It is hot in the desert. Between dehydrated delusions, a wanderer might wonder whether shade is more scarce than rain. Surely, more of either one would enhance the experience. But quenching thirst with water is a rarity, so a drink is going to have to come from somewhere else. The options are not promising. Sand? No, too grainy. Scorpions? No, too many legs. Cacti? Sure, why not!
In the region sometimes known as Oasisamerica, spanning from the Pacific Coast to Rio Bravo in central Mexico, a variety of indigenous peoples have long shared particular life ways oriented to desert living. The deserts there, the Sonoran and the Chihuahuan, expand across the entire northern region of Mexico and stretch into the Southwestern United States. The Sonoran desert can expect only 3-15 inches of rainfall per year, and the Chihuahuan desert does little better at 6-16 inches annually.
These arid and notably rugged areas may not top many lists of best places to live, but they have been populated for thousands of years. The cultures of the desert peoples have allowed them to thrive in these harsh climates. Cacti, as it turns out, has figured prominently in the lives, diets, and even religions of people native to the region. One common way to utilize the cactus was in the production of wine from its fruit.
The Chihuahuan desert is not home to many large cacti species, but it does have a few that are used by humans. Most famously Lophophora williamsii grows natively in the desert which stretches from southern New Mexico down to the Mexican state of Zacatecas. This small cactus is the source of a tea when the above-ground button of the cactus is removed from the root and dried. While this is not alcoholic, it contains the hallucinogenic mescaline. It may not come as a surprise that this cactus’s common name is peyote.
The natives of this desert did use peyote as a psychedelic drug , but they also had access to another species of cactus which could be made into a different kind of intoxicant, wine. The genus Opuntia is at home in the rocky expanses of the Chihuahuan desert. This genus classifies the common prickly pear, nopal, and even cholla cactus.
The famous red fruit of the prickly pear, called tunas in Spanish, can be peeled, pressed, strained and left to ferment in the sun or by a fire. The juice of these fruits can be inoculated with yeast from a previous batch or it can be left to ferment spontaneously in the desert air. The resulting wine is called Colonche, a word likely related to the Nahuatl word for tuna wine nochoctli an agglutination of nochtli for tuna and octli for wine.
This same process is followed in the production of wines from other cactus fruits as well. A number of Opuntia varieties can be used in the wine making process including Opuntia ficus-indica, streptacantha, orbiculata, robusta, hyptiacantantha, and phaeacantha. Where Opuntia is not available in the Chihuahuan Desert, non-Opuntia candelabro cactus or Pachycereus weberi is sometimes used to make wine. The Opata people who live in the mountains between the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts were known to make a wine out of cholla cacti as well.
On the other side of the Sierra Madre Occidental, the is no refuge from the aridity of the Chihuahuan desert. The Sonoran lies in wait, intervening between the mountains and ocean. While both the east and west slopes of this chain are home to deserts, the mountains are enough to isolate them from each other. In the Sonoran, the cacti are much larger and the native people are of different ethnicities, but one thing stays the same, they still make wine from cactus fruit.
The peoples of the Sonoran live in the shadows of two massive species of columnar cacti, the famous saguaro, Carnegiea gigantea, and the estimable organ pipe cactus, Lemaireocereus thurberi. Both of these plants bear fruit which can be boiled down to a sweet syrup or fermented into wine. Due to their extreme height, sometimes reaching over 15 feet, harvesting poles were traditionally used to pry off the fruit. These poles were often fashioned out of the vertical ribs of the cacti themselves, which remained after the cactus died.
The fruit of the saguaro matures in June and July each year during which time many peoples harvest it for consumption and wine production. Henry J Bruman says that the Papago, Pima, Maricopa, Yuma, Yavapi, Walapai, Western Apache, and Seri all consumed the fruit fresh, while only the Papago, Pima and Maricopa made wine from it. The Seri, however, have been said to exclusively use the saguaro and organ pipe fruit for wine production.
The Tohono O’odham (meaning desert people) whom Henry Bruman refers to as Papago above, were once consummate brewers of saguaro wine, which they called nawait or haren. After harvesting, peeling, and crushing the fruit, the fermenting vats were kept hot with sun, fire, and even blankets. This was simply cultural practice, but likely served to optimise the performance of yeast involved in fermentation. After the juice was fermented, scum was removed and it was strained through baskets into another clay vessel for drinking. Back in the day, the much anticipated wine was ritualistically consumed within a 24 hour period, a binge which intentionally induced vomiting. This ritual was believed to encourage the coming of summer’s rain. Celebrants would dance around a fire and toss feathers in the air as “clouds” before they went house to house and consumed all of the nawait that individual households had fermented.
In past times, the Pimas and Maricopas would have similar revelries. They drank the blood red wine while they sang war songs. Only some of the tribe got drunk on a given night so others could be lookouts and caretakers for their tribesmen. The Seri people who inhabited the Pacific coast and islands were said to make wine every couple of days during the season when the saguaro fruit was ripe.
