00:00 Tequila 1349 Origins You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We have a special episode today. All Things Agave was a few weeks ago at Lincoln Park, and Lexi and myself and Rob and Brad from the Whiskey Outline set up in Lincoln Park, right, Lexi? Oh, yeah. And yeah, it was great. And we interviewed some industry luminaries and talked to them about, we had importers and producers, different levels of the industry, talked about Tequila, Mezcal and other agave spirits. I know Lexi had a good time because she loves agave spirits. I do love agave spirits. We also got to try at the actual event, we got to try, was that roasted, freshly roasted? Freshly roasted, yes. Which is interesting. Yeah. Lizzy from Tequila 1349 talks about it. She brought some roasted agave with her from Mexico. It's pretty cool. All right, we're here for agave speed dating, which is what we a few weeks ago did with the whiskey speed dating at World of Whiskies. And now we're back for All About Agave, which is another Linkin Park location, usually in the summer, sometime in the summertime. This year, it's in early June. Late May, early June. And it's now one night instead of two, combining mezcal and tequila and other agave products. And Rob and Lexi are here with me. And why don't you introduce our guest? Or she can introduce herself. Yeah, go for it. Yes. And I'm so excited to be here. I am Lizzy Lopez. I am a farmer and founder of Tequila 1349. It's a small batch, additive-free. Women own tequila from the highlands of Jalisco. My town of Arambas, actually, to be exact. Yes. Perfect. You were telling me on the walk over here is where your family actually lives. Yes. They all live there. I lived there for 10 years and I came back to Chicago. And I go back now every three to four times a year now. Nice. But that's where the Tierra Roja comes from. And it's considered the land of tequila. Okay. Very cool. Awesome. Jalisco is where Queso Berria Tacos are from, right? Yes. Okay. Berria Tacos, I mean. Yes. They're in Guadalajara, which I don't know who made those. I don't like anything sheep, anything goat. I like the chicken. I like chicken or beef. Personally, I'm not really a goat guy. I'll take it all. Wait. I made them last week with jackfruit. Oh, yeah. You mentioned that. I did chicken a few weeks ago. It was great. Yeah. Everyone loved it. It's a huge breakfast item too in our town. I wonder if it's because everyone's hungover from the night before. Yeah. Something like quesadillas and tortas ahogadas and menudo. Excellent. Okay. Anyways. What is 1349? Where does that name come from? So that's the amount of plants I actually started with. I started with 1,349 plants coincidentally in 2016 when my dad gifted me an acre of land. As you know, just since he was doing this for all of my siblings and they all went on to build homes. And I was just so out in the outskirts that it just made sense to get into the agave production. And then when I, when I started it, I did it just as a lucrative way, you know, of eventually selling to accounts. My father's been in the industry for 37 years and he sells to major tequila brands that we all know today. And I remember at the time I didn't have, I have no money. So I'm like, I don't even know. I had enough money to prepare the soil, let alone the workers and machinery. And he was like, you know, whatever you have left over, just plan something, something. And I remember he assumed I start with maybe 1500. And when I got it certified and logged into the system, I realized it was only 1349. So I named it that way. And the coordinates around the label actually take you to my town, Aranjala Salisca, right in the middle. Oh, cool. Super cute. Your parents were farmers? They were agave farmers? My father is. Your father, okay. My father is an agave farmer. My grandfather was one before him. And Aranjala Salisca, that's really all there is to do. Either you're making tequila or you're making leathers. And 80% of worldwide exported tequila comes from our region alone. And did they ever make tequila? No, I'm the first one. Okay, so you're the first one. The trailblazer. I'm the first one. I mean, he's moonshined a few things back at home with some barrel experimentations, but I'm the first one. That's awesome. Very cool. Yeah. Yay. Well, let's try it. 4:16 Tequila 1349 Expressions Let's try it. Yeah, please. Let's start with the Blanca. It's been a very excited journey, I have to say. And it just came so organic. I figured it makes sense. My father is a farmer. My brother-in-law just opened up his own distillery and he used to work for Diageo under Don Julio. And he started his own bottling facility and now he's distilling. And, you know, all my siblings slowly have gotten into the business as well on the farming side. I'm the first one to bring Tequila to market. And it's only available in the US as well. I don't have it in Mexico. It's so wonderful. So what you're going to get here is a Blanco. This Blanco was made from five year old agave. And this is my favorite kind of profile because it's tequila in its purest form. You know, as much as I love rapasados and anejos, and you can do a lot of fun stuff with them, especially extra anejos, this is agave in its purest form. So I love the taste. It has a nice little bite to it. You can taste some of the peppercorn in it, a lime, a little bit of the red soil, the green pepper. If you swirl it around, it's really great on the nose. You can detect that nice like raw agave that you get like in the back. It's a double distilled obviously. And yeah, this was my first profile. I debuted to this three years ago, the first one I did. How did you decide on five year agave versus going more mature? Six, seven? The reason I didn't want to go mature is because then we were going to use it's sugar content. There's a misunderstanding that the older the agave is, the better. It's better for farmers because you get the most for your weight. It's bigger. But then after you're four, it stops producing sugar. So then it depends on what profile you're going for. In the Highlands, you'll notice that we have a little bit more fruitier tequila. And in the Lowlands, when they're more, they're a little bit more high in like minerality. It's, you know, we call it like the feminine tequila versus the masculine tequila. And I wanted something that was a little bit more forward in terms of like the jalapeno bite, the pineapple bite, a little bit more of those floral fruitier tones. Because then what happens, and you see this a lot with brands, that they're waiting longer. And you used to wait longer because it was a status thing to say I waited for a nine year plant, you know, for the weight of it. And now, you know, everyone's producing, so there's such a high demand that, you know, people started pulling early when there wasn't a demand. And what happens when you pull early, your agave plant is not ready. And then they find themselves injecting additives to bring in the flavors that it lacked because it wasn't left in the soil for long. I'm glad you brought that up. That's a hot button topic right now. Yes, it is. It really is. And let me tell you, it's infuriating to people in the industry who are a small batch because I mean, I fight all the time with my distiller about having a little bit more transparency, because now that Tequila Matchmakers program is not around to give that additive-free certifications. I recently actually was down there and I had a conversation with them about releasing our, it's called Orgo Naleptico sheet, which is basically the sheet that tells you everything that makes your tequila, your tequila. But it goes beyond the transparency of what you see on Tequila Matchmaker. And it's so great, but they can't do it for one, because if they do it for one, they have to do it for others, and