They’ve been visiting remote parts of Mexico for eight years but Natalia de la Rosa and Jason Thomas Fritz have no doubt which spot was the farthest-flung. The cobblestoned town of Alamos was the last area with “pavement and stores and banks”, says Fritz, before an eight-hour drive to a homestead high in the Sierra Madre mountains on the Sonora-Chihuahua state border.

Their mission was to sample the traditionally made mezcal of Alicia and Ramón Bustamante. De la Rosa barely noticed the bumpy dirt road, gazing instead at the agaves growing abundantly on the mountainside. A feast of flour tortillas and gorditas (corn cakes) awaited. “We were the first people to come all the way to see them so they were excited,” says de la Rosa.