Del Maguey Barril Mezcal
Honouring the extraordinary skill of the late Florencio Don Lencho Laureano Carlos Sarmiento former patriarch of Del Maguey's partner family in Santa Catarina Minas. Produced with a rare agave that, in some regions of Ejutla de Crespo, can take up to 30 years to mature, Del Maguey´s Barril variety does belong to the Karwinskii family of agaves, upright, with the trunk of the heart included in the entire process. Along with the underground roast, hand mashed agave, and an extensive fermentation period of 20-30 days prior to ancestral clay stills production, this spirit has extraordinary depth. Floral dark fig root vegetable and slate notes.
Flavor Profile
Tasting
Jasmine, pear, fig, root vegetable, forest floor, slate
Jasmine and pear with dried fig
Root vegetable and forest floor with deep earthiness
Slate and mineral with long complex finish
Origin
Central Valleys
Santa Catarina Minas
5900 ft
Clay and Limestone
Barril (Agave karwinskii)
18 to 30 years
The Process
Florencio Carlos Sarmiento family palenque
Hand-cut in clay and limestone soils after 18 to 30 years
Earthen pits lined with volcanic rock
Hand-mashed with wooden bats · open wooden vats · prolonged wild fermentation
What defines this mezcal
MINAS MEZCAL: THE NOBLE SLOW WAY
“The real value of this mezcal lies in not letting this town die. It’s like our dead: they don’t die unless they’re forgotten. We must not forget how this is done: its essence, its foundation, how it was first created.” “With a clay pot it’s slower, but nobler.”
What the Mines Left Behind
Once a hub for silver, gold and copper extraction, Santa Catarina Minas owes its name to the mines that shaped its land. Beneath its quiet streets lies volcanic-rich terrain where mineral veins once drew fortune seekers. Today, water remains its true treasure: wells and rain-harvested reservoirs sustain the clay pot stills and the agave fields that inherit the mine’s legacy.
The Learned Family of Minas
It’s unusual to find ancestral mezcaleros whose children all went to college, and even more so to see them return to the palenque. In Santa Catarina Minas, where ancestral production is guarded like a family secret, the Carlos family stands out for combining formal education with inherited knowledge. Luis, the eldest son of Luis Carlos, studied veterinary medicine; one sister trained as a chef, the other as a nurse. Each chose a different path, yet all three returned to mezcal with the same conviction their grandfather Florencio, Don Lencho, once had. That mix, education and tradition, is part of what makes Minas feel so singular, a place where cultured lives orbit around an ancient craft.
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