Anyone drinking tonight... or, today??

bring me more mead

 

The breakfast of the champions. Egg white as protein, fruit, and the alcohol has zero carbs. This is better than a green smoothie.

 

I've only had 2 tonight

 

An occasional white distilled rum with mango juice or pineapple juice. Super tasty...

 

I can’t believe my wife dislikes shopping.

 

Damn! Nice selections!

 

Cheers! I'm having a Brandy Manhattan while I make dinner.

 

Cheers brother.

 

I am out front with the pack.

 

Cheers!

 

I fired up my "old man pipe" with a nice new tobacco and a glass of buffalo trace bourbon cream. Delicious!

 

The none Australian Australian beer. Cheers

 

Had a couple 805s

 

Holy shit!

@Agent_Outside , @SlvrSlug , look what I finally found! I had grabbed a bottle of Artenom 1579 and was talking to the cashier and it caught my eye. She probably thought I was nuts, because I reacted like I had seen a celebrity.

Anyway, I can't wait to get home later and try a little sample!

 

We just got back from Mexico with quite the haul.

 

Did you get one W/Scorpion in it? I was down there at a tequila bar/store & saw that. wish I would've bought just for the novelty, I can't remember last time I had tequila, never shot what ever a popular mixed drink is. Kamikaze??

 

Fun fact, there are zero tequilas with a scorpion (or worm) in it. The governing body that sets the rules does not allow it. If there’s a bug in the bottle it’s not actual tequila.

But I did get stung in the shin by a scorpion on Thursday

 

How did that feel?

 

This was probably min 10 yrs ago. I don't know but it was a scorpion

 

Not great

We were in agave fields so in the moment I thought I got poked by another thorn on a penca. Those things are vicious and we had accidentally caught a few of them.


It was a couple hours later that is really started to hurt. It felt very similar to pain you get touching somewhere your had a cut that get infected. By bed time my ankle joint was throbbing and it felt like I was eating a boot made of fire. It was a very short sleep because getting home late and packing then needing a 4am Uber to the airport. When we got up I could barely put weight on that leg. Crazy limp but moving around seemed to help. My lower leg was red and warm, slightly swollen, my watch warned me that my wrist temp and resting heart rate were higher than normal for the 24 hours following it. It was totally fine by Sunday.

 

Sounds brutal! I'm glad to hear it healed on its own.

 

I know the feelingfor sure, Fortaleza for us is few and far between. Enjoy my friend, i really like the Blanco.

 

I’m having a little El Tesoro Blanco as we speak.

 

It was fine. Very few scorpion stings actually require treatment. There’s only a couple species that have the potential to be deadly but those are in the Middle East. Normally there’s no treatment unless you have an allergic reaction to the venom.

It was a pretty epic trip though. Morgan and I, along with Nathan the owner of Ni Tuyo, started the Colorado Agave Collective. Nathan was taking some of his bartenders and servers on an industry trip down to Mexico to get up close and personal with the agave spirits they sell and invited us along. Travis, who works for a distributor in Colorado that carries a ton of great agave spirits made all the arrangements and joined in as well. So the core ground was 7 of us plus our driver, and we got the red carpet rolled out everywhere we went. Tours, tastings, dinners, transportation, it was all covered. We just had to get ourselves down there with a place to stay.

Sunday afternoon we landed in Guadalajara and got picked up by our driver Miguel for the week. He took us straight to Farmacia Rita Perez for food and lots of drinks with Pancho, a local legend in the agave world. From there we made our way to the AirBnB in Tlaquepaque. We settled in and spent the night walking around, checking out the square, seeing the nightlife, and bar hopping until finishing the night with some very late night street tacos.

