It’s always a good idea to know what you’re drinking. but can you identity of a crucial ingredient of an infamous alcoholic beverage mezcal?
Mezcal, a Mexican spirit distilled from agave plants, is famous for the pickled ‘worm’ lurking at the bottom of the bottle, which adds colour and flavour, and an element of trepidation for drinkers. The catch? It's not actually a worm at all, but the larva of an insect.
And in 2023 scientists decided once and for all to discover what it was. “Mezcal’s alcohol content is relatively high, so the larvae and their DNA are really well preserved,” says Akito Kawahara of the Florida Museum of Natural History. This allowed his team to identify grubs from 21 mezcal brands.
The results, published in PeerJ, revealed them all to be caterpillars of a moth named Comadia redtenbacheri, which live inside agave leaves.
Just one question remained: what to do with the left-over mezcal? “We held some tasting parties,” says Kawahara. “I’ve become a huge fan.”
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Main image: Bottle of mezcal with ‘worm’. © Esdelval/Getty
