Pulque, the Original Tequila
Tequila really stole the thunder of this forgotten tipple. Like its more famous cousin, pulque is derived from a member of the agave family, the maguey. But instead of colonizing every bar from Cabo to Ibiza and getting slurped out of people's navels, the ancient Aztec drink, which is naturally low in alcohol, has almost disappeared from production today. Though it was still popular in the 1800s, the beginning of the end for pulque had arrived with the Spanish a few hundred years earlier. With the Europeans came beer, and one foamy, fermented drink displaced another as the popular beverage of the Mexican people. You can still find pulquerias in parts of Mexico City, but their proprietors fret over whether the next generation may ever have the chance to taste this ancient drink. Too bad, because pulque has a few great origin myths, including one in which an opossum first extracts the juice from the maguey plant and becomes the world's first drunk.