Aguacasado de CEnizo - el Venado

Batch: D-AC-02

Release date: El Camion & The Pink Chihuahua Exclusive Batch

If you travel to Durango in search of mezcal, your first stop is likely to be Nombre de Dios. But drive the steep dirt tracks an hour south and you’ll find the tiny community of El Venado, which has is own particular style.

This tiny batch of the local ‘Aguacasado’ has been bottled exclusively for El Camion Soho.

Unlike the maguey Azul (A.Tequilana) used to make Tequila, or most of the maguey Espadín (A.Angustifolia) used to make most mezcal, which is cultivated and grown in uniform plots, the majority of maguey Cenizo (Agave Durangensis) is still harvested from wild crop.

These wild plants will have more genetic diversity and more variation of flavour based on the specific terroir of the spot where they spent their years growing - typically 10 for wild Cenizo to mature.

For this batch, once they arrived at the palenque, the Cenizo piñas were roasted in this earthen pit with for 3 days with pine wood and volcanic rock.

The roasted agave was then chopped by axe and milled with the wood chipper before being fermented for 3-days in the quintessential Durango style wells. These are a series of relatively small capacity in-earth ‘graves’ lined with wood. The natural insulation of the earth keeps the ferment from dying out in the often cooler northern climate.

Distillation in Durango is in this hybrid alembic-filipino style. It’s got the wooden filipino style top condensing pot that you’ll see in Michoacán to the south, but no condensing lid with water running into it, and no in-still capture system.

Instead the vapour is forced out of the wooden top pot into an attached serpentine coil in a cooling bath… the likes of which you would see with regular alembic distillation. The boiling pot is copper, and everything is double passed.

Given the defining feature of ‘filipino’ style distillation is the in-still capture, lets call this ‘Durango style alembic’

The wooden condensing chambers of these stills are known locally as ‘los viejitos’ (the old men), and they can be seen lazing around in rivers and wells between distillations, where producers store them to keep them from drying out and cracking, extending their working lives into old age.

Crucially for this batch of ‘Aguacasado’, on the second distillation 6 avocado stones / seeds were added the the boiling pot, along with 15 of the powerful avocado leaf (hoja de aguacate). These avocado leaves are common in Mexican cuisine and offer a herbal anise type flavour.

Tasting notes: Rustic, sweet, herbaceous from the hoja de aguacate.

This batch has been bottled exclusive for El Camion.

For a capita, head to the bar in Soho.

Continue your agave spirits journey via the Mezcal Appreciation Society: