In San Luis Amatlán, in the Miahuatlán district of southern Oaxaca, you’ll find Nicolas Garcia Gutierrez and family making exceptional agave spirits.
We have been visiting and sourcing from the family since 2016. This was one of the very first batches we bought. It’s been resting in glass for 7 years - a process that rounds the flavour, knows as ‘madurado’ (matured).
The bottle these 15 litres have been resting in since 2016
Nicolas makes true community spirits. While cultivating various species of agave in his own nursery and land, he also has arrangements with family and friends in neighbouring communities to exchange agave for finished mezcal.
When it’s time do the heavy manual labour of building the oven with wood and rocks, and then covering it with the agave, the community comes to help and receives a hearty breakfast when it’s done.
Pre-dawn, waiting for the rocks in the horno to heat
Community oven covering at sunrise
Almost breakfast time
The agave was roasted in an earthen horno before being milled by machete and mechanical chipper. The milled roasted agave was then left in large open air wooden tubs, or ‘tinas’, with the addition of local well water, to interact with the airborne yeasts and naturally ferment for around 6 days.
Machete work
Agave chunks ready for the shredder
Fermenting
Then the sour fermented mash, at this point around 10% alcohol, was loaded bit-by-bit into the boiling chamber of the still. It will take multiple fills of the still to use all the mash in the fermentation tub. And Nicholas employs a very old school technique of adding a little of the first pass, or ‘ordinario’ distillate back into the boiling chamber with each new fill of ferment.
All the fibre goes in the still for the first pass
Swapping out the mash
Everything in this batch was ultimately at least double passed (some triple, when you take into account that old-school technique). After the second distillation the batch was proofed with puntas and colas (heads and tails).
Gracias Nicolas
Profile overview: Salty, mineral, vegetal
Tasting notes: Powdered chocolate on first nose, with rich earthy tones opening as it aerates in the glass. The first drops to hit the palate are powerfully vegetal, with a sweet mustiness building into the mid palate. By the finish it’s become more oaky and honeyed. Spectacularly complex, yet rounded and mellow from the years spent in glass. Certainly one to contemplate slowly with a good cigar.
Only 29 bottles produced. Available exclusively at:
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