Del Maguey Single Village Wild Papalome San Pedro Teozacoalco Mezcal

Papalome is a Mixteca Alta treasure — a wild Agave potatorum cousin of tobalá that grows in the high, dry, indigenous Mixtec country of northwestern Oaxaca — and Del Maguey's is distilled in hybrid stills of clay and stainless steel by a palenquero called El Bigote. Ron Cooper, the Taos artist who founded Del Maguey in 1995 on the single-village idea, bottles it from San Pedro Teozacoalco, where Fernando "El Bigote" Caballero Cruz and Fernando Caballero Miguel work: wild papalome, roasted in an earthen pit, crushed, fermented naturally, and twice-distilled in the village's distinctive clay-and-steel stills, bottled at 45% ABV. Master of Malt calls it meaty, earthy, and tropical — the hybrid stills giving a bold yet balanced result. Expect a nose of cooked agave, ripe tropical fruit, and a savory, faintly meaty depth over the earthy softness clay lends, opening into a rich, textured palate where potatorum-family florals and fruit meet a mineral, high-desert edge and a rustic, rounded mouthfeel, finishing long and warm with gentle smoke. Honest note: this is one of the more unusual bottles in Del Maguey's range — a single-agave sipper from a region and a still type most drinkers have never encountered — and it's priced as a rarity. For the collector who's worked through the central-valley villages and wants the far corner of the map, it's the Mixteca in a copita. Neat, slowly. The certified-organic hand-blown bottle with the Ken Price label.

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