not everyone wants that, because not everyone is transparent. It's just the industry that we're in. I always said there's tequila drinkers and then there's label consumers. Right. I like that. Cool. I like that. Yeah, this is like a classic tequila. It smells like a margarita, like a delicious margarita. It's also so clean. They have fruit. Clean, fruity, this would go well. I mean, it's great by itself, but it would go so well in any cocktail, because there's nothing overpowering about it that would take over. I think it just complements whatever you're putting in any kind of juice-based cocktail. Really? And it's funny, you mentioned margaritas, because that's the one cocktail I'll never make. Really? I'll never make it. I'm really careful about it. I'll make a margarita if I can make it from scratch, and I have to make it in my terms. That's how I do it. I do a lot of partnerships with different companies and charities and sponsorships and they always want to do a polymer margarita. And I'm like, let's talk. What do you like to do? What does this mean? I don't mind a margarita, but it has to be fresh squeezed lime juice. Exclusively. Exclusively, yeah. That's why I only do a Tommy's. So Tommy's margarita. Yes. And it has to be agave syrup. Yeah. And usually I like making my own, which by the way, guys, if you're sticking around for the tasting and I have, actually I brought back cooked agave off the brick oven from Mexico. It is so good. Really? You have some. I have some. I'm featuring today. If you guys haven't tried it, you have to. It is so delicious. I found a loophole to bring it through customs with proper documentation. Because I'm like, well, it's not plants or species. It's cooked right off the brick oven. I let it cool down. It was super airtight, packed in the factory. And then I brought it and I froze it and I just thawed it out this morning. Nice. You can try that. It's so delicious. It's the heart of it too. The actual heart of agave. And then the 1349 is 34.99 on our shelves. The Blanco. For the Blanco. What kind of cocktail do you like to make? What's your favorite cocktail make with your tequila? I like making, I'm very spritz-forward. I don't like anything that's too sugary because it overpowers a drink. And really that's what creates hangovers. For anyone that has had a bad experience with tequila, it's you're probably using too much sugar and whatever it is. I like a Tommy's Margherita. I do like his Tommy's Margherita. I like a spritzy Paloma. Actually one of my favorite mixtures to do if I don't want to do anything, you know, if I need to do something quick, I like the Fever Tree Grapefruit Sparkling. We're big fans of them. I'm a big fan of Fever Tree Grapefruit Sparkling. If I sell for them, I should be receiving a check every week. I think it's been showcased in about 20 episodes. Yeah, we've featured it a lot on this podcast. We love that stuff. I featured a really great cocktail for the NASCAR race days two years ago. I did a clarified watermelon margarita with lime juice, a little bit of lemon, and I did a little bit of a cactus wash on it. And it was really good. Took me two days to do it with a bartender that I commission all the time to work with because he's honestly a guru. He's a mixologist, he's a apokatherist, I call him, I made that word up. He should have his own lab, but he's fantastic. Anything you can think of, he makes up. Very cool. That's cool. Very cool. Cactus wash? What is? So, nopal, you know like vegetable nopal? It cooked it. Yeah. It cooked it and I reduced it and then you wash it and you clarify it with like a cheesecloth. Like a coconut wash. Like a coconut wash. Milk wash. Or like a fat wash. So, then it freezes and then you take the salads out? So, the salads out. It's taken out and then after I clarified it with the watermelon, it was so fantastic. It was clear. It was so clear. Next time we have you around, we want this. No, absolutely. I'm really, I'm complicated with my cocktails because I like them to be elevated. You know, that's the only way you could really, you know, appreciate the profile. Especially the blanc with silver subtle. You know, it's one of those you can drink neat, you can drink it on the rocks, or you can drink it in a nice crafted cocktail. I imagine myself drinking this with a little bit of soda and a lime all summer long. That's perfect. It's just like clean this way. It's honestly the most complex spirit in every category. I love it so much because of that. It's just so many of that and, you know, obviously followed by whiskey, which interestingly enough, I did not use an American Barrel for my Reposado, which we'll be trying next. But first let's do shots. Give me a couple hours. I'm super heavy on my fores, I guess, you know, I'm just, I have built so much resistance to alcohol, so much immunity, I call it. But let's try the Repo. My Reposado here, this is a six and a half year old agave, and this was rested in French Oaks, French Oak barrel for four months. I like the French Oak barrel a little bit more. I like American and I'm actually going to eventually be using a good whiskey barrel. So this is a new, you said new French Oak. This is a new French Oak. And I like it because it doesn't manipulate too much the agave. The thing that I have with American, it was depending which whiskey or bourbon was used in it. It gives it too much of a whiskey taste, which is the issue that I have with the ñajos. And I love whiskey, but if I want a tequila that tastes like whiskey, I'd rather just drink whiskey, and just leave it unaltered. You want the agave to showcase. You want the agave to showcase. And there's a lot of great ones out there. There's a lot of good friends of ours. We're good friends with the Beef of Mexico, with the Tequila Ocho family, the Camarena family has been friends of ours for a long time. You know, Casadores, Corralejo, I mean, I can go on and they've all done great stuff. One of my favorite extrañojo is actually Excelencia by Viva Mexico, by Tapateo, I'm so sorry. And it is fantastic. It's fantastic because you still get a lot of that agave forward. So that's what we want to be careful with. And this one, you know, this has a little bit more of a character bite to it. It lingers a little bit more in your tongue. It's more cooked agave. You get a little bit more of a, like a buttery taste to it that you'll detect. Also some white peppercorn, you know, some anise, a little bit of that. This is one of my favorite sipping cocktails. If I do do a cocktail with it, I like an old fashioned, you know, version of it. I like the new fashion, you know, obviously instead of simple syrup, agave syrup. And I like just a little bit of that orange squeeze instead of the cherry. Cherry just gives it too much of a tart that I just don't think it blends well with it. It's a great cocktail. Or, you know, I like also turning this into a Manhattan. I had recently, I did like a Zazraq rye version of this. Yeah. And it was really good. And I did it just with a little, I sprayed a little mezcal on top. I sprayed a little 400 quinoa on top. A little mist. And I did that with tobacco bitters and it was fantastic. You can see my wheels are turning. We were just talking about tobacco bitters. You know, they don't use them enough and they should. But I love doing stuff. I have a whole bitter collection and I have a bartender friend that makes his own syrups from the own things that he grows in his own garden and it's really neat to do. I just made like, I just juiced a bunch of limes and then I made syrup out of the hulls and then you use that in margarita, which is great. It's a good idea. Just extra lime flavor. See, you're one of mine. Do you understand? I mean, I started doing that during the pandemic because I saw some article that was like everyone sending articles