We got up early Monday and Morgan and I walked over to meet the rest of the crew at the pickup spot. The first to arrive was Andrés (he’s a rep for Cruz de Fuego, Los Valores, Flor del Desierto, Sotol Onó, and a few other brands) who was going to join us for the day. Miguel (the driver) picked us up and took us to Destileria El Pandillo, home of G4, Volans, Terralta, Don Vicente, and ArteNOM Selecciòn de 1579. Eddie led the distillery tour but our hosts, Christina and Chad from Volans, were present and involved from beginning to end. After the tour, we went to the tasting room where Filipe Camarena, the head distiller and mastermind behind El Pandillo also joined in for the next couple of hours. We tasted through the Volans lineup, probably 10 different Volans single barrel repos, and got to drink G4’s Madera Blanco and Day of the Dead Madera Reposado with Filipe which was pretty special, they aren’t cracking open $300 bottles for random tours. We also got some overproof G4 blanco straight out of the still. We grabbed some roadside tacos afterward to hold us over and made our way back into Guadalajara. Andrés took us over to Tikuun Comdor Local, a fine dining restaurant where his friend is the chef. Afterward, we walked to Vietnam Bar, a dive bar with an amazing agave selection, and then finished the night at Andrés’s favorite bar, El Grillo before making our way back to the Airbnb in the early hours of the morning.

On Tuesday we were up and on the road early. We made the trek out to the legendary Caballito Cerrero. This place was not just a small batch agave spirit distillery but a place of unmatched historical significance. Caballito Cerrero’s distillery is built on the property of Cielo Abierto, a UNESCO recognized archaeological site where the family lineage had been producing agave distillates dating back to the 1600’s. We saw the original ruins and the current distillery. We tasted through a large variety of their offerings, some of which aren’t commercially available. Plus we checked out their mini on-site museum. Afterward, we stopped for a quick lunch next to Cascahuin and then made our way inside for a tour. Cascahuin’s tour left a lot to be desired. Something got lost in translation and though we were guests of Wild Common, we were just given the typical tour but at no cost. The tour guide was nice, but every single other tour we did during the trip was with the brand owner or head distiller, the difference was drastic. He did fine reciting his memorized mini speeches but didn’t have any real knowledge and got a lot of stuff wrong. Seeing what the typical person would get really made us appreciate our visit. We got back to Tlaquepaque and had a great dinner at Casa Luna and then it was back into Guadalajara to see Luchador wrestling. We even bought our driver Miguel a ticket and brought him with us.

Wednesday we grabbed some breakfast and jumped on the shuttle. We had a long drive to Zapotitlan de Vadillo to visit Chacolo. The family has been producing mezcal for 5 generations and it’s exceptional. They capone the agaves and continue to let them mature for years, they cook them in a conical earthen pit, the sugars are extracted with hand tools, then slow fermented in a cool temperature underground stone and cement tank with volcanic spring water and ambient yeast for an unheard of 25+ days. The next step is distillation in Filipino-style stills made from hallowed out parota tree trunks and copper sitting on top of a brick oven. They only produce around 2000 liters per year. Even more impressive is what they do for the environment. They are recognized among agave botanists for their role in biodiverse agave cultivation from seed, agave collection and preservation, and sustainability efforts. For example, blue weber agave used in tequila is typically mono-cropped from asexually reproduced clones and mass harvested, the practice leaves them vulnerable so pesticides are often used. Chacolo has organic fields filled with bio flora and a wide range of agave varietals creating their unique micro ecosystem that they have sustained for over 70 years. They have a worm house on site and collect the urine of the worms to inject in the soil as a natural pesticide and they have one of the largest composting operations in Jalisco. They have gone so above and beyond in their practices that our visit happened to be while a group of biologists from the ACBTC were weeks into their on-site visit studying what they do. They have been tracking a documenting their practices for 10 years and have used it as the framework for a certification program for sustainable agriculture of habitat restoration. They made us lunch, we tasted through some of their mezcals and we each bought a couple of bottles and had them sign them. I got the 2 different versions of Puntas they do, both extremely rare but 1 is not imported into the U.S. That was a long day. From the time we left our Airbnb to the time we arrived back at it, it was a roughly a 16.5 hour day. The Ni Tuyo crew had an early flight out in the morning. Morgan and I had another day, Travis was still going to be there for a few days.

Morgan and I got to pick between going over and touring Fortaleza or joining Travis for a very undefined tour of agave fields. We opted to skip Fortaleza and go to the fields so Thursday morning we were again out the door by 7 am. We didn't know what to expect for the day, just that an Uber was picking us up to meet somebody at a coffee shop that would take us to see Santanera’s organic agave fields. We set out hoping to learn why their tequila is so expensive. We were not prepared for what we saw.

Santanera blew our fucking minds and changed the way we think about tequila.

In the world of tequila, discussions typically revolve around production methods and additives—a conversation that starts with freshly harvested agave pinas arriving at the distillery to start production. But what happens before that? It’s always kind of hidden behind the curtain and not talked about.

