Verde - la Constancia

Batch: D-MS-01

Release date: August 2023

At a glance:

  • Maguey: Verde (A. Salmiana)
  • Producer: Manuel Simental
  • Region: La Constancia, Durango
  • Cooking: 3 days over hot rocks in earthen horno
  • Milling: By hand with axe
  • Fermentation: 3-4 days in 'coffin' style wood lined in-earth pits
  • Distillation: Double pass in Durango style hybrid (see below)
  • Composition: Heads, hearts and tails
  • Batch size: 100 litres
  • Date of production: November 2021
  • ABV: 48.8%

A short way north off the highway from Nombre de Dios, Durango’s spirits production hub, sits the community of La Constancia, within which Manuel Simental works Vinata ‘Mal Pais’.

We’re very pleased to have met Manuel during our Durango travels, and to represent his work with this 100 litre batch of Agave Salmiana from November 2021.

‘Verde’ is one of those confusing maguey names that’s quite widely used as a colloquial name for various agaves endemic to different regions. In Oaxaca it will most likely be in reference to agave Karwinski, whereas in the costal parts of Jalisco it’s a variety of Angustifolia used to make raicilla. Here in Durango, it’s agave Salmiana.

  • Mighty Agave Salmiana used for mezcal

    Mighty Agave Salmiana

  • Oven at vinata Mal Pais for mezcal

    Oven at vinata Mal Pais

  • Roasted agave waiting to be axed for mezcal

    Roasted agave waiting to be axed

While it can be an enormous plant to behold (growing some 2 metres tall in its up to 20 year lifespan), agave Salmiana is relatively low on sugar content and therefore low yielding. Roughly four times the weight of Salmiana hearts are required to produce the same quantity of mezcal as Espadín.

The resulting spirits tend to be green and vegetal in flavour.

Production here is in the Durango style: agaves are quartered with an axe and roasted for 3 days in an earthen oven before being mashed entirely by axe. Mashed agave is fermented with local well water for 3-4 days in the coffin style in earth wells. It can get cold here in the northern parts of Mexico, and these wood walled vats use the earth to provide natural insulation, ensuring the ferment doesn’t die out.

  • Fermentation pits - note the puffer jacket (it can be cold up north) for mezcal

    Fermentation pits - note the puffer jacket (it can be cold up north)

  • an axe laying in agave for mezcal production
  • agave Fermenting for mezcal

    Fermenting

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.

The defining feature of ‘filipino’ style distillation is arguably the in-still capture. So lets call this ‘Durango style alembic’

  • Manuel & Jon at the still waiting for the mezcal to be made

    Manuel & Jon at the still

  • Fermentation wells & 2x stills for mezcal production

    Fermentation wells & 2x stills

  • In the bodega for mezcal

    In the bodega

  • Looking up into the Dalek chamber used for making mezcal

    Looking up into the Dalek chamber

Multicolumn

Multicolumn

Manuel, creator of the Verde - la Constancia mezcal

Gracias Manuel

House Tasting Notes:

Nose: Big. Very big, with lush green and vegetal yet herbaceous wafts that fill the nostrils. There’s a woody sweetness hidden down there below the powerful fauna on top. From first nose you know something special is coming your way.

Palate: Dryer than expected on first sip. All of those vegetal and herbaceous tones collide into a peppery flavour explosion in the mid-palate. Green jalapeño come to the party in the back end. Slowly fades into a dry finish.

Further thoughts: Sweet woody tones detected on the nose are accentuated with time in the glass. Holds up superbly over a big pour. Extremely moreish. We’re doing the mezcal dance for this one!

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