about like, the world has ended. What can you do with your food scraps? What can you do with your food scraps? No, it's true. We had to reinvent. We had to recycle, refurbish. It's so funny. During the pandemic, at this store exactly is where I was inspired to create this brand. I remember I was out one day and I'm thinking, where am I going? There was nowhere to go. But grocery stores and liquor stores. Yeah, we were open. I came to Binnys and I'm thinking, oh my God, I've never seen a line like this. It looked like as if we were going to a concert. Yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy and I thought to myself, I went home and I remember thinking, I think I just found a recession proof industry to get into. Oh yeah. I'm like, this is brilliant. During very hard times for us all, but then I'm like, this is what we all like. We couldn't socialize. So what do we do? We socialize at home by doing, create cocktails and using our imagination to drink responsibly, of course, and that's really what inspired this whole thing. Nice. That's great. Cool. What's the price on the Reposado? $44.99. Nice. Anything else you want to tell us about your brand or your company? Yes, of course. I will be working on a third profile. It's going to be really exciting. I'm actually going to be working on an artisanal high-proof blanco in Tahama that we're actually acquiring as we speak, and it's going to be fantastic. I'm a big fan of high-proofs. Yeah, the high-proof blancos are big now. I love them. I was super- For cocktails, it's great. They're really good. My favorite is Primo, which I guess they're not making anymore. Primo high-proof is fantastic. They did a great job, and that's really good on its own. A lot of people think that that's only for cocktailing and I like that. I like that in a real fashion. Sure. Also like a big ice cube. Yeah. We have great exciting things coming. I'll be making that announcement later in the fall. Cool. I do encourage everyone to follow us on our Instagram. We just became a partner of Chicago Fire Soccer. We're going to do a lot of sweet steaks, giveaways, really cool stuff coming up for the World Cup the whole summer and of course, the holidays. We'll need to talk about that. Yes, it'll be fun. Support local, support small batch, add it free and save water, drink tequila. Yeah. Keep an eye out on the Binny's Instagram too because you guys put out great content and I'm always reposting it. Thank you. Keep an eye out. Get some collaboration. Heck yeah. Cool. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Back for more agave speed dating. All right, we're back with another round of agave speed dating. 16:25 La Catrina Imports Unveiled We're here at the Lincoln Park Store for our All Things Agave event, and we are pulling some tequila makers and importers and other agave spirits adjacent folks up here to talk to us. And today, with us right now, we have... Lucia. I'm Lucia from La Catrina Imports. Nice. And so La Catrina Imports is... La Catrina Imports is a boutique importing and distribution company based here in Chicago. So we distribute primarily Mexican spirits. Nice. It was kind of interesting, our relationship. Tell us kind of where we started because it really is something that drives from your family. First and foremost, it's turned into a much larger thing than that in terms of the areas of Mexico you're touching, the products you're touching. But it's very interesting to me that you were probably the first person in the market that had commercially available product from Guanajuato, which is kind of fun. So kind of tell us a little bit about that and your family connections. Yeah, of course. Well, I was born in San Luis Potosí. So my entire life, I've had this connection of being in Mexico, living in the US. My parents are from here. And so having those roots has always connected me to the producers, the region, everything that has to do with mezcal and tequila and everything. And a few years back, my aunt and I were talking about launching this brand. I had the idea of starting this importing company. That was kind of my background in international business. And so these two ideas kind of converged. And I'm also very, very close friends. I would say she's like my sister with the co-founder of Lucy Pistolas. They're the producers in Guanajuato. And so they make these really beautiful spirits. And it all sort of came together as a project. And we decided to launch everything at once. It was very pioneering for this market. There were a number of products. This was all going down right around the time when Mezcal was trying to have in a moment. And people were starting to discover that Mezcal was a lot more than what was something that had a worm in it that you made a bad decision if you drank it in a bar on a dare. And so Mezcal was having a moment. This is, I mean, technically Mezcal, but it is the different species of plants, right? The difference, kind of talk a little bit about the difference between Salmiana, for instance, and typical Mezcal. Definitely when we launched, it felt like we were going against a current because with Mezcal making this boom, I think people had the expectation that Mezcal was this one thing, right? It was the smoky spirit from Oaxaca. And I think lots has changed since then. But when we started, people would either try it or look at Guanajuato. And they were like, what? This is not Mezcal. Like, what are you talking about? And over the years, we've had to really heavily educate everyone in, well, Mezcal is available all throughout Mexico. Our offering is unique because we're from Guanajuato. It's a very, very tiny region called San Felipe. It's neighboring San Luis Potosi, the city. And we sort of share this valley of agave salmianas with San Luis Potosi. So if you go down, it's like this one in the same region. And we primarily use salmiana grasispina, which is a very specific varietal. But salmiana really has a wide range of agaves, which we'll probably get into these. But there's so many things about the brand that I could say, right? But our region is unique. Our method of cooking the agaves, we steam our agaves in above ground ovens. And that's really a legacy from when the Spanish were in power. My co-owner, the co-owner of Lucy, actually, her grandfather lived in an hacienda. He was working for the Spaniards. And so before the Mexican Revolution hit, they were such a, they were this part of history, right? So all that story is kind of built into the brand. The women-owned aspect of it, the flavor profile, the minerality of it, the water that we use, we use water from a hot spring that's on the property. And not a lot of mezcal's use hot springs. So the flavors that really show in the flavor profile are really pretty and unique. Oaxaca is kind of the most known mezcal producer in region. And what kind of agave do they use there versus? So Oaxaca is a really interesting state because they use all kinds of agaves. They are the most diverse state in terms of agave offerings. Yeah, yeah. And we don't have that wide variety. We are salmianas. But we have a whole variety of different salmianas. OK. So. Total. So we've poured a little bit of the Lucy Pistolas. And this is just the pink label, which is the wild salmiana. And again, going back to what I think preconceived notions about Mezcal were, this is the first thing. There's no smoke. If you go on the nose, there's literally no. Clearly, that's a sign of the above ground cooking. And this is just are you cooking under pressure or just an atmospheric pressure? Yes. Yes. I mean, there there is a certain amount of pressure that's created in the oven, but it does have a certain amount of ventilation because of the way it's sealed off. We seal off with agave fibers. So that allows for a certain, I don't know how to say the word in English, escapé, like a pressure valve kind of. