Jose, Can You See (I'm Disappointed)?

Crushing realizations are as common as bowel movements, and sometimes just as unpleasant. It's recognizing that Santa's a farce and that the Easter Bunny exists to sell egg-shaped chocolate. In this vein, let me tell you a little story about the Jose Cuervo factory.

Cuervo HQ is found in central-western Mexico in a city called, fittingly, Tequila. This tiny town-scarcely more than a church and several muddy streets-is indirectly responsible for countless fistfights and ill-conceived couplings. And like visiting Jack Daniels' Lynchburg, Tennessee home, Tequila is a Holy Grail pilgrimage. For some, perhaps, but not me. The spirit brings out my punch-something side, and leaves me as impotent as an octogenarian.

Yet I am a drinks columnist. And I was recently in Guadalajara, Mexico. So I rode a bumpy bus to Tequila, which doubled as a lesson in cash-crop agriculture. About 10 miles from Tequila, pastoral farmland relents to thousands of spiky blue plants, which look like a punk-rock Marge Simpson. This is tequila's main ingredient, blue agave, and Tequila stinks of it. Upon arriving at the bus depot, my nostrils are overpowered by sweet, rotten fermenting alcohol. It's unpleasant, yet serves a purpose: It leads me to the Jose Cuervo plant, located just off the sunny town square. Its seedy underbelly soon reveals itself.

"Hey, hey, want to buy some tequila?" asks a wifebeater-wearing man, steps from the Cuervo entrance. "I got good stuff."

"No, you want my tequila," says another illicit vendor, with a mustache like a horse's tail.

Though their accented English is impeccable, buying bootleg tequila sits at the bottom of my to-do list, right beside "Try Cannibalism".

Cuervo HQ is a hacienda, a stretched-out, low-rise affair, like a dachshund. A no-nonsense clerk greets me, and I purchase the basic ten-buck tour. I join six enthusiasts (one wears a shirt reading, "WHAT WON'T TEQUILA WILL ONLY MAKE YOU STRONGER"), and into the heart of tequila we travel. A tour guide with spectacles and superb English leads us to our first stop, gesturing to a dimly lit wooden shop. We inch nearer. What tequila secret lies inside? "It's the authentic Jose Cuervo store," the guide says.

After embracing capitalism, we head outside to loading docks, burning furnaces and useful information. Stacked in 15-foot piles are pineapples on steroids-pinas, the blue agave's heart, which can weigh more than 200 pounds. Who knew? It's like skinning a porcupine and finding meat ripe for the barbecue. Anyway, pina hearts are baked in 900-degree ovens for about 48 hours to convert starches into sugars. Afterward, the pinas are pressed to a fibrous pulp, with syrupy, golden juice (aguamiel, or honey water) flowing in to vats large enough to fit a Kindergarten class.

Rocketing tequila growth (tequila is now a billion-dollar industry) has made aguamiel a finite resource; blue agave plants take eight to ten years to mature. Hence, some manufacturers cut aguamiel with sugar. By law, however, less than 51 percent agave ain't tequila. To become tequila, the aguamiel undergoes multiple distillations. "You don't want to drink the first distillation," says the guide. We're in the distillation room, surrounded by gleaming silver pipes and whistling doodads. On a table sits a bottle half-filled with clear liquid. Our guide pours a round of shots. "This is the first distillation," he says.

I raise my hand. "I thought we shouldn't drink it?"

"Yeah, is it poisonous?" asks the worried T-shirt wearer.

"You can drink it," he says, perturbed.

We do. It's a smidge like drinking a cheese grater.

"That's why we distill it twice," says the tour guide.

Next, we're shown wooden barrels where tequila ages for anywhere from several months to several years. "This is where tequila?becomes tequila," the guide says like a Nova announcer awed by the Milky Way. We're ushered to another table, where he pours several jiggers of Cuervo. "Thanks for coming on the tour," he says as the shot hits my stomach. He gestures toward an exit and another gift shop. That's it? Where's the secret testing laboratory? The Florida State University co-eds chained to a bed, shot glasses glued to their hands, a scientist inquiring, "Are you horny yet?" I am in the middle of Mexico, and I deserve answers!

"Excuse me," I say, raising my hand, "but I have a quick question."

"Yes."

"Why is tequila so popular?"

"It's the perfect party drink," he says, with a conviction that's not quite convincing.

Jose Cuervo Tquila Headquarters

Tequila, Jalisco Province, Mexico

Go to cuervo.com for more information