Destilado de Agave Madrecuixe 'Oaxaca'

• Destilado de Agave produced in Miahuatlán, Oaxaca
• Maestro Mezcalero Sosimo Jarquín
• Distilled from 100% Madrecuixe Tumbado (A. karwinskii)
• Cooked slowly for one week in a conical earthen oven
• Milled by hand with mallet
• Fermented in traditional pine tanks (tinas)
• Single distillation in red copper pot still with external condenser (refrescadera)
• Fibrous and vegetal aromas of corn silk and snap pea hull, boiled peanuts and celery salt, with a mildly maritime palate that evokes paprika, tobacco leaf, salt water taffy, carrot cake, and an old-timey barbershop (in the best way)
• 50.1% ABV

Sosimo Jarquín’s mezcales have long been some of the most distinct and arresting batches we’ve experienced, regularly redefining for us what Agave karwinskii in particular can express in the hands of a true maestro.  

Sosimo distills only alone or with his son. The careful patience and solitude of their craft have become something of a trademark. The Jarquin family are farmers and produce their distillate slowly, leaving most of their time to other crops and farm work, which in turn allows the agaves to further develop and deepen their sugars, and their process takes 5 to 6 months (while most producers in Oaxaca turn a batch around in about a month). We’ve recently learned from Lamata founder Luis Loya that the name for this unusual process is tumbado.

Harvest takes place September through December, though some of the agaves have had their reproductive stalk—thequiote—cut months earlier (aka capón). The agaves are cut from the root but laid down and left resting in the fields until April, when Sosimo and his son return to collect them. Carried back to the family palenque, the agaves are cooked in a traditional earthen pit oven, long and slow for a week or more, following what Loya calls “an almost forgotten rhythm.”

After the oven, the agave rests again for over a month, beginning the process of dry fermentation, developing distinct bacteria and other microorganisms, sometimes forming mold of white or green on the exterior. The color of the resting fibers themselves signals when it is time to continue the work. Milled by hand, using only a wooden mallet, the fibers are pounded in extraction, then naturally fermented with added well water in pine vats. The yield is finally introduced to an alembic pot still of red copper fitted with a refrescadera—a small external condensing chamber attached to the pot—that allows them to achieve their mezcal in a single distillation run. Sosimo does not drink and has no hydrometer; he measures his alcohol and knows his cuts by nose and eye alone, the knowledge of decades—the wisdom of generations—informing his final results.

Sosimo’s mezcales are consistently sublime.