The other columnar cactus of the Sonoran, the organ pipe cactus, bore a fruit that was better than that of the saguaro fresh, but made an inferior wine and syrup. This is the pitahaya dulce, a cousin of the indigenous pitahaya, better know as the dragon fruit. The organ pipe can produce two crops in a given year first in the summer months and again in October. Because of this, there is less anticipation for this wine than that of saguaro. In addition to the normal culprits, the San Carlos Apache made a wine out of this fruit, although it was not their drink of choice. Machaerocereus gummo, or pitahaya agria was also used for wine-making by Seri people and supposedly made the strongest wine of all.
The cactus wines were ephemeral. They were made only when the fruit comes into season and the fermented drinks did not last long in the desert. For these reasons, binge drinking, as noted in the case of the Tohono O’odham, was common. In regards to sudden influxes in wine-making and drinking, anthropologists have recorded one last unique use of the cactus. During large inter-tribal meetings, which would require copious amounts of wine for celebration and building trust, a giant barrel cactus or biznaga gigante could be hollowed out and used as a natural storage vessel.
Prickyly pear colonche is still manufactured in rural communities of the Mexican Altiplano today, but it is a dying craft. Commercial beer is cheap and accessible, and younger generations couldn’t be bothered by all of the work required in collecting, peeling, and fermenting tunas from the prickly pear.
The craft of cactus wine-making in the Sonoran has long been on the decline. Most Seri people transitioned into commercial fishing in the 1930s and left some of their desert folkways behind. The Tohono O’odham, on the other hand, faced the dual threat from the US government of forced reeducation of their children and Prohibition during the 1920s. Children were deprived of a cultural education which included this ancient art, and reservation authorities outlawed the religious nawait rain festival for several years. Very few people still make wine from columnar cacti today. The desert, though, has not changed, and cactus wine might just still be the best drink around.
Booth, Peter MacMillan. “‘IF WE GAVE UP THE MAKING OF NAWAIT, IT WOULD MEAN STARVATION’: Saguaro Wine Defenders of Tohomo O’odham Land and Way-of-Life.” Journal of Arizona History, vol. 46, no. 4, Winter 2005, pp. 375–396. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=ahl&AN=19906314&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Bruman, Henry J., and Peter T. Furst. Alcohol in Ancient Mexico. Univ. of Utah Pr., 2001.
Felger, Richard S., and Mary Beck Moser. “Columnar Cacti in Seri Indian Culture.” Kiva, vol. 39, no. 3/4, Winter 1974, pp. 257–275. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00231940.1974.11757795.
La Barre, Weston. “Native American Beers,” American Anthropologist, vol. 40 no. 2 [American Anthropological Association, Wiley] 1938, pp.224-34, http://www.jstor.org/stuble/661862.
McNamee, Gregory. Tortillas Tiswin & T-Bones: A Food History of the Southwest. University of New Mexico Press, 2017.
Ojeda-Linares, César I., et al. “Traditional Management of Microorganisms in Fermented Beverages from Cactus Fruits in Mexico: An Ethnobiological Approach.” Journal of Ethnobiology & Ethnomedicine, vol. 16, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 1–12. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1186/s13002-019-0351-y.
Smet, Peter De, and Jennifer A Loughmiller-Cardinal. “4P-9a: Drink/Enema Rituals in Ancient Maya Art. Part One: Text.” Ancient Maya drink/enema rituals (2020): n. pag. Print.
There is great diversity in wine press design and use across space and throughout time. The most primitive forms of pressing, by foot for example, are still in use today. Some technological innovations improved grape juice yield throughout history. Yet assuming that more efficient presses made older methods obsolete ignores the truth. Wine is a marriage of both tradition and technology.
In ancient Aztec times, the Fifth Pulque was considered taboo. If you drunk exceedingly. you could be severely punished. Pulque, called octli in Aztec times, is still alive and well as a traditional beverage in Mexico. But drinking five pulques can be challenging, especially because the beverage continues to ferment inside your stomach. Often, Mexicans attribute gastrointestinal cleansing properties to the drink.
Cod liver oil. Not exactly a beverage, but always consumed by drinking. The stinky oil has been consumed as a folk medicine in fishing communities for centuries. During the 1900s, cod liver oil helped scientists discover vitamins. After this, the medicine enjoyed great commercial success for its purported healing qualities.
Heard of wood alcohol? Don’t drink it. Wood alcohol, or methanol, is poisonous. It is produced by heating wood in a sealed container until it breaks down, releasing trace amounts of methanol. This process, destructive distillation, has been practiced since ancient times. The last 100 years, however, have seen the rise of industrial production of methanol and an increase in methanol poisonings.
Subscribe to our Monthly TAB Newsletter to stay curious about drinking culture.
One more thing! Check your inbox (Promotional & Junk) for a message from us. Click the link in the email to confirm subscription!