Tobala, Tepextate, Cuishe - Amatlán

Batch: NGG-07

Release date: Sautter Cigars Exclusive Batch

At a glance:

  • Maguey: Tobala (A. Potatorum), Tepextate (A. Marmorata), Cuishe (A. Karwinski)
  • Producer: Nicolas Garcia Gutierrez
  • Region: San Luis Amatlán, Miahuatlán District, Oaxaca
  • Cooking: Classic in-earth horno: 1 week roast
  • Milling: Machete & Shredder
  • Fermentation: 1 week in open-air wooden tina with spring water
  • Distillation: Double pass in copper alembic
  • Composition: Heads, hearts and tails
  • Batch size: 50 litres
  • Date of production: 2016
  • ABV: 48.5%
  • Special notes: 7 year madurado

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).

  • A 15 litre bottle of mezcal that has been resting in since 2016

    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.

  • A group of distillery workers around an outdoor oven built for mezcal

    Pre-dawn, waiting for the rocks in the horno to heat

  • A group of men filling the outdoor oven with agave to make mezcal

    Community oven covering at sunrise

  • Almost breakfast time at the mezcal distillery

    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.

  • Jon Darby from the Sin Gusano project cutting agave with a Machete ready for the shredder to make mezcal

    Machete work

  • Agave chunks ready for the shredder during the process of making mezcal

    Agave chunks ready for the shredder

  • the agave Fermenting for the Tepextate - Amatlán mezcal

    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 to make the mezcal

    All the fibre goes in the still for the first pass

  • Swapping out the mash for mezcal production

    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).

Multicolumn

Multicolumn

Nicolas, the creator of the Tepextate - Amatlán mezcal

Gracias Nicolas

House Tasting Notes:

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.

A bottle of the Tobala Tepextate Cuishe mezcal made for the Sin Gusano project in collaboration with Sautter cigars

Only 29 bottles produced. Available exclusively at Sautter

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