Tobala - Amatlán

Batch: NGG-10

Release date: June 2025

At a glance:

  • Maguey: Tobala (A. Pototorum)
  • Producer: Nicolas Garcia Gutierrez
  • Region: San Luis Amatlán, Miahuatlán District, Oaxaca
  • Cooking: Classic in-earth horno, 2-week roast
  • Milling: Machete & Shredder
  • Fermentation: Slatted wooden tinas, with well water
  • Distillation: Double pass in copper alembic
  • Batch size: 78 litres
  • Date of production: September 2021
  • ABV: 47.6%

In San Luis Amatlán, in the Miahuatlán district of southern Oaxaca, you’ll find Nicolas Garcia Gutierrez and family making exceptional agave spirits.

Nicolas’ 100% Tobala has become as close to anything gets as core to the Sin Gusano range. There remain remarkable nuances between vintages, and this late-summer 2021 distillation might be our favourite one yet.

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 wild 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.

  • Group of people standing around an outdoor oven of rocks in an outdoor setting with trees and mountains in the background.

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

  • People working with large agave plants covering an oven for the agave to cook and make mezcal outside

    Community oven covering at sunrise

  • Group of people working outdoors with tools and equipment on a sunny day on a mezcal distillery

    Almost breakfast time

The maguey tobala in this batch were roasted along with a mix of agaves that filled the oven at the time, in August 2021. They remained underground for 14 days before being chopped into fist size chunks by hand with a machete, and then fed through a 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.

  • using machetes to cut up the agave ready to make the mezcal

    Machete work

  • Agave chunks ready for the shredder to make Mezcal

    Agave chunks ready for the shredder

  • 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.

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.

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).

  • Two men working with large barrels in an outdoor setting to make Mezcal for the Sin Gusano project
  • Man in a cowboy hat using a large metal container to handle all the fibre goes in the still for the first pass

    All the fibre goes in the still for the first pass

  • Swapping out the mash for the Tobala - Amatlán, Batch: NGG-10 exclusive to Sin Gusano

    Swapping out the mash

Multicolumn

Multicolumn

Nicolas, creator of the Tobala - Amatlán using a green funnel to transfer mezcal from a large container into a smaller one in a room.

Gracias Nicolas

House Tasting Notes:

Nose: Those who have come to know and love Nicolas’ spirits in Amatlán along with us will have come to expect salty minimality upfront, and this is no exception. Umami, saline, and very light on the smoke scale. There’s a background mustiness in there waiting to be discovered on the pallet.

Palate: Yes indeed, that salinity carries straight through to first sip before a mineral mustiness overtakes the mid-palate. Woody, mossy, forest floor becomes a little leathery before a dry bite on the back end.

Finish: Spicy sweet & sour tingles ultimately finishing dry. The continuation of a classic.

Tobala - San Luis Amatlan limited release mezcal bottling only available at Sin Gusano

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