Distiller magazine

78 distiller grows agave azul for large firms. Currently exporting to California and Illinois, he also contracts for Duque Luciano, a bottling smokier than Saité. With wind blowing through dried corn stalks and the sounds of sheep nearby, I was welcomed to the 1,700 m altitude Los Jecales by Peña and his wife, Raffaela, with cups of Lobo de la Sierra raicilla. is was quickly followed by mugs of a hibiscus-raicilla cocktail. Geraldo shares how he first commercialized the operation in 2003, from what had long been a family tradition. In addition to a recently established cultivation site, he also harvests wildcrafted agave of 8–18 years of age. He slices each piña into 8–20 pieces, depending on size, and then moves the processed pieces to his home oven. He heats the agave pieces over an oak pit fire, covered with river rocks, where they are left to roast for three days. Once removed, they're crushed with a wood mallet and placed into a fermentation barrel. After 5–6 days of fermentation, the fiber/liquid combo goes into the still for 6 hours over a wood fire and is distilled at around 40% ABV. A gas-fired distillation is done for a second running, coming off at 75%. Along with a third proprietary distillate, a final blend is diluted to 40% with water sourced from a well on the property. Rio Chenery's Estancia label came to be in 2013, when he was a resident of Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood. "After a particularly cold New York City winter I decided to move to my mother's home in Puerto Vallarta to make our family's favorite agave spirit, to work with my hands in the countryside rather than at a computer all day in Manhattan." Soon after his visit, a second oven was completed, allowing him and his crew the flexibility of both 2.5 and 4.5- ton capacity ovens, with locally made clay amphora stills of 4 x 300 L and 5 x 400 L, plus 2 x 1,100 L oak fermentation vats. To supply this growth, Chenery's purchased a 115 ha swathe of nearby land where his wild agaves grow and has commenced planting maxi- miliana on it, and where the Aussie/Mexican intends to build a solar-powered distillery with a few visitor cabanas. Due to the high alcohol taxes and low aver- age incomes in Mexico, he only makes his 45% ABV version for export, a bonus considering the spirit's power and complexity over the standard 40% abv. Esteban Morales Garibi launched his La Venenosa Raicilla in the US in 2014 with Fidencio Spirits' Arik Torren his US importer. "After Oaxaca, Jalisco has the largest amount of agave products along with the greatest diversity of stills, most of which are fashioned by those who distill with them and with some relying upon technology relevant as long as 500 years ago: clay stills of varying types, hollowed-out tree trunks, inter- nal and external condensing stills, columns including the classic Coffey with many tweaks." Torren contin- ued enthusiastically, "It's the only category embracing single distillation with the variety of species, stills and distillation, terroir and personal touches leading to an algorithm allowing for an amazing number of expres- sions," claiming that Morales imparts no "house style," as each is chosen based upon Esteban's connection to the distiller. e Fair Trade-certified Sierra Occidental and Sierra Tigre are single distilled; the maximili- ana-founded Puntas is overproof at 63.3% and dou- ble distilled. "Tabernas" is an affordable bottling of 4,000 bottles sourced from varying distillers heeding Morales's personal tastes to build volume with a qual- ity product that changes when the batch is sold out. Chicago-based importer Juan Pablo Garciabueno's Puntagave brand is a "Costa," made from an earthen pit extraction, double distilled in a classic Filipino still under contract at Estancia. "We don't want to be excluded because our ounce prices are high in compar- ison to many of the better-known tequilas and mez- cals, and the smell and taste profiles are idiosyncratic enough!" Once selling as few as 40 cases annually when launching in 2001, "now I can sell that much Saité's stills

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