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@ CMD007: The source you cited for "fermented agave to be distilled into mezcal is still called pulque" does not say that. All it says is that the agave sap can be converted to a non-distilled alcoholic beverage called pulque. This is the standard definition of pulque. Mezcal is not distilled from fermented agave sap. It is distilled from fermented piña. Your quote does not mention mezcal. If you want to say that fermented piña is also called pulque, that would be a new non-standard definition of the word "pulque" and we would need a source citation to support that. Your source does not say that. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 01:24, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
1. My sources ( [1], [2]) are peer-reviewed scientific papers that specifically study, in painstaking detail, the origin of the distillation technology used for mezcal and similar drinks in Mexico and Central America. Including the history of mezcal production when it was banned (with a chronological study of distillery sites), along with all other indigenously produced distilled spirits. Your sources are all highly generalized WP:TERTIARY sources that mention mezcal in like a paragraph or even a single sentence. None of them are scientific papers. They're coffeetable books on bartending, a guide on types of alcoholic drinks, and a highly general book on the history of alcohol. None of them I can even verify, because you don't even provide page numbers. In terms of which sources are more reliable and which should be given due weight, yours don't even come close to mine.
2. You provided just one scientific paper, by Puche et al. (2023), which raises the possibility of pre-Hispanic distillation. But it is out of context and does not verify your claim that the distillation technology is Spanish. Moreover, the archaeological remains Puche et al. has discussed in all of their papers are conical KILNS interpreted to be for cooking maguey. It has not been incontrovertibly proven to be for mezcal production. To date, there have been no remains of pre-colonial STILLS discovered, nor of any mention of pre-colonial mezcals. They are first mentioned only shortly after the arrival of vino de coco from the Philippines in the early 1600s. You're just randomly referencing anything which seems related.
3. As mentioned by the paper, the distillation technology used for Mezcal uses the Asian-type still, which consists of two pans in a simple cylinder with a central drain. It is unique to Asian cultures (originally Mongol or Chinese, but spread to Southeast Asia) and easily recognizable. It is also EXTREMELY different from the Spanish stills which use the Arabic-type alembic configuration. This is also discussed in my sources. But not in yours.
4. You basically made up stories about how the Spanish banned brandy and burned vineyards to fit in with the story of why mezcal was banned. Now you replaced it with a sentence claiming it was Charles III who banned it in 1785, when the prohibition of vino de coco and mezcal started in the late 1600s. Nor do you give a reason why it was banned. Because you don't actually have a reason that makes sense. The history of the banning of vino de coco and mezcal are well-documented in Spanish colonial records, and they were banned because they competed with imported Spanish alcohol in sales. These two alcoholic beverages are closely tied together historically, again as discussed in my sources. These are FACTS. The following is an actual quote from a letter sent by Sebastian de Piñeda to Philip III of Spain:
"There are in Nueva España so many of those Indians who come from the Filipinas Islands who have engaged in making palm wine along the other seacoast, that of the South Sea, and which they make with stills, as in Filipinas, that it ill in time become a part reason for the natives of Nueva España, who now use the wine that comes from Castilla, to drink none except what the Filipinos make. For since the natives of Nueva España are a race inclined to drink and intoxication, and the wine made by the Filipinos is distilled and as strong as brandy, they crave it rather than the wine from España. . . . So great is the traffic in this [palm wine] at present on the coast at Navidad, among the Apusabalcos, and throughout Colima, that they load beasts of burden with this wine in the same way as in España. By postponing the speedy remedy that this demands, the same thing might also happen to the vineyards of Piru. It can be averted, provided all the Indian natives of the said Filipinas Islands are shipped and returned to them, that the palm groves and vessels with which that wine is made be burnt, the palm-trees felled, and severe penalties imposed on whomever remains or returns to make that wine."
— Sebastian de Piñeda (1619), Bruman, Henry J. (July 1944). "The Asiatic Origin of the Huichol Still". Geographical Review. 34 (3): 418–427. doi: 10.2307/209973. JSTOR 209973.
5. I don't care if you're a raging racist who seemingly think Filipinos were only slaves. Your ignorance is your own, it is not a valid reason to dismiss WP:RS. It also breaks WP:NPOV even before you started editing. Facts don't give a shit about your racism. OBSIDIAN† SOUL 14:50, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
You have both been guilty of removing sourced material. That's not how we achieve neutrality. We include all the reliable sources, and where they disagree, we include both viewpoints. See WP:NPOVHOW. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 21:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
I suggest that the entire paragraph about Curtis be removed. It has nothing to do with mezcal. When Curtis says "mescal" he's talking about the agave plant, not about distilled liquor (this is explained in the footnote on page 22). I removed this once but got reverted with no explanation, possibly as collateral damage from the ongoing edit war. Maybe when the edits settle down someone can do this.