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And so what's interesting about the cooking process as well is that we're able to collect the runoff from what we cook. So imagine you're cooking a chicken in the oven, right? Those juices that come out at first are probably even toxic for you, right? Like the chicken is still raw. So you're going to want to either cook that thoroughly or get rid of that. So we do that. Those first, that first runoff from the cook gets thrown out and then we cut, and we start to collect the juices that drip throughout the rest of the cook, which is for about three, three days. I want to say like almost 72 hours. That runoff is collected and it's used back in the process during fermentation. Right. The meal, right? I know Tequila, they call that the meal. Yeah, Miela Marga. Yeah. Guanajuato is an interesting state because you share a deal with Tequila. It's really one of those states where the traditions start to overlap. Back when Tequila and Mezcal were not separate categories, everybody had their traditions and Guanajuato is one of those regions where you can see part of the artisanal Tequila style of cooking, but then you're going into the San Luis Potosí, This is wild. It's so crazy. The smell and the flavor is just totally different. Yeah. I feel like maybe I tried one of these last year, and I remember someone was like, you have to do that. I've never seen this. Let's do it. I remember sitting there for a long time trying through the portfolio. It's shocking how it's got this really cool, almost cheesy characteristic, which is one of my favorite characteristics to look for in an agave spirit. Then when you actually sip it, it's just light and clean and I love it. There's a little bit of smoke there, but it's not overwhelming. But it smells to me like sugarcane rum, like a really grassy sugar cane, pure cane rum, like that kind of esters in there. That's what it reminds me of. But then the taste is very subtle, a little bit of smokiness, but not overwhelming. You know, Lucia said, you could make a strong argument that this is with the connection because it was so close to where tequila was being made. It's not the whole existence of tequila hasn't always been 100 percent blue agave, right? In fact, blue agave isn't even native to the Highlands, for instance. So where most of the blue agave that's grown or a lot of blue agave that is grown, that's used in the tequila business, it's not even an endemic plant there. There are many other strains of agave that were endemic to Los Altos besides that. So for me, that's kind of what's always interesting about this because there is a bit of a connection. It's a little bit more you use what grows in your area, but the production technique is closer to tequila. Yeah. And that's legacy, you know, it's just something that's inherited. If they decide that they want to stop the monoculture of blue agave and actually do some things that are more interesting, it would be fun if tequila would allow for more species of plant to be used just for some diversification because this isn't, I mean, a tequila drinker isn't going to grab this and look at it like they might, some mezcal and say, oh my, this is really weird, it's too smoky. It's not so far off the beaten path or so far off the style. In fact, it's better because it actually has character and there's something interesting to it. So you started with Lucy and you started just with like the home distillate with friends. You've kind of expanded since then and we've just brought in a bunch of stuff from La Catrina and you kind of now have a book that is really fascinating and very, very broad covering a number of different states, a number of different agaves, a number of different producers from, you know, a little bit more established and conventional to literally people cooking in their backyard just as they have from the municipal generations. Let's talk about a couple of things we've just brought in from there's a producer called Lucero. from there's a producer called Lucero. 26:27 Lucero Mezcal Production Lucero Verde, we're Verde's the agave. So we've just brought in two very, very small batches, like we're talking 60 bottles and 72 bottles of two different mezcal from Lucero. Do you want to tell us about those two and kind of how, how you got your hands on them in the first place? Yeah, these two expressions, we are super excited about. Again, I'm from San Luis Potosi. So these two picks are from a family or a community that is from San Luis Potosi. It's a small region called Palmar Segundo. And it's three different tavernas is what they're called, you know, different from Palenques. Palenques is Oaxaca in this specific region of San Luis Potosi. They're known as tavernas. And it's three families making agave spirits at the same time. So this is from one of them. This is from Daniel Navarro. This community is making Ancestral Mezcal, which is, you know, the teeny, teeny, teeny tiniest percentage of mezcal on the market is ancestral. So essentially what that means, it's very labor intensive, right? Their most unique, and I would say like the highlights of their production process is the cooking method is essentially an earthen pit flipped upside down. So underneath is the firewood and, you know, old agave fibers being lit underneath. Volcanic rock is placed into a sort of hill. And then all of the agaves are placed on top of that volcanic rock that's, you know, a little, a little mound, like this, right? And so, I was gonna say another, I saw a photo. Yeah, yeah, you gotta kind of see the photo, you know, it's like a hill of volcanic rock. And on top of that, you put the agaves and then you seal that off with blankets and mud to insulate. So the cooking process is really, you know, the starting point. The distillation process, you know, they distill in a Filipino type still. And it gets really crazy because, you know, they bury a clay pot into the ground, which is where the, you know, your mashed juice goes into. They seal that off with another clay pot. Okay. And then on top of that, you seal it off again with a copper pot. And that's what takes the cold water. So all of this is being heated underneath, underground, right? And so I say labor intensive because there's literally a human stirring the copper pot, you know, keeping the water cold. Once it gets hot, they take, they take that copper pot and they throw it on like a, you know, a little mound of twigs. And what that does, all of these like intertwined twigs, it breaks up the hot water molecules instantly and cools the water so that they can reuse it. So it's really fascinating. Inside the second clay pot, there's a receptacle that's hanging. And that's where the spirit is collected inside. So, you know, you're really talking, you know, eight generations of just fascinating. So they collect inside, because I've seen a Filipino still work in both Michoacan and outside of the hills of Puerto Vallarta and Jalisco. And in that case, they use what they call the canoe. Where it's the same concept. There was a pit in the ground that they could start a fire in. Above that was a pot that they could put the wort in or whatever the fermented agave juice was with, the gauze with the fibers and then just a hollowed out Encino oak stump with a copper pot on top that had cold water in it. But the copper pot had a point and then everything would condense on the copper. It would get the cold air in the top, condense under the metal, run to the point. The point would actually then run into just a little, like hollowed out, but a little gouge that looked like a canoe. And would run out the side of the, it would actually run out the side of the still into a bucket. Basically was how you're reflecting in that case. That's