El Rey Zapoteco is one of Oaxaca’s oldest artisanal mezcal brands that still produces its mezcal entirely in-house.
About this mezcal
El Rey Zapoteco Pechuga is made from the family’s estate grown “capon”, or fully mature, Espadin agaves that are 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 a first time in copper stills to yield Espadin mezcal as the base distillate. It is then distilled a second time along with wild turkey breast, orange, banana, cantaloupe, pineapple, prune and almond to yield the desired flavor and a 45% ABV, where it is finally aged in oak barrels for 45 days prior to bottling.
El Rey Zapoteco Mezcal
One of Oaxaca’s oldest artisanal mezcal brands that still produces its mezcal 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.
Learn more about El Rey Zapoteco:
- El Rey Zapoteco: The Matron of Mezcal in Oaxaca on Culinary Backstreets
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HighWine
76 reviewsAroma of Neopolitan ice cream. It’s hard to describe it any differently. Strawberry, cocoa, and dry roasted almond. The fragrance is like an ice cream sundae! Taste isn’t quite as bold. It’s got strawberry, raspberry, and roasted nut qualities but not nearly as much as the nose would indicate. Boozy and the finish is kind of flat at first but then flavors of spumoni ice cream creep in.