(AP) — This April 2011 photo shows workers at Destileria la Fortaleza, the last distillery in Tequila that still uses a tahona, a giant lava stone, to crush the juices from the baked agave, in Mexico.
Here the juice is being pumped into a wooden fermentation vat, where it will spend about a week as the sugar ferments into alcohol. Tequila consumption has increased 45 percent in the U.S. over the past five years. It's no wonder, then, that the country is waking up to the tourism power of tequila, the drink, and Tequila, the place — the center of the farming region of the prickly Weber blue agave plants from which the spirit is distilled. (AP Photo/Tracie Cone)
