El Rey Zapoteco Cuishe Mezcal

El Rey Zapoteco Cuishe Mezcal 

El Rey Zapoteco Cuishe is made from fully mature, wild Cuishe agaves cut by hand with machete and hoe and cooked using oak wood in an underground conical oven made of river rocks covered with soil. The cooked agaves are crushed by horse-driven Chilean quarry tahona. The crushed agave fibers are fermented in open air pine vats using natural yeasts. The fermented agave is distilled twice in copper stills to yield a 48% ABV Cuishe mezcal bursting with flavor, giving vegetal notes and hints of fresh linen. A long finish, more than 2 minutes, with pepper and smoke.

Oaxaca’s oldest artisanal mezcal brand that produces its mezcal entirely in-house, El Rey Zapoteco was founded in 1960 by Don Serafín Hernandez Blas in Santiago Matatlán. Today, the business is run by the family matriarch Doña Juana and Don Serafin’s sons. Caretakers of agave fields that routinely yield some of Oaxaca’s largest agaves, the Hernandez family are faithful stewards of production techniques that remain the same as they were at their founding.