like Michoacan and Jalisco for Mezcal for Racia. This is known as Campania style distillation. And Campania literally means bell. And so that's where the name comes from because of the receptacle that's hanging inside and kind of looks like a little swinging bell. They've done a lot of research. We generally attribute distillation to the Upper Middle East sometime in the, you know, pre-Christian area before zero. But there's a strong argument that they've discovered probably proof of Filipino stills that existed in Mezzo-America well before that. Which means that at the very least there's an argument that they were distilling in Mezzo-America before they were distilling in the Middle East. And that if they were distilling there, they call them Filipino stills for a reason because they've also found evidence of the same stills in the Philippines. So which also predate or at least are close to the time of the Mezzo-American discoveries. So we could be Tequila, Tequila and Mezcal might have a claim to be the oldest spirits in the world. Well. What's crazy? Certainly my favorite. Yeah. If I haven't said it before, as I always say. And as is common with a lot of these tiny, tiny, tiny producers, they kind of they don't have a production plan per se. If I'm right, they harvest what they harvest and it could be one agave, one amague. It could be a number of them. And then whatever the combination of a particular harvest is, they cook down and distill. So the two things, the two batches that you brought us, were a couple of different combos agave. So can you tell us about that? Yeah. Yeah. So this is a Verde Mapisaga. You said it perfectly. Really these families, it takes about three weeks for them to have a finished product from harvest to distillation. And then they take a week off because it's so labor intensive. So you're, likely they're coming out with something every month. These are not efficient processes because of how much human intervention and so little machinery they have. And so they tend to be a little bit more on the unique pricey side and not something that you can always get, right? So a lot of these are single runs. You know, it's the one time, you know, one time thing. This is a Verde Mapisaga. So again, Verde is a variety of salmiana from the region. And Mapisaga is, I don't want to say it's a new species of agave, but it's, it's an agave species that has recently been in production more. So this is one of the. All that sound of banging around is me making a mess on the table. Yeah, so these were when we got there and you're going to dig this Lexi when we. I'm so excited. Because you're talking about the difference. This is my favorite day to work of the whole year, by the way. You can make an argument that a heavily smoky mezcal is actually just means it was a mistake when they were cooking as much as anything because you know, you can't see it on the podcast. But if you look up just the picture of a horno or the picture that Lucia showed of the oven is essentially you start a fire with oak, the fire burns and makes these these rocks red hot. And you pile all the agave on top of that, they immediately start to scorch and burn, you get a lot of smoke. The quicker you cover that up once you have the pile of molten hot rocks with the pile of agave to be cooked on top of that, the quicker you cover that out, you put out any fire and you damp down that smoke, right? And so if you don't get that covered very well, you're gonna get a super, super smoky, ultimately you're gonna get super, super smoky, the pinas, the agave, right? If you cover it quickly, that smoke goes away and it just turns into a cook, right? You get a little bit of Malliard reaction from whatever is touching the molten, you know, that good sort of umami meaty character and then the rest of it is just cooking the sugars and converting the sugars. And so this, you know, that's what everybody, you get scared away and there's not like a ton of smoke. Whatever they did, this was a really, really cooked well. Yeah. And you know, one of the wildest things I've heard them say, I asked, I was like, well, you know, when you're distilling, how do you know? Like when it's ready, how do you know when it's time to like change the receptacle when it's full? And they're like, oh yeah, that's easy because, you know, when it's not full yet, you kind of hear like the, but when it's full, you hear a. Oh my gosh. Are you serious right now? What is the difference between those two sounds? And it's just such a sensorial, you know, experience and, you know, they've been doing it for eight generations and it just comes so naturally to them. You don't want chemists or the FDA to listen to this, but they do get everything here was tested for methanol before it was shipped over the border. It was, it was, it was. I mean, we've been drinking it for years, so we're good. If anyone's ever cooked with like their grandma, who's like really into cooking, it's really. What's the recipe? It's this and that and this. Yeah, a pinch of that, a little bit of that. Oh, and I just wait and sometimes it's too hot, so I just do a little bit of this. That's all it is and it's like almost like instinctual when they've been doing it so long. Yeah. It's really, really cool. And it's really cool to see these batches coming out that are so at the mercy of nature. If it's raining, it's raining. And how, you know, what that's gonna do to the flavor profile of your spirit, who knows? But once you started, like you can't stop that train, you have to see it through no matter what, whether, you know, it's sunny, it's raining, it's whatever. And all of that is really reflected in the final spirit. This one is like the smoke comes on later. It smells like a humidor to me. Retronasal is like a humidor kind of. Yeah, cedar-y. Yeah, not the typical mezcal smokiness, but there's a cedar cigar kind of thing. But there was a really sort of herbal minty. I liked that. It was really herbal minty and a citrus peel, like almost like a savory citrus character, which was one of the things that sold me when we were initially able to try this particular sample. Is this one a little bit higher proof than the last two? Yeah, I don't think they distill anything under like 50 ABV maybe. I think for the most part. Yeah, most everything off of a stilt, very typical of Tequila, it would be come off between 50 and 55, which is when you see still strength releases, the strongest release you'd see would be 55. This one we have listed as 51.6. And so these are coming in soon. These two special ones are coming in soon. Yeah, next week. Next Wednesday. Yeah, and these will only be available at Binnys. So let's take a look at the other one, which is just another batch from the same family. So this is a Cuerno Chino and Mapisaga. So essentially three different agaves also growing wild in the region. And the way they identify each of these agaves is just by the looks of it, right? So Verde is Verde because it has this very bright green, deep green hue. The Cuerno has a specific shape to its leaves. And then the Chino is very, it has tons of leaves. So it's very like, you know, almost like looking at a curly haired person, right? Yeah. So. I know about that. And so the community has just named them. It's just what they see. And are these all sort of botanically part of Salmiana? Or are they from different, they're not different families? Yeah. Mapisaga is a different family, but the other ones are varietals of the Salmiana agave, yeah. There's like a roasty coffee note here. It's so cool. Yeah. Right, none the nose. It's almost like a little bit fatter and a little bit rounder. And the way this family produces these batches is really just, you know, like you said, Brett, they don't really plan. Like, oh, I'm going to do an ensemble of cuerno and mapisaga