Mexican Spirits: The State of the Art
by Jay Erisman, EQ Wine and Spirits Manager
First printed in our Fall 2007 Drinks magazine, this post recounts my trip to Mexico with our tobacconist Eric Brown in May of ‘07. I’ll post future articles on both the El Tequila of Carlos Camarena and the palenqueros of Oaxaca. But the short version is this: there is no more skilled or passionate Tequila producer than Carlos Camarena; and possibly the only Mexican spirits that surpass his El Tesoro Tequila are the single village mezcals of Del Maguey. Visit again next week for a look at our new favorite Tequila.
Our recent tour of Mexico will last forever as one of the great cultural experiences of our lives, filled with warm and friendly people, fantastic food and a colorful aesthetic sensbility everywhere we turned. But for sure the highlights of the trip were the distilleries. From the flat-out best Tequila distillery to mind-bending tours of four single village Mezcal producers, we found the state of this Mexican art to be perhaps the most traditional of all the spirits in the world.
Shortly after meeting Carlos Camarena, I decided he is a really cool guy. The passion he holds for his ultra-traditional El Tesoro 100% Agave Tequila comes burning off him like the steam that fires his old-fashioned agave ovens. Following in his father Don Felipe’s footsteps, Carlos does things with Tequila that other distillers consider insane. Carlos’ estate-grown blue agave plants are the ripest in the industry, and the workers laboriously trim by hand the part of the male plant that creates bitter flavors in the finished product.
He persists in crushing the cooked agave (baked three days in brick ovens) with a giant millstone (as opposed to a modern mechanical shredder). Unlike nearly all other Tequila producers, Señor Camarena ferments his agave totally naturally, with no added chemical fermentation accelerators. He then distills the fermented juice with the agave fibers for added flavor, in pot stills so small they could fit in the back of an SUV. All this obsessive attention to detail leads to the most flavorful Tequila we’ve ever had, bar none.
But Tequila country did not prepare us for the Del Maguey Single Village Mezcal producers in Oaxaca. I was acquainted with the traditional production methods used by such Mezcal masters as Paciano Cruz Nolasco of San Luis del Rio, hand-crafted in a remote mountain village. But to actually see these rustic, pre-industrial distilleries in operation was totally amazing. In the village of Minero, Florencio Sarmiento uses a clay still with a unique design of ancient Chinese origin. Florencio’s distillery is also the only one we saw that used electricity, with a small pump circulating cold water to the internal condenser bowls in his far-out stills. Like El Tesoro, all Del Maguey Mezcals are 100% natural with no added flavors or chemicals used in production. And now having been there, I can better appreciate where the potent, smoky flavor of these Mezcals comes from. If they are drop for drop the most intensely flavored spirits in the store, surely that reflects in part the rugged land—and the hand of the maker—from which they spring.
Tags: del maguey, el tesoro, mexico, mezcal, tequila