Miguel Galán, the municipal tourism director in Cosautlán de Carvajal, Veracruz, said this week that his office is focused on two of the area’s industries to bring tourist to the municipality — coffee and aguardiente, a category of strong, artisanal liquors.

A little over an hour from Xalapa, the Cosautlán de Carvajal municipality is located in a mountainous area of the state near its border with Puebla. Historically, the region has produced coffee and aguardiente, with several producers gaining national recognition in recent years and expanding their businesses beyond small-scale production.  The municipality’s current tourism plan, according to Galán, includes creating hiking routes that incorporate visits to local producers of both products that will hopefully attract new tourists from Veracruz and beyond.

According to Galán, the tourism office is working with the agriculture development office to help local distilleries that make different types of the liquor, usually with a base of cane sugar alcohol, have their production evaluated and receive official recognition as masters of their trade from the state Tourism Ministry.

“We have 11 to 15 [producers] that have joined, and from there we are inviting more because there are some that make the product but don’t have their own brand … what I want to do with the directors and my coworkers is  … that more keep joining the group of aguardiente producers,” Galán said.

There are also 40 regional coffee producers, from simple set-ups where farmers are drying coffee on the outdoor patios of their houses, to award-winning coffee producers that are creating new local brands. According to Galán, there is already a coffee route where local guides take visitors to visit producers and the tourism office is looking to expanded and formalize that trail.

The tourism office is planning for these routes to be established by the end of 2023 and connect 33 communities within the municipality.

With reports from Diario de Xalapa