Pechuga de piña - amatengo

It’s always a pleasure to return to this community and visit the Ramírez family. Luis, his father Sergio, and mother Sara, are excellent hosts and make excellent spirits.

Spirits here are made in the quintessential style of Ejutla, detailed below. In recent years Luis has been experimenting with fruit. For this delightful high proof batch, 350kg of small and sweet criollo pineapples were added to the boiling pot of an unusual extra distillation.

Most communities in the central valleys of Oaxaca double distil using coper alembics (with a couple of exceptions, most notably the famous clay pot distillation of Santa Catarina Minas). However in San Agustín Amatengo and most of Ejutla, producers create a 2-in-1 distillation using a ‘refrescadera’ method.

This smart distillation set-up has a reflux plate installed inside the otherwise regular domed copper top chamber of the still. That dome also has an outer casing that’s filled with water during distillation, keeping it cooler.

When the rising vapours hit that relatively cool internal plate, they re-condense and drop back into the still to vaporise again before escaping into the cooling coil.

This reflux action means the liquid that runs off the still has effectively been double distilled - referred to locally as a 2-in-1 distillation.

Knowing when to refresh (refrecador) the liquid in the water bath is key to the process working properly.