(Connie Watson/CBC)

Anacleto Romero, a jimador (Spanish for agave harvester) in Mexico's Tequila Valley, lifts one of a row of agave plants. Romero is also the field boss and has been a jimador for half his 6o years. (Connie Watson/CBC)

Sixty-year-old Anacleto Romero holds out his calloused hands and points to a couple of small black spots embedded in his fingers.

"Those are agave thorns under my skin," he says. "Most of them work their way out, but these two never have."

Romero doesn't let the thorns slow him down. He's a jimador, an expert harvester of the spiky plant that is the essential ingredient in tequila.

Tequila and champagne

Tequila is to Mexico what champagne is to France. Only one region in the world can legally produce a beverage by that name. In the case of tequila, that zone includes parts of five Mexican states.

Every agave that goes into a bottle of tequila is accounted for. Every batch of the liquor is monitored, tested and approved by Mexico's Tequila Regulatory Council, known as the CRT. The council has stringent rules to guarantee the quality of the final product. Its inspectors ensure only agaves grown in the tequila zone are used to make tequila. The CRT also protects tequila's name around the world, launching lawsuits against countries or companies appropriating it for their own product.

He's keeping alive a tradition that goes back more than 200 years. The job of the jimador hasn't changed since the first licence to produce tequila was granted in 1795. Even the rudimentary tools of his trade are the same. But all around him, the traditional tequila industry has been transformed.

Demand is going through the roof. Production has gone high tech. Tequila is now quality controlled by scientists and legally protected by lawyers.

And owned — to a large extent — by foreigners. Mexico's trademark beverage is no longer in Mexican hands. And that's producing thorns that are causing a lot more trouble than the agave barbs embedded in Romero's calloused hands.

Seven years in the making

In the midst of the Tequila Valley, its hilly terrain ribboned by row upon row of spectacular blue agave plants, sits the Tres Mujeres tequila operation. Like many of the very small high-end tequila makers, Tres Mujeres is a family-operated business and 100 per cent Mexican. And it produces only pure tequila — made from 100 per cent agave.

An agave field that belongs to Tres Mujeres Tequila, a Mexican family operation in the Tequila Valley near the town of Amatitan. (Connie Watson/CBC)

(Mexico's Tequila Regulatory Council now allows regular tequila to be made with only 51 per cent agave. The remainder may consist of sugar cane or other plant sugars. Pure tequila must be marked 100 per cent agave and bottled in Mexico.)

Operations manager Sergio Partida is giving orders to the jimadores, watching over the fermentation process and checking the bottling of Tres Mujeres tequila. In between, he explains to me how a blue agave goes from the field to the final product.

A blue agave plant takes seven or eight years to reach maturity. During that time, its large flower stock is regularly cut off, so that the energy and sugars devoted to the flower's growth remain in the heart of the agave instead.

Sergio Partida, operations manager and a member of the family that runs and owns Tres Mujeres Tequila. (Luis Arau/CBC)

The plant is only harvested once in its life.

Agave from field to distillery

That's when the jimadores like Romero and his crew move in. They clear a field one huge agave at a time. In 15 minutes, they can take down a plant as tall as they are. They slice off all the spiky leaves that jut out from the centre, and then tumble the agave out of the ground.

Then they systematically pare down all the remaining growth until what's left resembles a giant pineapple. It's even called a piña, the Spanish word for pineapple.

The piñas are so saturated with juice, they weigh between 40 and 60 kilograms a piece. That's often more than the mass of the average Mexican fieldworker who lifts them.

Workers hoist and load agaves in Tequila Valley, in Jalisco state, Mexico. After the leaves are cut from the agave, it is called a pi&#241a, the Spanish word for "pineapple." (Connie Watson/CBC)

Between the cutters and the loaders, a field crew can move 30 tons of agave a day. Meanwhile, big trucks piled high with piñas line up outside the gates of the distilleries spread out in the valley.

At Tres Mujeres, most of the piñas come from the family's own ranch. They're dropped onto a small conveyer belt, sliced in half and then manually stacked into huge ovens, where they steam and bake for 48 hours. Then the heads are soft enough to squeeze out the sugary juice.

