I sampled real Jalisco tequila down the road from Tequila in the town of Magdalena at a small distillery called Sangre de Azteca, a name which means "Aztec Blood." Over the brick wall next to the Sangre de Azteca factory, I could see the sprouts of young agave plants growing on the hills. Cows grazed on the dusty ranch across the street.

Francisco Villalobos, a recent college graduate with a degree from Tequila Jalisco, a local technical institute, who works as a manager at Sangre de Azteca, gave me a tour of the facility. Steam poured from the main boiler, clouding the exit where men in blue overalls hacked at the clipped hearts of the tough, seven-year-old blue agave plants that are used to make tequila. A man in a small backhoe pushed the heavy plants toward the building. They looked like giant, wooden pineapples. "Here, we're in the reception room for the agave," Villalobos told me. This is "where the cooking process starts, the rustic way."

Sangre de Azteca produces about 9,000 liters of pure tequila a day, selling it under different brand names in Mexico, France, and the United States. Major tequila producers, by contrast, use machines called diffusers to extract the agave juice directly. "What they cook is the juice," Villalobos said. "Jose Cuervo, Sauza -- they use the most modern techniques."

Inside, conveyer belts whirred, pushing the chunks of roasted agave toward spinning gears, which crushed the plants, extracting liquid. Water poured from jets, washing over the juicy, mashed agave, collecting in pools below, ready to be used in the fermentation process. "This is the artisanal way," Villalobos, skinny with black hair and short beard, told me. "This tequila is 100 percent pure. It's not mixed with corn or sugar or any other type of alcohol."

Villalobos picked up a piece of cooked agave from the ground. "Here's the molienda," the mill, he said. The lower half of the machine was covered with brown earthen tiles. On the bright green wall behind the machine, there was a hand-painted picture of a raw agave core, with the word PIÑA, which means pineapple, written under it.

"Here's where they extract the juice from the cooked agave. This is the second step in the process of making tequila," Villalobos explained, speaking over the hum of the engines and the hiss of steam. "They extract the honey, the sugar," he said, holding the chunk of roasted agave in his hand. The plant's hard, white core had softened, turning honey-colored, separating into soft hair-like strands, held together by gobs of thick, sweet agave nectar.

Inside the Sangre de Azteca factory, the air compressor used in the bottling process whirred to a stop, letting out a hiss of air. We climbed up a ladder and looked into the 15-foot-tall, 25,000-liter vats where the fermentation process takes place. Some of the vats were covered in white foam. "It's a carbon oxide that makes the foam," Villalobos said. "You can feel it, the temperature rises. It's a little bit caliente from the process [of fermentation]." To the right, the liquid in another vat was bubbling. A third had already finished the two and half day fermentation process. "It's now ready for distillation."