Palenqueros Baltazar Cruz Sierra Negra Mezcal

Palenqueros is the single-producer mezcal series started by Luca Gargano of Velier, the Italian independent bottler, bottling individual Oaxacan palenqueros under their own names. This one comes from maestro Baltazar Cruz Gómez in San Luis del Río, a mezcal village in the Tlacolula district, working with wild-harvested Sierra Negra (Agave americana), an agave far less often bottled on its own than espadín. The process is fully traditional and slow: the piñas are cooked in an earthen pit oven, crushed under a mule-drawn stone tahona, fermented for four days with wild yeast, and distilled in a 300-liter copper pot still. Cruz bottles it at still strength, uncut, at 51% ABV, and production runs only around 800 bottles per batch. Reviewers of earlier Palenqueros Sierra Negra releases from Cruz have noted butterscotch and cream, ripe banana and melon on the nose, with sweetness and spice on the palate over earthy, mineral notes. A rare single-maguey mezcal from a high-proof, low-volume producer, best poured neat and slowly to let it open up in the glass.

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