We started the day with a very nice breakfast at the hotel: fresh fruit, good coffee, and a tamale with mole for me. We saw the fifth member of the merry band, Mary Lou B., for the first time in about a year.
A brisk walk brought us to where we joined three young people from San José for our mezcal tour. I think we lucked out: the regular guide, Antonio, seemed great, but our guide, Jordany, was a true mezcal fanatic. Trained as an automotive engineer at the university in Puebla, he worked for Volkswagen for a few years before following his heart—and his palate—to Oaxaca and life on a mezcal palenque. He cadged an invitation to work at a small family distillery in the village of Santiago Matatlan and began to learn how to make mezcal. He has since worked at three other palenques, including one in Durango state and one in Chihuahua state, serving as technical consultant and a Mescalero in his own right.
He was currently working in another family palenque, Real Matlatl, and we all piled into a van for the ride up into this high, lovely valley. At the palenque we had an extensive introduction to the main varieties of agave that grow in the Tlacolula valley and to the preparation of the agave hearts. This is the pit in which the hearts are roasted.
The hearts are then chopped into smaller pieces and ground into a fibrous mess by a massive stone millwheel.
The fibrous mess is then dumped into a pine fermentation tank and allowed to ferment through. This is what the cap looks like. There is no temperature control: they just watch it bubble, and punch down the cap one time during fermentation. You begin to see why every batch tastes different!
Real Matlatl makes both artisanal and ancestral mezcal. Artisanal mezcal undergoes a double distillation in copper stills. You are looking at just the covers for the stills, each of which holds 300 liters.
At Real Matlatl, ancestral distillation uses a first distillation in copper stills and then a second one in clay jugs holding 80 liters. At a palenque like Real Minero, both distillations take place in clay.
They also add some unusual elements to their distillates (I‘m bringing versions of this mezcal to selected friends and family):
Top that, Vladimir!
We started off by tasting some mezcals aged in French oak barrels: a joven, a reposado, and an anejo. Pleasant, but with decreasing amounts of agave flavor. Here is Mary Lou showing us how to do it.
We then went upstairs to the bar and worked our way through nine more varieties. Here‘s the list for the geeks among you (the numbers are alcohol percentages):
Espadin 40
Espadin Olli de Barro (ancestral) 45
Espadin Pechuga de guajolote 48 *
Tepextate 48
MadreCuiche (Karwinski) 48 *
Tobala 48
Jabali 48 *
Cerrudo 48
Ensemblem 48
The first three are all espadin, the most common variety of agave. The third bottle, the Pechuga, had been distilled by Jordany himself. He had included a wide variety of fruits…and an entire turkey (minus feathers and skin). It was extraordinary…and we‘re bringing home a bottle.
The next five are all wild varieties of agave. We all loved the Madrecuiche and the Jabali.
Here is Jordany getting things set up.
And here he is with his pride and joy, his turkey pechuga.
Because the crushing floor at Real Matlatl with its enormous millstone was driven by a gas powered machine, we visited a second nearby palenque, El Rey Zapoteca, where a horse turned the stone. This one is for you, Viv, Iggles, and Nathaniel!
We tried a few of their products, too…but only for the purpose of scientific comparison. Jordany told me that they made his favorite espadin in all of Oaxaca, and it was really great.
We then headed back to Tlalocula for a late lunch at a wonderful little restaurant, Casa Tierra, run as a kind of collaborative project by a bunch of young people: terrific moles, chorizo, and several variations of tlayudas and quesadillas new to us.
We finished the meal with, what else, some new distillations. Antonio brought over his own creation, an Espadin infused with cannabis. It was actually pretty interesting, with a lingering and very pleasant vegetal taste.
Then Jordany shared two more of his own distillations, which he had made while working in the mountains in Chihuahua. Sotol is distilled from a completely different plant, one of the 16 varieties of the Dasylirion. The first sotol was straight: a bit sweeter than mescal, a bit more rustic, but delicious. The second one was a pechuga sotol, this time with a haunch of venison…also intriguing and really tasty.
It had already been a long day, but Jordany wanted to introduce us to a weaving family with whom he was friends. We saw the demonstration of the carding and spinning of the wool, and the production of native dyes that we had seen on the last trip, but this time without any hype or salespitch, just love of what Donna Elvira was doing.
Mary Lou bought a gorgeous hanging with a bird motif (Sue was tempted), and we took photos of a rug that we think Sarah would love.
We didn‘t get back to Oaxaca until after seven, tired but exuberant. After a siesta, David, Sue and I went to the Zocalo, sat in a restaurant on a balcony overlooking the square and watched the dancing, happy crowds. You can‘t ask for a more splendid day.
