Del Maguey Wild Fruit Iberico Santa Catarina Minas Mezcal

Ibérico is a pechuga made with a leg of Spanish ham — and it exists because José Andrés's R&D chef had an idea in Oaxaca. Pechuga is mezcal's ceremonial style, a third distillation with fruit, nuts, spices, and traditionally a raw chicken or turkey breast hung in the still; when Chef Rubén García of ThinkFoodGroup visited Santa Catarina Minas with Del Maguey founder Ron Cooper, he suggested jamón Ibérico de Bellota — the legendary ham of acorn-fed, black-footed Spanish pigs — and months later shipped a leg to Oaxaca to begin testing. The result is made by Florencio Carlos Sarmiento and family in the ancestral heartland of Santa Catarina Minas: espadín, roasted in an earthen pit, crushed by hand, naturally fermented, distilled in clay pots over direct fire, and redistilled a third time with the ham, wild fruit, nuts, and spice, bottled at 49% ABV. Master of Malt calls it a showstopper — pechuga with the chicken replaced by jamón Ibérico, luxurious and wild. Del Maguey's notes: a spicy floral nose of carnation, gardenia, and jasmine with ripe pear, dark fig, wet green hay, and forest floor. Mezcal Reviews' tasters found milk chocolate, baked sweet potato, chipotle, cold-ash-smoked pineapple, bitter orange, a big hit of salt, dry clay, and dried smoked cherry — dense and dark, and much better with thirty minutes of air. Honest note: too rich for some blood to buy, as one put it — a collector's pechuga. In a copita, neat, with time and patience.

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