I also suggest that the cantaro and gusano images have the "upright" param added to them. The gusano image in particular is crowding into the following section on my fairly narrow screen. Again I already did this once and got reverted with no explanation. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 17:14, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
@ Obsidian Soul: You're the one who restored the Curtis paragraph. Is there some reason you think it should be included? GA-RT-22 ( talk) 18:30, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm going to go ahead and make these changes, since no one has objected here. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 18:38, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Why does this article on Mezcal have so much history about Vino de coco? That subject already has an entire article here. The appropriate “links” to Mezcal can be included, but not an entire history of it. It isn’t Mezcal. I propose deleting all information except that which is pertinent information. CMD007 ( talk) 02:22, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
@ CMD007: Regarding these edits: [13] [14]: Don't do this. Go read WP:LEAD. The lead summarizes the article. The way it was before was fine. In the History section we had a detailed discussion, and in the lead we had a brief summary. No one wants to read all that in the lead. The paragraph in the History section was not redundant, it was essential. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 14:12, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
This seems like weird marketing stuff. Where does this notion come from? Jasdasra ( talk) 22:03, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
It’s NEVER spelled mescal, the correct form is mezcal. Please delete that because it’s a mistake 2806:2A0:F14:83BB:18D6:624A:80A6:A446 ( talk) 17:56, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
@ 2601:647:8200:BD40:3D87:E8C4:1FF4:7345: Are you CMD007, editing anonymously? I see you've re-applied some of his edits, using the same sources. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 04:33, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
@ Steven Walling: Cocktails names are not proper nouns, at least not on Wikipedia. There are pointers to the relevant discussions at Talk:List of cocktails#Requested move 23 November 2022. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 03:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Regarding this: "Alexander von Humboldt mentions it in his Political Treatise on the Kingdom of New Spain (1803), noting that a very strong version of mezcal was being manufactured clandestinely in the districts of Valladolid (Morelia), State of Mexico, Durango and Nuevo León." Obviously Humboldt could not possibly have mentioned anything regarding the State of Mexico. The others are problematic too, for example there was no district of Durango, the city was part of Nueva Vizcaya, New Spain. Maybe it should say "present day" but I have no access to the source to check. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 19:32, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
I have taken this out. In addition to the problems I noted above, Humboldt could not have published this in 1803, because he didn't return until 1804. The title is wrong, it's "Essay" not "Treatise" ("Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne" in the original French). I have checked both the second French edition of 1827 and the Kutzinski and Ette translation and neither one mentions mezcal unless he's calling it by some other name. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 19:59, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Mezcal article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives:
1Auto-archiving period: 365 days
![]() |
![]() | This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
@ CMD007: The source you cited for "fermented agave to be distilled into mezcal is still called pulque" does not say that. All it says is that the agave sap can be converted to a non-distilled alcoholic beverage called pulque. This is the standard definition of pulque. Mezcal is not distilled from fermented agave sap. It is distilled from fermented piña. Your quote does not mention mezcal. If you want to say that fermented piña is also called pulque, that would be a new non-standard definition of the word "pulque" and we would need a source citation to support that. Your source does not say that. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 01:24, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
1. My sources ( [1], [2]) are peer-reviewed scientific papers that specifically study, in painstaking detail, the origin of the distillation technology used for mezcal and similar drinks in Mexico and Central America. Including the history of mezcal production when it was banned (with a chronological study of distillery sites), along with all other indigenously produced distilled spirits. Your sources are all highly generalized WP:TERTIARY sources that mention mezcal in like a paragraph or even a single sentence. None of them are scientific papers. They're coffeetable books on bartending, a guide on types of alcoholic drinks, and a highly general book on the history of alcohol. None of them I can even verify, because you don't even provide page numbers. In terms of which sources are more reliable and which should be given due weight, yours don't even come close to mine.
2. You provided just one scientific paper, by Puche et al. (2023), which raises the possibility of pre-Hispanic distillation. But it is out of context and does not verify your claim that the distillation technology is Spanish. Moreover, the archaeological remains Puche et al. has discussed in all of their papers are conical KILNS interpreted to be for cooking maguey. It has not been incontrovertibly proven to be for mezcal production. To date, there have been no remains of pre-colonial STILLS discovered, nor of any mention of pre-colonial mezcals. They are first mentioned only shortly after the arrival of vino de coco from the Philippines in the early 1600s. You're just randomly referencing anything which seems related.
3. As mentioned by the paper, the distillation technology used for Mezcal uses the Asian-type still, which consists of two pans in a simple cylinder with a central drain. It is unique to Asian cultures (originally Mongol or Chinese, but spread to Southeast Asia) and easily recognizable. It is also EXTREMELY different from the Spanish stills which use the Arabic-type alembic configuration. This is also discussed in my sources. But not in yours.
