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 Albarradas is a remote community in the northern mountains of Oaxaca.
Mezcal production here is extremely small scale and traditional in style.

We’re very pleased to present our second bottling from young mezcalero Ever López. This is a fascinating batch, and we’re looking forward to sharing more of Ever’s work in the future.

The long road into Albarradas

Harvesting wild Sierra Negra

The piña of a single mature agave Americana can weigh up to 500kg

Huge, mature (20+ yr old) maguey Sierra Negra (Agave American) were wild harvested from the hills of the northern sierra.

Back at the palenque the piñas were roasted in a small conical oven, covered with banana leaves, as well as the leaves of the local tepejuaje tree.

Milling here is ancestral style – entirely by hand, using heavy wooden mallets to squash the cooked plants as soon as they can be removed from the oven.

Harvesting Tepejuaje

Loading agave Americana into the oven

Covering the oven with leaves

Hand milling with mallets

Bark added as nitrogen source to fermentation

Open-air rawhide ferment

The bark from that same tepejuaje tree is used here as an addition to the ferment.
In this high-altitude cloud forest environment, the bark is a source of nitrogen, stabilising the open air ferment through day-to-night temperature fluctuations.

Distillation is also the most rudimentary and ancestral ‘filipino’ style, with a double pass of small clay pots.

Palenque in the Sierra

Tiny clay pot still

Distilling

Batch sizes are tiny, with this September 2024 production clocking in at just 60 litres.

An incredibly special liquid.

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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