Clayton Szczech reviews “Vino de Cocos, The Pilgrim Beverage: Filipino Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and the Forgotten Origins of Mezcal” by Paulina Machuca, translated by Paul Kersey.
Paulina Machuca’s seminal Vino de Cocos, a crucial read for anyone interested in the history and origins of mezcal, is finally available in English. Machuca is a historian, research professor at El Colegio de Michoacán, and a leading expert on the cultural exchange between Mexico and the Philippines. She published the original Spanish-language version of this book in 2018. It won a prestigious award from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, and has been out of print since 2020. This 2025 translation is augmented by two new chapters and an expanded conclusion that addresses the debate over pre-Hispanic distillation more directly than did the original book.
Machuca begins with the ethnobotanical biography of the coconut palm tree, from its origins in India, through the Philippines, to its introduction to New Spain (now Mexico) around 1565. While it is hard to imagine Mexico’s Pacific coast sans coconut palms, this Asian species in fact displaced endemic American palms in the sixteenth century. Machuca elucidates the parallels between coconut palms and agaves: both plants have been revered as sacred and held mythological significance in their lands of origin, and both were called “trees of life,” providing food, shelter, clothing, tools, medicine, and beverages.
The Manila Galleon—Spain’s maritime trade route connecting its sixteenth century American and Asian colonies—is the central historical phenomenon of this book. The galleon was not only the conduit for a massive exchange of edible plant species between the continents, but also the way thousands of Asian people of various nationalities migrated to New Spain. Some of those “indios chinos” (as they were clumsily labeled in Spain’s racial caste system) were skilled producers of tuba (fermented palm sap) and lambanog—distilled tuba that came to be known as vino de cocos in Spanish.
Vino de cocos production was centered around Acapulco and Machuca’s native Colima, where production was in full swing by 1609. That coastal town was already connected to Guadalajara and Mexico City by Indigenous trade routes. This facilitated the distribution of vino de cocos throughout western and central Mexico, and as far north as modern-day Chihuahua. Miners there referred to the invigorating liquor as “Colima,” and Machuca points out that this is probably the first use of a Geographical Indication in Mexico.
“Indios chinos” and seeing history from below
The indios chinos were mostly Filipinos (itself a multiethnic category), but also included people from modern-day India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, and China. Many of them emigrated with traditional knowledge of the myriad uses of the coconut palm, including distilling its fermented sap. The indios chinos’ place in the colonial social structure was varied and complicated: some fell into debt and outright slavery, while others became politically connected landowners. In the early seventeenth century, tuba and vino de cocos were produced exclusively by Asians, whether exploited laborers or rural capitalists. Machuca argues that they used this know-how to seek acceptance in colonial society. Distilling and indios chinos were so strongly linked in colonial culture that to climb up a palm and extract its sap was to “subir de chino” (“climb Chinese-style”), and a contemporary stereotype held that all Asians knew how to distill.
One of Machuca’s explicit objectives is to offer a glimpse of the world’s “first globalization” from underrepresented perspectives—“global microhistories” illustrating the everyday lives of the Asian migrants who brought their knowledge of distillation to western Mexico. She does this primarily in two new chapters exploring the lives of “Francisca Martha,” a (female) india china who owned a palm plantation, and a group of (male) Filipino migrants who brought the ancient Bayasin system of writing with them to the Americas.
Machuca carried out Herculean archival research to illuminate these folk’s stories, and she breathes life into otherwise dry seventeenth century tax records, court proceedings, and wills that she unearthed in the Phillipines, Mexico, and Spain. Her vivid portrayal of the turbulent, multicultural world of seventeenth century Colima reminds us of our shared humanity with these long-dead pilgrims: like us, they lived in unprecedented times of crisis, and they did their best to make sense of their surroundings—working, striving, partying, fighting, forming families, and losing loved ones.
The extended explorations of the lives of Francisca Martha and company may feel like digressions for readers primarily interested in mezcal history, who might want to skip these chapters. But generalist nerds (like me) will enjoy the depth of detail and historical imagination that Machuca employs.
Vino de cocos boom and bust
In 1545, the first of several Royal prohibitions on alcohol production was imposed throughout New Spain. It also criminalized all drinking for the Indigenous, Black, and slave populations. Machuca presents vino de cocos as a drink born in defiance of this official prohibition, coming on the colonial scene in 1600.
