A New Kind of Book about Beverages
The essential guide to the history of Mexican beverages and their evolving cultural significance from beer and cocktails to soft drinks, herbal tea, and more.
Half of the book explores the history and landscape of alcoholic beverages in Mexico including cactus wines, pulque, beer, and cocktails, while the second half focuses on the country’s culturally important non-alcoholic beverages, including corn atole, chocolate drinks, agua fresca, and more. Tequila, mezcal, margaritas, and Corona are all everyday drinks in American households, but many consumers are ignorant of the broader context of Mexican gastronomy that gives us these excellent tipples. This book is targeted at the average consumer and is meant to be an accessible but thorough resource for the traveling foodie.
Beyond this, the book tells the history of Mexico from the point of view of the beverage. Five centuries of history are traced from the fall of Tenochtitlan’s cacao economy to the rise of Mexican mixology. Drinks have played important rolls in Mexico’s history (wine helped to start Miguel Hidalgo’s revolt against Spain in 1810.)
Reviews:
“Near the very end of N.C. Stevens’s excellent book on Mexican beverages, he expresses the hope that readers will walk away with an appreciation of their vast variety. But that appreciation arrives within just a few pages. This is the English-language book on Mexican beverages, from beer to herbal remedies, and it’s comprehensive, to say the least. Stevens writes with the eye of an anthropologist, attentive not only to what people drink, but to why they matter. The Complete Guide to Mexican Beverages is thorough, thoughtful, and persuasive-a genuine tribute to Mexico’s drinking culture.”
Derek Brown, author, “Mindful Mixology: A Comprehensive Guide to No- and Low-Alcohol Beverages”
Karen MacNeil, author, “The Wine Bible”
“In the long history of cultures with intriguing drinks, Mexico has often been overlooked. N.C. Stevens remedies that in this beautifully written, impeccably researched book on Mexico’s ancient and modern beverages. From indigenous drinks like cacao and pulque to today’s tequila, mezcal, and Mexican wine, this book is a fascinating journey through the world of Mesoamerican drinks and drinking traditions. As with food, the drinks of a place tell the stories of a people. Stevens tells those stories with intelligence, insight, and passion. Every page will make you want to pour yourself something delicious.”
“In The Complete Guide to Mexican Beverages, N.C. Stevens guides us on a kaleidoscopic tour of Mexico’s diverse beverage heritage, deftly weaving the nation’s history, geography, biodiversity, and industry into a narrative account that is as rich and inviting as the unique hospitality culture it portrays.”
Nicola Nice, author, “The Cocktail Parlor”
Jonathan Deutsch, professor of culinary arts and science, Department of Health Sciences, Drexel University, author, Barbecue: A Global History (with Megan Elias)
“N.C. Stevens is the best kind of drinker: the kind who peers deeply into the glass and asks, ‘What is happening here? How did we come to drink this? And why?’ Nowhere are the answers to those questions more compelling than in Mexico, where history, culture, geography, nature, agriculture, and politics converge-sometimes joyfully and often tensely-to yield distinctive flavors like pulque, atole, horchata, mezcal and drinking chocolate-or deeper cuts like toloache, pu’pu, or bate. Together, these beverages-and their stories as Stevens tells them-draw visitors to Mexico and enchant palates worldwide. Salud!”
About the Author
N.C. Stevens is a writer and independent researcher whose work explores how beverages shape the communities, economies, and cosmologies that produce them. His reporting spans herbal teas, coffee, beer, obscure regional spirits, and the ritual and everyday drinks that rarely make it into mainstream beverage media. He has written for publications including the Financial Times, BBC Travel, Slate, Wine Enthusiast, SevenFifty Daily, Sprudge, Good Beer Hunting, Eighty Degrees Magazine, Full Pour Magazine, and Atlas Obscura. Alongside this editorial work, he maintains DrinkingFolk.com, a self‑curated archive of more than 150 essays documenting global drinking culture.
Stevens’ interest in the material culture of beverages began on the east coast of Madagascar, where he lived among the Betsimisaraka people and learned to make and drink betsabetsa, a bark‑hopped sugarcane wine fermented in small village stills. Returning to Massachusetts, he continued exploring fermentation and distillation through the legally ambiguous hobby of home distilling with his brother, leaving his early brandies to age in his parents’ basement. His fieldwork has since taken him across Latin America and Asia, including extended periods in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and China, where he has documented everything from the tea gods of Yunnan’s ethnic minorities to the genetic diversity of Madagascar’s wild coffee.
Across his writing, Stevens works to dissolve the artificial boundaries that beverage media often draws between categories like beer, wine, spirits, tea, and coffee. He approaches drinks as artifacts of material culture—objects that encode history, ecology, belief, and social structure. His worldview is grounded in the idea that beverages are not merely consumables but cultural technologies, and that understanding them requires attention to the people who make them, the landscapes that sustain them, and the stories communities tell through them.
He currently lives in Boston, though he is more often found couchsurfing with locals, following rumors of a regional drink, or documenting the practices of small‑scale producers whose knowledge rarely reaches global audiences.