today. And they go out and find the agave. It's really the other way around. When they go out into the valley to look for agaves, it's whatever is ready. They harvest, bring back, and that's what's what's used for production at the time. Nice. I think that's one of the many things that interests me so much about just a lot of these agave processes, is it's not, you know, in a lot of the other spirits worlds, this is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to do it. Whereas in the agave world, it's kind of like letting nature kind of run the show. Yeah, it's very organic. It's really, really cool and fascinating. And it's crazy to think, too, that, you know, this is what they create without a plan and without like, okay, we have to do this type of thing. And it's just so fascinating. Yeah. What is, what is just typically to triangulate people. So typically blue agave would be considered to be five to seven years from maturity. Maturity being when you would spring your kilte and then, you know, seed and either, you know, hopefully create more agave plants or eventually die away. What is the life span or what, what's considered the age of maturity for a typical salmiana? And then is it different for the subspecies? Yeah. So that's a really hard question when talking about a wild agave because it's really dependent on so many factors. And as brand owners, you know, you, you, you want to answer to the market who wants to know, like, like, give me a number, like what I got, like, how old is this agave, right? And so you do your best to kind of come up with an average salmiana tends to be up towards like the 12 year, but it can grow in as little as eight. And that really just depends on, you know, the climate conditions in the last few years, where it sits on the mountain, you know, while it's hard to pinpoint like blue agave because blue agave is cultivated. So you can really get that exact number almost. And with a wild agave, you're just kind of like, all right, well, many times we don't even know. You're out in the mountain and if you're not like properly tracking all of them, who knows how long it's been sitting there, right? I would say an average of a salmiana, for the most part, across all of its sub-varietals, is about 12 years or so. We've seen them go to 15, but again, in as little as eight as well. And they're, and they tend to be wild poppy. In other words, they're not being replanted with clones. These are truly being- So there is a sustainability component where you want to responsibly harvest to the point where if you see a pup, you're going to replant it for two reasons. One, because you need to keep agaves growing and alive. If you leave the pups with their mother, they will compete for nutrients and eventually most of them will die off and there will probably be one or two winners. So it's not ideal to leave them to their own devices. So there is some level of replantation, but it's not as orderly as you would see in a cultivated environment. You tend to maybe take it somewhere. I've seen, for example, in this community specifically, you go visit them and they can have a mound of little pups, just like sitting there. And I'm like, aren't they gonna die? And they're like, no, you have to stress the plant before putting them back out into the mountain. And so God knows where they came from. God knows where they're gonna go. And so there's this level of replantation that's happening, but not to the level of like a cultivated agave. The Lucy Pistolas, the pink label is 39.99 at Binny's. And then the other two are from, they're from where? San Luis Potosi. Okay, and so those are coming in, you said, next week, Brett? They're in a number of stores. I mean, they're open and they're in a number of stores where as we're getting more into agave season, we're starting to broaden. And then what else do you guys, back to your roots and the things that you're the most connected with, what else is down the pike possibly for Lucy Pistolas? You know, Lucy Pistolas has the three expressions and we're going to focus on that right now. We're a very fiercely, I would say, independent brand and we like what we have and we like the simplicity of it. We have, I think, a pretty unique offering, but there's something for everyone. So we have our Salmiana Cupriata, which is something that appeals to people who like kind of like that more smoky mezcal. It's an ensemble of our traditional Salmiana with Cupriata agave from Guerrero. So that's really appealing to some people. Whiskey drinkers especially are really drawn to that. Our flagship pink label, which is our Salmiana, is also really nice. It has this versatility of, you can make really any cocktail with it, but also a really nice sipper. And then finally, we have our newest addition, which is our yellow label, and it's an ensamble with agave azul. And this is agave azul from Zacatecas, so our neighbor Zacatecas, as opposed to azul from Jalisco or the monoculture that you were talking about. And we are really happy with that product because it is the first azul produced at our distillery that is not Salmiana. So you're talking about 80 years of making Salmiana. Wow. Has left a very unique microbiome. Yeah. In our vats, in our ovens and everything. And this is the very first azul that's being produced there fully. So we're really happy with that product and that's really appealed to the tequila drinkers because of the azul component. So I think we're gonna keep it that way for a little while, keep it simple and hope people enjoy it. Yes, cool, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you guys, it was great. 45:32 PM Spirits Project All right, and we're back for more All Things Agave speed dating. We're here at All Things Agave at the Linkin Park Store, and we are joined by... David from PM Spirits. PM Spirits, and what is PM Spirits? We are a teeny tiny importer of dorky spirits based in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. Oh man. 15 years old now as of this year. The geeky nerdy stuff. I mean, that's what we, we like that stuff at Binny's. I see a bottle I recognize and I want to try it and talk about it. Cool. So what is your role there then? I'm our Midwest person. Cool. So I live in Chicago, Illinois. Greatest city in the world. But I kind of cover the Midwest, the perimeter of Lake Michigan. Right. Yeah. He does, so David does a really good job of connecting with our teams that are really into like the deep dive, so much so that... Our stores that have spirits nerd, like real deep dive spirit nerds. Big time, big time. So they're the ones that talk to us on the Whiskey Hotline team directly and they're like, hey Rob, when can we get this? And then I have to say, David, how much of this can I get? Right. Yeah. Cool. So let's start with the Steel String. Cool. So this is our PM Spirits Project Tequila. We are PM Spirits. This is our little Tequila. If you rewind back a few years, we had just met a gentleman named Juan Antonio, whose family was making some really great distillates in their distillery in the town of Arandas at NAMM 1468. Grupo Teculero México, a kind of new and shiny facility that they were very excited about, and they were looking for contract work. So a couple of the team traveled down to meet them. They came back with thousands of tiny lab vials of every iteration of Tequila they could possibly make. You know, this isn't like a white labeling project where this family was saying, we've got tanks of Tequila sitting around. They were saying, hey, we are very excited to iterate with you. Let's see all the different Tequilas we could possibly make by varying the length of leaf on the plant, cook times, cook temperatures, yeast strains, fermentation times, blah, blah, blah. And then we did the very grueling task of tasting an entire briefcase full of tiny