Fermenting tequila

That liquid bubbles away in huge vats until the fermentation process is done. Then the remaining thick liquid is boiled and refined through a series of tanks until it runs clear.

The bigger the producer, the fancier and more high tech the process. But the final product is the same.

The agave chunks are stacked into a wall oven where they cook for up to 10 hours. This softens them up to be crushed so that the juice that makes tequila can be extracted. (Connie Watson/CBC)

"All the tequila comes out white from the distillation process," Partida says as he offers me a taste of a warm and potent tequila right from the spigot. "Any amber colour and odour of wood comes from aging it in a barrel. For tequila reposado ["rested"], the rules state it must stay in a barrel for a minimum of 60 days. But we keep ours in barrels for nine or 10 months because we don't have a huge turnover that I have to move, so we always keep it longer.

"For añejo [aged] tequila, the minimum requirement is one year in a barrel. Now, there is a new class of tequila that is called extra añejo. It has to stay in a barrel for a minimum of three years. Which means the wood flavour and the amber colour will be more concentrated."

(The tequila that is just 51 per cent agave is often adulterated with artificial colours and flavours to obtain its sweeter taste and amber colour.)

Profits at the top, anger at the bottom

In the past decade, small high-end distillers like Tres Mujeres have popped up in the tequila producing region. Thanks to the increasing popularity of Mexico's drink around the world, the market is booming. And thanks to rock bottom prices for agave, the input costs are low.

After fermenting, the agave juice moves into these distillation kettles at the Tres Mujeres Tequila factory. (Connie Watson/CBC)

And that has small independent farmers in this valley fuming. They say 10 years ago, they were selling their agave for 16 pesos a kilo. Now, middlemen are offering them half a peso — about 4.5 cents — per kilo, because there is more agave than the industry needs.

Ramiro Robalero Rosales has a five-hectare parcel of agave in the valley. He's not sure how much longer he can afford to keep it.

"What people don't know outside Mexico," he says, "is that among all the families that live off growing agave, there is always one, sometimes two, three or even four members of each family who have to abandon the land and find other work. Even go to the U.S. Because the bottom line is, this crop can't support a family anymore. Even with 10 hectares of agave, the crop won't make you any money. And that's here, in the original region of agave, in the tequila zone!"

Growers vs. distillers

In the last 10 years, the symbiotic relationship between the agave growers and the tequila producers changed fundamentally.

The huge tequila producers such as Jose Cuervo, Sauza and Herradura used to buy most of their agave from local farmers. But when the price of agave went through the roof in the early 1990s, the big tequila estates (and many of the small ones) started growing and contracting their own agave, reducing the risk of another supply crisis.

A wall of ovens at the Herradura tequila operation, one of Mexico's oldest but now foreign-owned. (Connie Watson/CBC)

Now they no longer need what the small independent farmers grow, and it's the growers who are in crisis.

"The problem is not the price," says Sergio Partida of Tres Mujeres Tequila. "It's that no one is buying. Because there are so many companies now who are self-sufficient.

"Tres Mujeres buys agave from other places, to give growers a helping hand, so that we keep good relations with the people around here," Partida continues. "They come and they ask us if we'll buy a load [of agaves]. There are a lot of agave growers associations, and if you don't buy from them, they come and protest at your operation and they shut you down."

Desperate farmers say shutting down distillers is one of the only ways they can get attention from the industry and government.

"The situation of agave in Mexico is worrisome," farmer David Calderon says. "We have a monopoly of the big tequila companies. They buy our product at a very low price. Lower than the cost of production. That gives them huge profits. We want to know what they're doing with all those profits."

What the foreign takeover means

Mexico posted records in both production and exports in 2006, according to the Tequila Regulatory Council. However, Calderon says the wealth from tequila's boom isn't staying in the region. He blames the foreign takeover of Mexico's tequila-producing giants.

Free trade in tequila

The United States now consumes nearly half the tequila produced in Mexico every year.