As tequila sales have skyrocketed so has its production. 651,400,000 liters were produced in 2022, a 187.6% increase from 10 years prior. How do you support that level of growth? Deforestation, mono-cropping, chemical pesticides, mass harvesting, and the farming of asexually reproduced cloned plants.

It’s all concerning, but let’s focus on clones. Tequilana blue weber agave, used in tequila production, takes 6-8 years to mature. The plant produces and stores sugars and at maturity, the plant will sprout a quiote - a large center stalk used for sexual reproduction that will sprout flowers and seeds. That process depletes the sugar stores in the plant leaving it unusable for tequila production, so quiote is cut off as it grows to keep the sugar concentrated in the pina. Its blue weber agave genetics have been frozen in time as the climate, pests, and funguses continue to evolve around it. That are programs like Bat Friendly that promote holding 5% of agave fields for sexual reproduction. This is a vital practice for both pollinators and the plant species but it does mean losing 5% of the raw materials and not many producers do it.

That brings us to Santanera and our first stop, walking one of their agave fields with the head of agriculture. They self-produce their own agave across 13 completely organic, pesticide-free fields while letting 15-17% of their crop grow the quiote to flower and sexually reproduce through pollination. Then they selectively harvest the rest, individually, at the peak of maturity. This is a remarkable sacrifice for the sake of healthy ecosystems. Why put in all the manual work to maintain organic fields for years for the better part of a decade just to get such a comparatively small yield? Because sustainable practices matter and it’s the right thing to do. We were the first outsiders to ever walk that field and see that nursery, not because it’s restricted, but because nobody else has ever asked to go see it.

After the field, we meet Pablo the owner of Santanera at Tres Mujeres. Tres Mujeres, NOM 1466, is a contract distillery known for low-quality additive bullshit in fancy bottles. I had heard of Santanera previously but immediately wrote them off because of being produced at NOM 1466. That was so short sighted. They are produced at 1466, but they are also produced at 1123 which is Cascahuin, my favorite distillery. All of their Tahona blanco is produced at Cascahuin, which makes sense since 1466 doesn’t have a Tahona. So how does it work at 1466… when they are going to do a batch of Santanera Organic tequila they shut the entire distillery down, they clean and sanitize everything, the overs, the roller mills, distillation tanks, everything and then they let the entire facility air out for a month. Then they bring in their own crew of people along with head distiller Sergio Cruz, the head distiller of NOM 1414, to make their product. Next, it’s cold filtered and a sample goes to some world renowned laboratory in Italy for in-depth analysis proving with absolute certainty it is completely natural and additive-free. It’s so irrefutable that even though the CRT by rule doesn’t allow any tequila brand to claim they are additive-free, Santanera’s Organic tequila says “This tequila is free of artificial sweeteners, flavors, and additives” right on the label! That’s a first and an only.

Preference is preference and everyone’s pallet is different, but objectively Santanera is the best tequila on the planet. They are in a category all their own.

From there we went to the construction site where they are actively building their own distillery from the ground up. We got to see the plans and renderings. We walked the construction site and got to see the hidden gem. They knew there was spring water on site, but what they didn’t know until they started digging, is that it was a volcanic hot spring that will self power all of their ovens. We drove up to the flat above the construction site and had a picnic style tasting through their lineup. He asked Morgan and I what we liked the best and then gifted us those bottles at the end. Afterward, he took us all out to lunch at Corazón de Alcachofa Sao Paulo. The 4 of us sat there chatting for hours. It turned from business to personal and we sipped through almost an entire bottle of the Tahona blanco. Travis left but Morgan and I went with Pablo directly to dinner at Meet Social Grill for the opening night of his friend chef Emanuele Olivero’s restaurant takeover.

 

Wow! That sounds like a fantastic trip!

 

Anyone having a mint julep today?

I just made a mint infused simple syrup to use in mine later today.

Cheers!

 

Knocking some down at the family cabin.... Foundation work plus family time is a hard balance but a few when everyone goes to bed works out just fine haha

 

I’m having some Volans high octane.

 

I just brought a Mexican market bottle back signed by Filipe - the head distiller and owner of El Pandillo. That’s Cristina, the owner of Volans, next to him.