Arroqueño y Tobala - Santa Catarina Minas

Batch: TPH-03

Release date: August 2026

At a glance:

  • Maguey: Arroqueño (A. Americana) y Tobala (A. Potatorum)
  • Producer: 'Tio' Pedro Hernandez
  • Region: Santa Catarina Minas, Ocotlán, Oaxaca
  • Cooking: Small in-earth horno
  • Milling: By hand with wooden mallet
  • Fermentation: Open air in wooden 'tina'
  • Distillation: Double distilled in small clay pots
  • Batch size: 150 litres
  • Date of production: November 2024
  • ABV: 49.2%

Santa Catarina Minas is a community very well known to many mezcal lovers. With a production style largely unchanged for hundreds of years, it's proximity to the city of Oaxaca, and its breakout stars like Eduardo Angeles of Lalocura, some of the worlds most sought after agave spirits are coming out of Minas.

We are very pleased to introduce this classic batch, our third from maestro 'Tio' Pedro.

Ocotlán valley in the dry season

Minas taxi

Ex-distillation pots in the milpa

This batch is a roughly equal mix by weight of maguey Arroqueño and maguey Tobala. Each mighty Arroqueño piña can weigh up to 500kg, while the Tobala is comparatively tiny, meaning a lot more Tobala plants were required.

The piñas were loaded into Tio Pedro's 3 tonne oven - a capacity rarely filled when producing his very small batches - and roasted for 4 days.

Milling in Minas is done the ancestral way - with just a well and a heavy wooden mallet for crushing the cooked agave.

The mighty Arroqueño

Pup guards Tobala amongst Tepextate

Preparing to roast at Tio Pedro's

Hand milling with mallets

Hand milling mallet & fermenting tina

Minas tina ferment with local well water

After a few days of open-air fermentation with local well water in the pine vats, or 'tinas', the resulting mildly alcoholic sour mash is double distilled in the famous Minas clay pots.

Tio Pedro upholds the tradition of hundreds of years, by using particular clay pots from the Oaxacan community of Santa María Atzompa. These pots offer an inescapable richness of flavour.

150 litres produced in November 2024.

The original.

Gracias 'Tio' Pedro

House Tasting Notes:

Nose: Heavy dose of wet potters clay on the wheel. Strong sense of sea air. Mild tones of cut grass.

First Sip: First attack is very dry, with lots of chalk and slate. Opening to sweeter notes of dried banana, which present themselves increasingly on return sips.

Finish: Reprise of the sea air with a maritime feel. Mild tingles from the high proof. Bit of healthy competition between the dry and the sweet as it fades pleasingly into mildly smoked clay.

On Return: Absolute win for the Minas heads.

Grab a bottle for your collection while stocks last:

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