lab samples. Oh no, what a bad day. A challenging day. It's hard, it's hard. It's hard, I'm sure. Your tongue goes numb, your lips go numb. No, no, no, no. No, no, no. What? No, it's not hard. It's hard. It's not hard. Eventually, you get some chemical burns on the inside of your mouth. But you're fine. No, I mean, it's fun. When we do our hand picks, you know, we just develop calluses, you're fine. Yeah. And this is what we were really excited about. So Juan Antonio, unfortunately, is no longer with us, but his widow and their daughter, Irma and Esme, still carry on. I think they do a great job. So all Highland agave that the family grows themselves on their fields, harvested at ultra mega maturity, champagne yeast fermentation, distilled in copper. Here it is at still strength. We also offer it at 40%. And for a still strength, usually when we're seeing still strength or higher proof, we're seeing 92 proof, 94 proof. This one's coming in at 110. This is big and bold, but still fruity. Very much. And has that like cooked agave sweetness. Some citrus. This is delicious. Oh, thank you. Yeah, we do roughly one oven load a year. If we ever become wildly successful, maybe we'll do a second oven load. But it's a small brick oven, I think around 10 tons. Don't quote me on that. But the facility looks hilarious. Ten tons. It's such a funny looking place because everything else there is relatively shiny and new. Like they've got these pretty new, very polished copper pot stills and the oldest, like most patina brick ovens I've ever seen. Right. Yeah. And you know, I think still strength is really exciting. Your body's over 60% water. I don't need to put water in your tequila for you. Maybe your homes are full of clean drinking water. I like the red accent of the glass. Red for danger. You know, the 40% has a clear top and then red on the still strength. So you know, you're scared. I love this. I want to put it in like a roasted pineapple cocktail of some sort. I feel like there's like this fruity-ness to it that would pair really nicely or go really nicely in a cocktail like that. Yeah. Well, and what's great also is PM Spirits, any of their bottlings, and David, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but any of their bottling is like items like this. You go on their website and there's full text sheets, full pictures, everything that you can see that's very transparent about a lot of these items. Yeah, we do our best. The nice thing about working with these very small family producers that we work with is I don't have to go through a thousand layers of emails to get information. With a lot of people, I can literally just text the person who made it and like ask for a photo of a thing. And a lot of times before the meeting is over, I'll have a photo of the thing to show someone. Very cool. I'm like, you guys need more work-life balance. Like don't answer me immediately. I don't expect you to. I love it. Yeah. Cool. Great. 50:57 Neta Mezcal Community Cool. Neta. All right. So this is Neta, a project from my friends, Max and Nicky. It is a brand that solely represents one village in southern Oaxaca, plus like one dude who lives a mile across the river called Lagoche. This is a town of slightly more than 100 people, 14 little family distilleries that are also people's homes and like little farm houses. And I think they just make some of the best mezcals on earth here. About three and a half hours drive south from Oaxaca City, now that there's a relatively nice road for most of the way. Kind of the birthplace of a lot of really beautiful endemic agaves. So the agave carwinski's probably evolved within X number of miles of where this town is located. You see a huge diversity in these plants. You've got like an abundance of other plants like Tobala, Tepestate, Coyote, Javelin. But also it's a place where a lot of these heirloom, like cultivated agaves do really well. So people have been farming various Americanas, like Polcaro, Sierra Negra, Arroqueno here for a very long time. And since the 90s, they also grow some world class espadim. So the tradition in this community historically has been to do field blends often of a lower sugar wild agave, typically a carwinski, along with a higher sugar cultivated agave. So here, this is from a young man named Heriberto Garcia Sanchez. His friends call him Pony because he's small and strong. He's a little guy, a little guy, a little guy. This is a wild bequiche from sort of the hills around town. Thank you for pronouncing that by the way. Oh yeah. I was going to try, but my pronunciation is terrible. I think I say that word a little bit differently every time. Sometimes I pronounce the E, sometimes I don't. You got to just change it up. Along with cultivated espadine. Espadine is not native to Miwaflan. In fact, it's not native to Oaxaca at all. I think people started really planting it in Oaxaca in the early 1900s, but this community didn't get any until the 90s through like ordering some from a catalog. It's kind of funny tracking the history of espadine throughout various communities in Mexico because some people have had it for a very long time through like commercial interests or whatever. Sometimes people will end up with espadine through companies coming in and saying, hey, you plant this, we'll come back for it in 10 years. And if their company goes out of business in 10 years, then now you've got a field of espadine. There's even some pockets of, I think, Pueblo, where they receive some through a government subsidy program. And their local name for espadine is literally just the acronym for that subsidy program that brought them home. But these guys have been growing it since the 90s. It's become a little bit micro adapted to the climate. In a lot of places when you see espadine being farmed, it's essentially monocultured, right? It's like an entire sea of this blue-green agave. You can make really good mezcal that way, but it can be challenging because agave is nitrogen negative from the soil, and that soil is going to be dead in X number of decades. But here, they're farming it co-planted with their food crops. You guys familiar with like milpa farming or the Three Sisters? It's corn, squash, and beans in the next field, and those plants take care of each other, fill each other's ecological niche holes, whatever. Espadine is the secret fourth sister. You can square of corn, squash, and beans, Espadine in the corners, and everyone has a really good time. All right. Yeah. So two plants cooked together in an underground roast, ultra mega long fermentation. Typically, they're letting the plants sit to develop a furry layer of blue and white mold. The blue and white mold tastes awesome. The brown and red mold will kill you. But these plants only really develop the blue and white mold here. They've got a really good biome in Les Palenque. From there, broken down with machete and mechanical mill, very long fermentations in Cypress tanks and then distilled in copper. And sort of the village style here is nobody proofs their mezcal with water. They slice up the final distillate into a bunch of micro cuts of like essentially a gasoline jug worth of heads, hearts, tails. And then really the difficult part, the thing that makes you the mezcalero is reaching like a final equilibrium of heads, hearts, tails. The hearts gives you sweetness, body, a good amount of alcohol, but it can taste flat if you present it by itself. And so people will blend in a tasteful amount of the head section, which they call plumtas. It's sweet, it's intense, it's spicy, it's bright, along with a little bit of the tails or the colas, which is going to provide you with acidity, minerality, mouthfeel. And for them, that's a complete mezcal. But legally, it's not mezcal. Yes, it's agave spirit. It's an agave spirit because for various