Salud

Salud ("health") is the standard Mexican toast, given on the first pour and often again with each subsequent round at a formal table. The full longer form is a su salud ("to your health") or salud, dinero, y amor ("health, money, and love"), but the single-word salud is what most drinkers say.

The ritual is short and consistent. Glasses are raised at the same height, eye contact is made with each person at the table in turn (this is taken seriously, and in some regions the omission of eye contact is held to invite seven years of bad luck or a worse fate at love, a superstition that has a Spanish-and-Italian-Catholic parallel rather than a pre-Hispanic root). The glasses may or may not be clinked: in a small group around a wooden table they often are; at a formal banquet they often are not. The first sip is taken together.

Salud applies across every Mexican drinking context: a bandera of tequila, a small veladora pour of mezcal, a jarra of pulque at a pulquería, a beer at a cantina, a carajillo after dinner. The toast is universal; what differs is the pacing of the drink that follows. With tequila and mezcal the sip after salud is small and slow; with a beer or a cantarito it is larger. The broader etiquette landscape, including the besos no tragos discipline for mezcal and the salt-and-lime question for tequila, is in the culture chapter.