CENIZO - el Venado

Batch: D-FGC-01

Release date: October 2025

Felix, creator of the CENIZO - el Venado mezcal
Felix, creator of the CENIZO - el Venado mezcal

At a glance:

  • Maguey: Cenizo (A. Durangensis)
  • Producer: Felix Galarza Cruz
  • Community: El Venado, Durango
  • Cooking: 3 day roast in pit oven heated by volcanic rock
  • Milling: Axe & wood chipper
  • Fermentation: 3 days in small, open-air, sabino wood-lined, troughs
  • Distillation: Double pass in Durango style hybrid alembic
  • Batch size: 70 litres
  • Date of production: September 2023
  • ABV: 46.2%

With this release we bring a maguey Cenizo (Agave Durangensis) back into the range, while also re-visiting the tiny community of El Venado, Durango.

We released a Sotol from a different producer in the community at the start of 2025. But we’d have never made it back up the steep un-paved path out of valley El Venado sits in, if it wasn’t for this man.

Pleased to introduce Felix Garcia Cruz.

El Venado sits in a valley about an hour south of Nombre de Dios (Durango’s more well known mezcal town). With 5 Vinatas, about the same number of families, and very little else, it’s a tiny place that we’ve found to punch well above its size and notoriety when it comes to tasting the spirits produced there.

The journey was too much for our hire car, which har to be towed out by Felix and his camioneta.

Tiny El Venado

Trying to cool the hire car as it’s towed out of town by Felix

Cenizo (Agave Durangensis) is the workhorse maguey of Durango - to the point it’s named after the state. It’s not cultivated to quite the same extent as Espadín down in Oaxaca. And certainly nowhere near how Azul is propagated for Tequila in Jalisco. But cultivation efforts are expansing rapidly.

In broad terms Cenizo takes around 10 years to reach maturity, or course depending on its specific environment and growing conditions.

Semi-wild, almost mature Cenizo

Cenizo close up

Baby Cenizo

Felix in his agave nursery

When we first met Felix, in mid-2023, he was putting the finishing touches on the newest vinata in the village. Until that point he had rented the cooperative vinata of the community.

Felix’s production follows the traditional style of the region. After shallow fermentation, distillation is in the quintessential Durango still - a hybrid alembic-filipino with a copper boiling pot and a wooden top chamber that feeds out to a serpentine coil.

Ferment stirring stick at Felix’s new Vinata

Felix’s new single still vinata

Classic Durango still

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.

Gracias Felix

House Tasting Notes:

Nose: Tropical fruit, like over-ripe pineapple. There’s a mild hard cheese in there - one that’s melted like a raclette in Swiss alpine chalet.

Palate: Loads of chocolate on the first sip. Mid-palate becomes quite meaty - almost like a peppercorn steak sauce.

Finish: Warm and easy with more mountain restaurant vibes. That raclette cheese, chocolate, and peppercorn has all combined to become a rich beef stew. Very moreish indeed.

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