In 1622, the government sought to wipe out vino de cocos by ordering the destruction of all coconut palms. The decree was ignored, as vino had become central to the regional economy: More than 60 tabernas were distilling over 200,000 liters of vino a year from tens of thousands of palm trees around Colima. The industry trailed only cacao and cattle in revenue generated. A percentage of all that money was tithed to the Church, whose special dispensations legitimized the widespread and profitable lawbreaking.
Machuca meticulously analyzes legal, financial, church, and tax documents to narrate the vino de cocos boom that began with its legalization in 1627. The spirit was soon being sold and consumed throughout New Spain, successfully competing with both pulque and imported Spanish wine. The regional government in nearby Guadalajara, eager to get in on the action, established a monopoly on liquor distribution, raising prices beyond what most drinkers could afford.
Demand for vino de cocos then plummeted, and production also fell by two-thirds, reaching a nadir in 1649. Drinkers’ options were multiplying, as spirits made from sugar cane and maguey were cheaper to produce and could be made almost anywhere, not just on the coast. Onetime palm farmers were soon able to make more money planting other cash crops, and the indios chinos’ descendants largely assimilated into the mestizo population, their forefathers’ distillation knowledge having been disseminated far and wide in rural New Spain. By 1670, vino de cocos’ brief reign as the colony’s drink of choice was over. The last shipment was sent to Zacatecas in 1704. After decades of market dominance, vino de cocos disappeared entirely for over three hundred years.
The origins of mezcal and the question of pre-Colombian distilling
During the vino de cocos boom, the spirit was enthusiastically consumed by miners in present-day Jalisco, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Durango, and San Luís Potosí. Not coincidentally, those states would eventually become known for mezcal production. Their mezcal both grew out of and contributed to the demise of vino de cocos, as Indigenous and mestizo communities began distilling liquor from the magueys they had long used for food, fuel, and fermented beverages.
Machuca cites a 1616 government decree ordering taxes on a new class of distillate, “introduced only a few years ago…made from plants called mezcal and maguey, whose effects are not yet known” as the earliest unequivocal reference to what we now call mezcal.
Since the 2018 publication of the original Vino de Cocos, debate over the possibility of pre-Hispanic distillation has intensified among mezcal aficionados, even as the scientific consensus has solidified. In her new conclusion, Machuca summarizes the scientific research and removes any doubt as to her stance: there is no evidence that Mesoamerican distillation pre-dates 1519, and she is confident that mezcal production, at least in western Mexico, is the direct successor of vino de cocos and Asian distilling technology.
In presenting this consensus position, Machuca traces the origins of the pre-Colombian distillation hypothesis to Carl Lumholz, then summarizes Henry Bruman’s rebuttal, Zizumba and Colunga’s initial rejection, and subsequent adoption of the theory, Ana Valenzuela’s research into the various types of Asian stills adapted to Mexico’s material culture, and a 2019 archaeological-chemical analysis that found the evidence for pre-Conquest distillation in Colima to be entirely absent.
But Machuca maintains a degree of nuance in stating her case. For example, she points out that the four-hundred-year history of copper alembic distillation in Michoacán shows that mezcal history is complex and that distinct, independent origins are possible. Anticipating the nerves her conclusion may strike, she argues that adopting new technology to local environments and culture is indicative of ingenuity and resilience:
The fact that this [mezcal] history was nourished by external influences, far from decreasing its merit, is actually proof of how people in Mexico were capable of creating something new and transforming it into part of their identity. (Pg. 416)
Machuca ends the book documenting the 2023 rebirth of vino de cocos production in Colima, noting the neat circle of vino giving rise to mezcal, disappearing, then re-emerging three centuries later precisely because of interest inspired by the current mezcal boom. Vino de cocos, the lost ancestor of mezcal, “is now the prodigal brother invited to the festival of distillates” in Mexico. (Pg. 419)
The publication of this superb work of scholarship in English is a true gift to Anglophone mezcal aficionados and students of Mexican history, and I highly recommend picking up a copy while you still can. We can only hope that this Vino de Cocos, with its additional chapters and expanded conclusion, will soon be republished in Spanish as well.
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