Del Maguey Single Village San Luis Del Rio Azul Mezcal

San Luis del Río Azul is blue agave made into mezcal — Agave tequilana Weber, the tequila plant, grown in Oaxaca and treated the Oaxacan way. Ron Cooper, the Taos artist who founded Del Maguey in 1995 on the single-village idea, has worked with Paciano Cruz Nolasco's family in San Luis del Río since the beginning; Del Maguey calls Paciano a legend and one of the greatest mezcal producers the world will ever know. For Azul, the family took blue agave — which in Jalisco is steamed in ovens and column-distilled into tequila — and roasted it in an earthen pit over wood, crushed it by tahona, fermented it naturally in wood, and twice-distilled it in wood-fired riverside copper stills, bottled at 47% ABV. The result is a mezcal that tastes like the missing link: expect the sweet, cooked-agave, faintly peppery character tequila drinkers know, wrapped in the smoke, earth, and mineral grip of San Luis del Río — a nose of roasted agave, citrus, and clean woodsmoke, a rich, rounded palate of agave syrup, black pepper, and green herb with the canyon's iron-red minerality, and a long, dry, smoky finish. Honest note: it's a fascinating bottle for anyone curious about what separates tequila from mezcal, and it's priced as a single-village rarity. In a copita, neat, ideally beside a good blanco tequila. The certified-organic hand-blown bottle with the Ken Price label. Blue agave, the Oaxacan way.

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