4. You basically made up stories about how the Spanish banned brandy and burned vineyards to fit in with the story of why mezcal was banned. Now you replaced it with a sentence claiming it was Charles III who banned it in 1785, when the prohibition of vino de coco and mezcal started in the late 1600s. Nor do you give a reason why it was banned. Because you don't actually have a reason that makes sense. The history of the banning of vino de coco and mezcal are well-documented in Spanish colonial records, and they were banned because they competed with imported Spanish alcohol in sales. These two alcoholic beverages are closely tied together historically, again as discussed in my sources. These are FACTS. The following is an actual quote from a letter sent by Sebastian de Piñeda to Philip III of Spain:
"There are in Nueva España so many of those Indians who come from the Filipinas Islands who have engaged in making palm wine along the other seacoast, that of the South Sea, and which they make with stills, as in Filipinas, that it ill in time become a part reason for the natives of Nueva España, who now use the wine that comes from Castilla, to drink none except what the Filipinos make. For since the natives of Nueva España are a race inclined to drink and intoxication, and the wine made by the Filipinos is distilled and as strong as brandy, they crave it rather than the wine from España. . . . So great is the traffic in this [palm wine] at present on the coast at Navidad, among the Apusabalcos, and throughout Colima, that they load beasts of burden with this wine in the same way as in España. By postponing the speedy remedy that this demands, the same thing might also happen to the vineyards of Piru. It can be averted, provided all the Indian natives of the said Filipinas Islands are shipped and returned to them, that the palm groves and vessels with which that wine is made be burnt, the palm-trees felled, and severe penalties imposed on whomever remains or returns to make that wine."
— Sebastian de Piñeda (1619), Bruman, Henry J. (July 1944). "The Asiatic Origin of the Huichol Still". Geographical Review. 34 (3): 418–427. doi: 10.2307/209973. JSTOR 209973.
5. I don't care if you're a raging racist who seemingly think Filipinos were only slaves. Your ignorance is your own, it is not a valid reason to dismiss WP:RS. It also breaks WP:NPOV even before you started editing. Facts don't give a shit about your racism. OBSIDIAN† SOUL 14:50, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
You have both been guilty of removing sourced material. That's not how we achieve neutrality. We include all the reliable sources, and where they disagree, we include both viewpoints. See WP:NPOVHOW. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 21:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
I suggest that the entire paragraph about Curtis be removed. It has nothing to do with mezcal. When Curtis says "mescal" he's talking about the agave plant, not about distilled liquor (this is explained in the footnote on page 22). I removed this once but got reverted with no explanation, possibly as collateral damage from the ongoing edit war. Maybe when the edits settle down someone can do this.
I also suggest that the cantaro and gusano images have the "upright" param added to them. The gusano image in particular is crowding into the following section on my fairly narrow screen. Again I already did this once and got reverted with no explanation. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 17:14, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
@ Obsidian Soul: You're the one who restored the Curtis paragraph. Is there some reason you think it should be included? GA-RT-22 ( talk) 18:30, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm going to go ahead and make these changes, since no one has objected here. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 18:38, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Why does this article on Mezcal have so much history about Vino de coco? That subject already has an entire article here. The appropriate “links” to Mezcal can be included, but not an entire history of it. It isn’t Mezcal. I propose deleting all information except that which is pertinent information. CMD007 ( talk) 02:22, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
@ CMD007: Regarding these edits: [13] [14]: Don't do this. Go read WP:LEAD. The lead summarizes the article. The way it was before was fine. In the History section we had a detailed discussion, and in the lead we had a brief summary. No one wants to read all that in the lead. The paragraph in the History section was not redundant, it was essential. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 14:12, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
This seems like weird marketing stuff. Where does this notion come from? Jasdasra ( talk) 22:03, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
It’s NEVER spelled mescal, the correct form is mezcal. Please delete that because it’s a mistake 2806:2A0:F14:83BB:18D6:624A:80A6:A446 ( talk) 17:56, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
@ 2601:647:8200:BD40:3D87:E8C4:1FF4:7345: Are you CMD007, editing anonymously? I see you've re-applied some of his edits, using the same sources. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 04:33, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
@ Steven Walling: Cocktails names are not proper nouns, at least not on Wikipedia. There are pointers to the relevant discussions at Talk:List of cocktails#Requested move 23 November 2022. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 03:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
Regarding this: "Alexander von Humboldt mentions it in his Political Treatise on the Kingdom of New Spain (1803), noting that a very strong version of mezcal was being manufactured clandestinely in the districts of Valladolid (Morelia), State of Mexico, Durango and Nuevo León." Obviously Humboldt could not possibly have mentioned anything regarding the State of Mexico. The others are problematic too, for example there was no district of Durango, the city was part of Nueva Vizcaya, New Spain. Maybe it should say "present day" but I have no access to the source to check. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 19:32, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
I have taken this out. In addition to the problems I noted above, Humboldt could not have published this in 1803, because he didn't return until 1804. The title is wrong, it's "Essay" not "Treatise" ("Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne" in the original French). I have checked both the second French edition of 1827 and the Kutzinski and Ette translation and neither one mentions mezcal unless he's calling it by some other name. GA-RT-22 ( talk) 19:59, 29 June 2024 (UTC)