title: Long live pulque!
Author: Juan Escalona
Number of pages: 256
Size: 20 x 24 cm
Weight: 1,145 grams
Genre: Cooking, photography
Language: Spanish and English
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Novo
Year: 2025