In the community of San Luis Amatlán, in the Miahuatán district of southern Oaxaca, Camilo Garcia Gutierrez shares a palenque with his brother-in-law, Nicolas, and makes spirits in the style of the region.
While Miahuatlán has a long history of working with a wide variety of agave species that all thrive in its unique tierra blanca (white earth), producers are only recently experimenting with Cucharillo (Dasylirion sp).
With this release we are pleased to present Camilo’s very first Cucharillo batch, likely amongst the first to be made in the region, which we rested in glass for two years before release.
Cucharillo is not actually an agave, rather it’s a species of dasylirion. This type of plant has a much longer history of being distilled in the north of Mexico, where it’s known as Sotol.
As opposed to agaves, which flower just once before dying, dasylirion plants flower once every few years, after which the plant can continue to grow. This is quite exciting from a sustainability perspective, as it means seeds can be collected from a plant before it dies. Whereas an agave must be harvested before going to seed to be good for mezcal.
