Out of the valley in restored pick-ups, into the maguey, and into a palenque where the roast is still done in a stone pit. You taste what does not get bottled.
Two restored trucks, north out of the valley. Coffee and pan dulce for the road as the agave country opens up.
You walk the rows with the maestro. He cuts a piña open so you can taste the sugar raw, before anything has happened to it.
The stone oven comes up in front of you — smoke, wet earth, cooked agave. This is where the smoke in the glass actually comes from.
Tasting straight from the copper. Batches of thirty or forty litres that never leave the hill and were never going to.
Lunch cooked over the same coals — barbacoa, salsas ground by hand, tortillas made at the table.
A final flight chosen for what you liked. You return with the light behind you.
A palenque is a working farm building, usually family-owned, often without a sign. The maestro is a farmer as much as a distiller — he decides when the agave is ready, which can mean waiting eight years for espadín or twelve to fifteen for tobalá.
What you taste there is not what reaches a bar. Most of it is never bottled: a run of forty litres, drunk locally, gone. The full explanation of how mezcal is made sits on our craft page, and it is worth reading before you go.
You are also tasting at the source of the smoke. Mezcal is smoky because the agave is roasted in a pit lined with hot rocks for three to five days before it is ever crushed. Standing next to that pit when it opens explains the drink better than any tasting note.
The house uses restored pick-ups rather than a van, and that is not decoration. The last stretch is unpaved, the windows are open, and the change from city to agave country happens at a speed you can watch.
Nobody at the table drives. There is a driver for the day and the return is unhurried, which matters on an afternoon built around tasting.
This runs in daylight and depends on weather. In the rainy season, roughly June to September, the house may move you to another date rather than take you up a track that has washed out.
There is real walking, on uneven ground, in sun. Bring a hat. Boots or trainers, not the shoes you brought for dinner.
Everyone leaves with a bottle from a batch you tasted, which in most cases you could not buy anywhere.
Between ninety minutes and two hours each way, depending on which palenque is producing that week. Transport both ways is part of the afternoon.
No. Tequila is a mezcal made only from blue weber agave in a defined region, usually steamed in ovens. What you see here is pit-roasted, small-batch, and often from wild agave.
You leave with a bottle. Beyond that it depends on the batch — many are too small to sell, which is rather the point.
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Read moreOut of the valley in restored pick-ups, into the maguey, and into a palenque where the roast is still done in a stone pit. You taste what does not get bottled.
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