COMALA, CO—As part of its national policy for tourism development, the Mexican government has dubbed a variety of towns around the country as Pueblos Mágicos, or magical towns. Oftentimes, these are smaller towns that could benefit from increased tourism. They are awarded the status due to their beauty, culture, folklore, history, artisans, and cuisine. Today, there are over 130 towns with the designation.
In Colima state, the small town of Comala, just outside the capital, has enjoyed the Pueblo Mágico designation since 2002. Besides its cobble-stoned streets, quaint Spanish plaza, and volcanic landscape, the town is made unique by its culinary arts. The town is the inspiration for one of Mexico’s greatest literary works Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo. Above all else, bread, coffee, and punch dominate the local palate. Indeed, without these foods and drinks, part of Comala’s magic would be lost.
As you walk between the white-washed walls of Comala, every other door has a sign advertising homemade ponche or punch. The ubiquity of the punch is overwhelming, and also confusing–even for other Mexicans. See, ponche for most Mexicans is a Christmas drink prepared from water, fruit, sugar, cinnamon, piloncillo, and rum. It is served hot. When chilangos from Mexico City arrive in Comala, some locals tell me, they are often confused. This isn’t the punch that they know. But the residents here drink their ponche year round, and it comes in dozens of flavors.
In Comala, ponche is not the same as Christmas punch, rather it is a mix of alcohol, fruits or nuts, and sugar. Across the country similar liqueurs are quite common. In the state of Veracruz, the same drink might be called a torito. In other regions, it might be called a crema. In the city of Toluca, it is similar to the mosquito.
The alcohol in Comala punch can be a strong neutral spirit, rum, whiskey, tequila, mezcal, or the local tuxca, a name for mezcal produced only in southern Jalisco and the valley of Colima. Each fruit or nut calls for a different spirit and a different recipe. But no other flavor is as popular as pomegranate.
Ponche de granada. Pomegranate punch. Comala’s most emblematic liqueur. It has a pinkish cough syrup color. Light and bright, it has a gentle and sweet pomegranate flavor. The seeds of the fruit still sit in the bottom of each bottle macerating. The alcohol burns the throat on the way down. It isn’t for whiskey lovers, but anyone who likes a sweet drink would be a fan.
While ponche de granada is syrupy, the creamy punches are more luxurious. They are nearly all eggnogs with distinct flavors like chestnut, pistachio, or dulce de leche. These are thick, creamy concoctions that always have a savory kick from their flavoring. They come in a paint-chip array of muted tan colors. There are still small chunks of chewy nuts in the bottles.
And more flavors abound. Many stores make the staple flavors, but around town virtually every seasonal fruit has been transformed into a liquid punch. Guava, strawberry, kiwi, mango, passionfruit, a sangria with red wine. And the number of shops is impressive. This begs the question: How did Comala come to make so much punch in the first place?
At least 30 shops in town sell their own bottles of punch, and most folks have no notion of why Comala has become so famous for the liqueur. One store owner claimed that a local family began making and selling punch in 1936 and neighbors began to do the same. The town kept gaining some kind of notoriety for the drink and more and more businesses opened until the town was lined with what must be a kilometer of shelving space laden with fruity bottles. But this is just hearsay.
Not that it is rare for Mexican businesses to specialize in one commodity geographically. Even in Mexico City, certain neighborhoods are dominated by economic specialties. Here there might be 50 musical instrument stores, there you might have all your school supplies shops. The same is true at the national level: regions develop reputations for producing a certain good and businesses are okay with the heightened local competition. It’s the way of doing business. So Comala’s specialization in punch is not so strange.
A tourist narrative that explains the preponderance of punch in the Pueblo Mágico describes another origin. According to this story, locals had the habit of taking a break from work at 11 AM every day. They would drink a cup of tuxca, mezcal, or tequila and have a snack. Instead of going home to rest, little snack bars became common around town providing food and drink to the workers.
By this narrative, the botaneros, or snack bars, took off in the 1950s and sparked the touristic interest in Comala gastronomy, hospitality, and leisure. At some point, the pure tequila or tuxca would be supplanted by sugary punch, but snacks are still common in airy restaurants around the plaza. Indeed, Hermenegildo Salazar Torres, who died in 1974, is considered a local pioneer in bringing punch to Comala. He was also a restaurateur in the plaza.
However, it seems more likely that ponche has even deeper roots in the hyperlocal culture of Comala. A marriage took place in the town in February of 1930 and was reported in Guadalajara’s El Informador on February 23, 1930. The celebration was accompanied with beer and many bottles of ponche.
The central plaza of Comala is stunning. Papel picado, cut-out, colorful flags, wave in great numbers above the streets. The palm trees are painted with white skirts that match the white gazebo in the town’s center. A Spanish colonial church flush in restrained yellow plaster overlooks the vendors who sell tuba, bread, and other local artisanal products. And behind every shop door around town, shelves and shelves of punches shine like little fruity gems in the slanting sun waiting to be uncorked and enjoyed with a local snack. Such is the magic of this small town in Colima.
Poncela, Anna María Fernández. “Comala: pueblo blanco, botanero y mejor pueblo mágico.” TURYDES: Revista sobre Turismo y Desarrollo local sostenible 8.19 (2015): 50.
Throughout much of Central America, cususa is the name for moonshine. It is synonymous to terms like guaro and lijón. In Nicaragua, corn chicha is the traditional alcohol of choice, so cususa has also been produced from corn. During a national celebration, I find some cususa for sale in Managua.
North Korea today produces Korean staples like makgeolli and soju. North Koreans themselves are also avid home brewers, particularly in the countryside where the dregs of beer mashes are fed to pigs. Since the early 2000s, however, the government has consistently attempted to control this homespun tradition. Due to the government’s strict import restrictions and the population’s relative poverty, many North Koreans have to brew their own beer if they want to drink any at all.
In the correspondence regarding these cargoes, the owner literally measures a human’s worth in gallons of rum: “toutching first upon the Windward Coast, where I would have you dispose of your Cargo if PoSsible. & purchase your Slaves, even sopose you give One Hundred + fifty Gallons Per head [sic]” The letters even use the word “to slave” meaning to fill the ship’s hold with a cargo of humans.
Rather than just getting drunk, many native Mexican peoples liked to cut their booze with other intoxicating substances. Among them, peyote, morning glory seeds, mushrooms, and even a poisonous toad. These additions could influence the fermentation of alcohol, but also heightened the religious experience of drinking.