Cuentacuentos Arroqueño Mezcal

Arroqueño is a wild relative of Espadín, with denser, more complex flavour — agaves grow 18+ years before harvest. Cuentacuentos work directly with small Oaxacan distillers (palenqueros), each batch single-village, single-distiller, traceable. Smoky, herbal, savoury, with stone fruit and mineral depth. A wine-drinker's mezcal.

This bottling comes from Ángel Cruz Robles, who distils in Sola de Vega, a town in Oaxaca's rugged Sierra Sur. His family tended their field of Arroqueño for the better part of two decades before this first harvest.

The method is ancestral, the oldest and rarest way to make mezcal. Cruz Robles crushes his roasted agave by hand with a wooden mallet, then distils it in clay pot stills rather than copper. Cuentacuentos released its first bottlings in 2018, and every batch names its maker on the label.

Pour it neat in a small glass and take it slowly. The slow-grown agave gives a deep mineral core beneath the smoke. This is a bottle for the end of the night, not for mixing.