Video Category: Mezcal

Almost every great spirit got bastardized when it became commercialized. Los Danzantes has spent huge effort keeping the process absolutely/purely authentic. This is long but worth watching. Their blanco (las Nahuales in the USA) is very, very good.

 

Los Danzantes has spent a couple of years organizing their distillery so that they can produce commercial amounts of mezcal without abandoning artisan methods.

Los Danzantes has spent a couple of years organizing their distillery so that they can produce commercial amounts of mezcal without abandoning artisan methods.

Karina Abad of Los Danzantes telling me about using using the Hoga pot still (the one we shipped to them) for the second distillation of mezcal from the elegant agave tobalá: more finesse. This has a lot to do with the condensing coil.

Tasting a distillation run of wild agave tobalá coming off the Hoga still at the Los Danzantes distillery in Santiago Matatlan, outside Oaxaca City. No agave makes better mezcal than the small and wild tobalá: elegant, refined, beautifully flavored.

Tasting a first distillation run coming off a still at the Los Danzantes distillery in Santiago Matatlan, outside Oaxaca City. The first run is always very sweet, and ever so soft.

After a first distillation run at Los Danzantes. Ernesto is pitchforking the solids out, cleaning the still for the next rum. Distilling the solids makes the mezcal richer, more complex, and gives it the characteristic vegetal overtones of artisan mezcal.

Moving the milled agave solids to the still at Los Danzantes. Distilling with solids is more difficult (they want to cook to the inside of the still), but adding them makes the mezcal richer, more complex, and gives it the typical vegetal overtones of artisan mezcal. It’s a lot of work.