One time we spent a couple of weeks at the San Felipe Trailer Park in the hills above Oaxaca. Rows and rows and rows of thorn tipped agave plants grew there, like a vineyard. They called them maguey, and after some number of years they harvested the pina in the center of the plant and cooked it in the ground. The smokey fermented distilled liquor that resulted was bottled with a scorpion (imported from China) and was exported under the Scorpion brand.
The proprietor, a Mexican-American from California, kept a garafone of the finished product just inside his front door and would siphon out a half litre into your bottle for two or three bucks. It was drinkable. Not sure when they went out of biz.
