Piña

The piña (Spanish for "pineapple," named for the resemblance the trimmed heart bears to that fruit) is the thick central stem of a mature agave once its leaves have been cut away by a jimador. It is not a root; it is a swollen stem that the plant has spent five to thirty years filling with fructans. Those fructans are the energy reserve the plant would otherwise spend on its quiote, and they are the entire reason the agave can be distilled.

A harvested piña weighs anywhere from 25 to 90 kg depending on species and maturity. A. tequilana piñas trend large and uniform; A. potatorum tobalá piñas can be a tenth that size. Once cut, the piña is split or quartered for cooking. Cooking, whether in an earthen pit (for mezcal), an autoclave or masonry oven (for tequila), converts the fructans into fermentable simple sugars through hydrolysis and Maillard chemistry. The cooked piña is then milled into bagazo and pressed for its juice. See the distillation chapter Part 2 for the cooking step in production context and the botany chapter for how the plant accumulates the sugars in the first place.