Jalisco’s pajarete drink gains strength in the IE’s nostalgia market

Pajarete, a drink made with raw milk mixed with chocolate and 96 proof cane alcohol that is consumed at the start of the day, is a tradition from rural Mexico that is also popular in Inland Empire ranches. 

10 miles northeast of Fontana, considered a semirural environment of San Bernardino County, you can find Muscoy. It’s a community of ranches and other large homes with large patios and lots of space, some of it designed for cattle breeding. 

It is on one of these ranches in which the pajarete tradition developed, to the point of becoming a party of a clandestine nature. The party starts at dawn and this mythic drink is the main star, but there are many other elements added that enrich the environment, like banda music, food vendors and buckets of cold beer that make their way to the attendees.

On any given Sunday, at 8:00 in the morning, the party at Don Cornelio’s ranch has started. A few yards before crossing the main entrance, a man with a worn out hat and boots stained with manure lets the cars in that are just arriving. There is no guaranteed place to park, but the cars continue to enter. Cowboys, children, women, young and old start coming out of the cars, all with the purpose of joining the party.

Inside the place, the atmosphere is enlivened by a small group of musicians playing tuba, snare, clarinet and a drum with a lot of lung power, trying to emulate the complete experience of a Sinaloense banda. They get some extra support from speakers that hang from a low ceiling, emitting a loud boom. Under the roof we find a paved path that acts as a dance floor, which also has dozens of tables and chairs for the attendees.

The tables are filled with styrofoam cups bubbling with the famous spirited chocolate drink that people came looking for.

The main action is found on the crossing of the plaza, on the way to the stable. There, on top of two tables, Don Cornelio improvised a collecting station, where you pay $12 for an empty styrofoam cup. Right next to the station, on a wooden plank, there are two glass containers with a mix of sugar and chocolate. For the ones that look for a less conventional flavor, there is instant coffee and a lighter to flame up what will later be a pajarete, but before that, the stimulating ingredient that will heat up this drink … the 96 proof alcohol. Several bottles are placed on a table and whoever wants to taste a pajarete can pour it themselves at will and without limit.

Once the measure has been set, the next step is to go into the stable with the cowboy that is milking the cow. After handing over the cup, this person proceeds by milking the cow with the natural manual process, and he hands over the filled-up cup. Now, with the pajarete in hand, they feel a part of the community that feels nostalgia for their rural environment and even if all seems to point out that the alcohol is the main element, a good amount of attendees try to connect with their roots. The kids can interact with cows, goats and horses. It is even common that the little ones drink raw milk with chocolate. There is also regional music and birria tacos are available for sale. 

At 10:00 in the morning, Don Cornelio’s wife, who is in charge of one of the collecting stations, starts picking up the bottles of alcohol and the chocolate mixtures. Even if the party continues until three o’clock in the afternoon, the host said that Sunday there would be no more pajaretes, since the milk production ran dry, therefore whoever wants alcoholic beverages can continue to drink Modelos and Gran Centenario tequila. 

She mentioned that her family is from the state of Nayarit and explained that from Monday to Friday, the couple welcomes people at their ranch p looking to have a “pajarete” for breakfast starting at five in the morning. Generally, the people that arrive are workers. They also offer breakfast, whatever the husband makes, sometimes chilaquiles, sometimes eggs, whatever there is to share. 

Pajarete and its history 

Pajaretes originate from Jalisco and consumed in neighboring states such as Nayarit and Michoacán. Its history goes back to the cowboys in charge of milking the cows before there were machines for it, as journalist Conrado Vázquez Martínez points out.

Known for his career in agricultural communication, Vázquez Martínez said the tradition of drinking pajaretes started when cowboys had to extract milk manually. In some ranches, more than 100 cows were milked from the time that the shift started around 6 in the morning.

In the regions where the stables were located, the weather was very cold, and the cowboys had to have skilled hands to perform the labor. That’s why they opted for consuming pajaretes and that way they could warm their bodies, the journalist mentioned, since the drink has several properties due to the chocolate’s carbohydrates and the natural lactose in the raw milk, as well as the effects that alcohol produces, which includes inhibiting appetite.

As for the alcoholic beverage, with the passage of time and the modernization of the process of milking, the pajarete was not consumed for nearly 30 years, Vázquez Martínez said. But in Jalisco, it seems lately that the traditional way has been popularized by those who want to drink it before starting their shift at work. 

On the economic side, the pajarete in Mexico is also profitable for producers. A liter of raw milk is sold for approximately eight pesos. At the same time a pajarete sold at a ranch in the Atenguillo community of Jalisco costs around 60 pesos.

Are there places in Jalisco with banda music, food and beer that also sell pajaretes? 

“In Mexico, it is not customary to pair the pajarete with a party. The people that drink pajaretes do it as a tradition, before work, very early in the morning as they milk the cows, with a cowboy that is regularly a nice guy and known around town,” Vázquez Martínez says. “It seems [that] in the United States, the pajarete has turned into a product [for the] nostalgia’s market.” said. 

The drink of death

The rise of social media also helped popularize the consumption of pajarete, as content creators, as well as some websites, have called it "the drink of death."

Although one might think that this name comes from the consumption of raw milk, it was proven that deaths related to the consumption of pajaretes in Mexico have been related to the mixture of adulterated alcohol and not raw milk.

Still, drinking raw milk could have serious health consequences, according to information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC recommends against consuming raw milk contaminated with live A(H5N1) virus as a way to develop antibodies against A(H5N1) virus to protect against future disease. Consuming raw milk could make you sick.

According to the CDC, drinking or eating products made with raw milk can expose people to germs such as Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, Listeria, Brucella and Salmonella .

Some groups, such as children under 5, adults over 65, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems, are at higher risk for serious illness from these germs.

A CDC report noted that symptoms of raw milk food poisoning can include diarrhea, stomach cramps, and vomiting. In some cases, more serious consequences can occur, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome or hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can lead to paralysis, kidney failure, stroke, or even death.