On the tequila express: a once-humble country liquor brings photo-snapping tourists to town.

Spring-breakers who have passed out alter ten tequila shots might be satisfied to know that while it can be hazardous to your sobriety to drink Mexico's famous beverage, it can be physically perilous to make it.

The main ingredient, the blue agave, is hacked from the earth with a cua, a pole with a razor-sharp circular blade that looks more like a medieval weapon than a fainting tool. "You step too far forward, you cut the end of your feet off. You sharpen the blade clumsily, you end up with no fingers," says Jose Cruz Reinoso, a jimador, or agave cutter.

Cruz learned the trade from his father and grandfather, who also cut the automobile sized succulent (it's often mistakenly called a cactus) flourishing on the rocky hills around the town of Tequila, in western Mexico. Many of the practices used to make the potent liquor have not changed in centuries, The agave's core is still sliced from the earth by hand. Farmers grow agave on the slopes of rocky mountains, impenetrable to machines, so donkeys have to carry the loads down. Jimadores are rewarded for their dangerous work by getting a bit more than US$37 per day, ten times the minimum wage.

The explosion of the $6 billion global tequila market has transformed the town bearing its name. Tequila pilgrims flock to the mecca of Mexico's fiery beverage. While Cruz's forefathers worked uninterrupted under the shadow of the local volcano, Cruz has received visitors from around the world. Donning his sombrero and holding his cua, ire has posed fur photos with Japanese tourists and cut agave in front of German film crews.

The town boasts three tequila museums and numerous cantinas where "aficionados can choose from 793 brands of the head-spinning drink. The "Tequila Express" train takes visitors on tours of agave fields to the sounds of mariachis singing about the bravery of jimadores.

Small growers supplement their income by brewing up their own, stronger versions of tequila that they sell out of small shops lining the highways into the town, a practice tequila industry officials discourage. "There is no quality control. Having some of those drinks is like getting a cat shoved down your throat backwards" says Ramon Gonzalez, director of the Tequila Regulatory Council.

Surprise demand. Industry representatives say the rise in international tequila drinking was not the result of any clever marketing ploy but rather took them by surprise. A combination of factors created demand, including tourism, Mexican emigration to the United States, increased alcohol consumption by women and the acceptance of tequila by the Mexican mid die classes. In 1995, Mexico produced 104 million liters of its famous drink. Four years later, in 1999, it churned out 190 million liters and employed 36,000.

Tequila producers nevertheless were unable to meet the sudden demand. Outdated harvesting methods and long growth cycles--agave plants need seven to nine years to grow--held up production. The industry "also was hit by agave-eating bacteria, price wars between growers and bottlers and a 60% domestic tax that put tequila at double the price of rum, drying up local consumption. By 2002, production had fallen 26%, to 140 million liters.

Mexico's failure to quench the world's thirst for tequila has encouraged others to try their hand. More than 14,000 kilometers away in South Africa, Agave Distillers makes its own version of the Mexican beverage, which it calls Agave Sunrise. The company, in the city of Graaf-Reinet, is prohibited from calling their drink tequila since Mexico has controlled the name since 1997 under an origin rule much like that enjoyed by French champagne.

By the end of 2003, the South African company will be exporting its drink to the United States, which consumes 80% of tequila exports and spends $3 billion on the clear liquor. Keith McLachlan, director of Agave Distillers, says that if Agave Sunrise can capture 2% of the world market, it will post substantial profits. "The real proof of our product is the feedback People who drink it find it's just as good, in some cases superior (to the Mexican drink)," says McLachlan.

Mention of the South African drink makes most people in the town of Tequila screw their faces up and look like they've just drunk ten bottles of the stuff: Mexican tequileros say the taste of tequila derives from Jalisco's unique soil and volcanic rocks, and people from outside the area lack the culture to grow and distill it properly. "It's a passion that was given to the by my father and grandfather--the love of tequila, the love of the earth, the love of agave," says Eduardo Orendain Giovannini, president of the National Chamber of the Tequila Industry and whose family has had bottling plants in Tequila since 1840.

Nevertheless, Orendain says Mexican producers understand the challenge and are responding, investing to provide the world with all the tequila it can drink. Production will be back to 190 million liters by 2005 and there could be enough plants to double production to 380 million liters by 2010, Orendain says. Now, if only the spring-breakers can keep up.

IOAN GRILLO * TEQUILA, MEXICO