In 2003, the Mexican government announced a policy that would require all tequila leaving the country be bottled at its origin — to assure the product's quality and create more home-grown jobs.

But the powerful Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) wanted to continue bulk exports of tequila. In the end, the U.S. and Mexican governments signed an agreement in 2006 under which the proposed ban on bulk sale of tequila was dropped in return for greater enforcement of quality control in the U.S.

Mexico exported 140 million litres of tequila in 2006, almost 20 per cent more than the year before.

"The big tequila companies have been bought out by the big liquor giants of the world," Calderon says. "The international companies are trying to divide and control the tequila industry. The result is a failure for our agave and our tequila here in Mexico, to the point where we need the government's help to bail us out and help us against the big tequila companies."

About 30 to 40 per cent of the farmers in the Tequila region are independent. In order to keep the peace, the government is shelling out $13 million in support payments to growers who have no guarantee of selling any of their crop. The government is asking the tequila producers — who are making profits like never before — to pitch in as well. But many companies resent having to buy agave plants they don't need from farmers they say got too greedy and planted too much.

Tequila expert Rogelio Luna Zamora laments the state of one of Mexico's traditional industries. He says the symbolic drink of Mexico has become the symbol of a sell-out.

"Ninety per cent of the industry is in foreign hands. So the capital leaves. Public money leaves," the University of Guadalajara researcher says.

Just one big tequila producer is still owned by Mexicans: Jose Cuervo. Luna says it's not a coincidence that only Cuervo is still investing in the local communities to improve their quality of life. He says the other large companies — all now in foreign hands — are no longer putting money into supporting services, infrastructure and culture in the region.

"The tequila industry has been converted into a maquiladora for the U.S.," Luna says. "It's incredible. It's brutal. The symbol of Mexico is a maquila. It's a very, very serious issue."

Luna calls it Mexican surrealism.

Tequila tourism

In the midst of the takeovers and the tension between farmers and producers, the United Nations declared the Tequila Valley a World Heritage site in 2006.

The UN recognized not only the striking beauty of the region, but its historical and cultural significance in producing Mexico's trademark spirit.

The Inter-American Development Bank is offering millions to help turn the region into a tourist zone. There are major plans to include the five municipalities in the Tequila Valley in a circuit that will be known as La Ruta del Tequila, or the Tequila Route.

"The United Nations designation is a distinction for Mexico," says Ramon Gonzalez Figueroa, the director general of Mexico's Tequila Regulatory Council. "But it also brings with it a big responsibility to design a plan to manage it, to make sure it benefits the economic development of this region. It will be a big economic trigger for an area where often people are forced to migrate to other states or other countries to look for work. And we have to give a lot of support to the agave growers, who are the first link in the production system. We have to be careful that this agave landscape doesn't turn into a landscape full of corn fields."

On this, the farmers agree.

What's in it for the growers

Calderon, the farmer who has a 10-acre parcel of agave, is worried that once again the benefits of a tequila boom, this time in tourism, will pass the growers by.

At what's considered the entrance to the official Tequila Zone — the only place where tequila can be legally produced in the world — this sign reads, "Here begins the Tequila Route. The land of agave fields. A world heritage site. And a zone of disaster and misery for agave growers." (Connie Watson/CBC)

"We can't just go into another business," Calderon says. "We don't have the money or expertise to try anything else right now. We can't set up our own hotels or our own businesses.

"The plans the government wants to undertake here are big projects. The industry owners and their families will be the ones to set up all the hotels and restaurants. And we'll be qualified labourers. That's it."

Gonzalez, from the regulatory council, realizes that to bring tourism to this valley, first the state and federal governments need to bring peace to the relations between the growers and the producers. That requires finding a way to stop the wildly fluctuating prices of agave and giving the farmers a steady income that will keep them in business.

Gonzalez says this historic and unique valley has all the elements to become a tourist destination, but the region is also plagued by historic jealousies and disputes that will have to be dealt with first.

After all, keeping peace in the tequila industry will also be good for the tourist trade.