reasons, the certification process for declaring something mezcal basically makes it very difficult to proof with tails. But in this community, it's really important to them to do it this way. And if that means you can't certify, then like, guess you're not certified. Yeah. So when you say it's like representative of this village, like do they all, is this from one single distillery in that village? Or is it from the entire village kind of gets together? Great question. Kind of both. It's a village of like 120, 130 people. There are 14 distilleries in this village. There's like five or six last names. Everyone's related. I think there were like three or four founding families that have all intermarried. So everyone's related. But, you know, each family unit will have like a little family compound of a few houses. They'll have some farmland. They'll have one still and like distillery that they share. But when it's time to make mezcal, mezcal is maybe the most labor intensive spirit on earth. You probably don't have enough immediate family members to do a batch. So there's a system in this town. It's called Tequillo. It's a system of pre-Columbian mutual aid essentially. And so when it's time to make mezcal, you'll set off like a firecracker at your distillery, which tells everyone else that you're making mezcal. And all your neighbors are going to come and help you make it. And they'll kind of keep mental track of like who helped out. Maybe you have a notebook. But the currency that's not a currency is a system called manos or hands. And it's essentially like one honest day's work is worth one honest day's work. So when it's time for me to go do a harvest, like me and all my neighbors are going to come and harvest with me. And then maybe I have to go help them dig out an oven. Sure. Yeah. Very communal. That's really cool. It extends beyond just mezcal production. So like when it was time to build the church, everyone came and helped build the church. When we raised money to put in water capture systems in the town, everyone showed up and was part of a construction team. And you build roads, you serve on the town council, you like might have to be sheriff one year. That's great. I just, we were talking about earlier about the like, you know how a lot of these mezcal are and agave spirits are so dependent on nature? Because, you know, you start, it's a process, you can't stop, but it's also so dependent on, for a lot of these people like this, who's around and who's available and who's willing to help. And it's really, really cool to see that, you know, they're really a community of people versus, you know, here it's like, I'm not helping my neighbor. You know, it's just really cool to see, taste that. It's interesting with a lot of these independent bottler brands, like how they choose to interact with the community, right? Because a lot of, Oaxaca is not a super wealthy state. There's a lot of rural poverty in the state. I don't want to like glamorize it, but you'll see brands come into a town of people who are not wealthy and essentially choose one person to work with. And that can kind of skew the economy of the town. I'm not saying like that's necessarily a bad thing, but it is complicated. But when our friends, Nicky and Max, first met the people of Lagoche and were getting ready to work with the town, it was really important to the town council, which is also the Growers Association, which is also the like, you know, it's everything. It was important to them that they work with everyone, including the young people who don't have as much land. They were like, if you work with one of us, you work with all of us. The whole town sets pricing together. They pool their resources for things. They all bottle together and it's kind of cool. Yeah, and then the money goes back into the community. And then you make these small batches of 528 bottles. Yeah, teeny tiny. They travel thousands of miles. Yeah. That's crazy. So you said long fermentation, super long fermentation. Super long fermentation. How long are these going? Everything is dependent on the weather, on the agave type, on how busy you get, if you have other stuff going on and if you need to get stuff out of your fermenters faster. But typically once the agave comes out of the ground, if they're choosing to rest that species, there'll be a few weeks of resting as whole agave or half agaves to develop that mold. From there, after milling, the milled agave will go into the still for a few days of dry fermentation, which probably isn't super vigorous because there's actually too much sugar in it to ferment well. They'll add in well water, which is pretty essential to their process. And then with the water, another about two weeks of fermentation, depending on variety. From the moment it comes out of the ground to the moment it goes through a still, it might be like close to two months. Don't quote me on that. Crazy. All right. Cool. Real quick, what else you got? What else is exciting? What's in the works? What's the thing that's on brand for agave? I know we have rum and other things we could talk about, but what cool things is PM coming through with? Oh man, way to put me on the spot here. With brands like Neta, these are always going to be micro batches, so the stuff that we have here is the stuff we have in this moment. We were just talking about that. We just took a bunch of Neta in. There's potential for some more of these bottlings within these batches available, but a lot of this is just once it's in, it's in. Once it's gone, it's gone. Yeah. And then on to the next cool thing with Neta. But just in general with agave. We've got a cool new release from our friends at Cinco Sentidos coming to Binnys soon, I think. Yes. We've worked with a few different releases from Cinco in the past here. And one of the longtime Cinco producers, Alberto Martinez, in the town of Alboradas, in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca. He started cultivating Tobala many, many years ago. And his first harvest of Tobala is, of cultivated Tobala is going to be ready soon. So I'm pretty excited about that. Okay. Very exciting. So we'll take all of it. Okay. Yeah. And the PM Spirits single oven Blanco Tequila, still is tracked, right? Is that the single oven? Yep. Yeah. That is $79.99. $79.99. And then the Neta is? The Ensemble. The Ensemble de Cuiche, Espidim Capone, Mezcal. Yeah. That is $139.99. Oh, that's a great price. And these are extremely small batches made by hand in a tiny town. It's a beautiful town. You should all get it when you can. Yeah, that sounds amazing. They have one hotel now. You give me a date and I'm there. Easy. It's a two room hotel, but there's a hammock. You can see the whole town from the hammock. Is it mountains or is it a mountainous kind of area, highlands? It's right before the mountain mountains. So like 6,000 feet above sea level, plus or minus. It's a terrible drive. Yeah. There's some great footage on the internet of me throwing up off of very scenic vistas just because there's some pretty winding roads. It's a lot of, you should make sure your truck has. It's Dramamine. Get that going. Dramamine is magical. Yeah. Cool. Yay. Well, thanks for coming on. Thanks for joining us. Well, thanks to everyone who joined us for All Things Agave. Check our events page, because we have events coming up all the time, and we'll probably be doing some more episodes from these events, like the Summer of Rum, other stuff like that. We've got Summer of Rum, we've got some local distilleries events. I think there's the Scotch one coming up that I'm pretty interested in. There's some stuff in the fall with Vermouth or something. There's a bunch of stuff coming up. So we'll probably have more episodes just like this coming up. Till next time, I'm Jim. And I'm Lexi. Keep tasting.