Erstwhile Tobala Ancestral was produced by Epifania Gómez Mejía & Silverio García Luis using an agave quiote to replace the copper turbante in distillation.
About this mezcal
Erstwhile Tobala Ancestral was produced by Epifania Gómez Mejía & Silverio García Luis. From the brand:
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, Mezcal production was prohibited and persecuted by the authorities in Rancho Blanco Güilá and other parts of Oaxaca. Silverio’s father, Lorenzo Antonio García (“Don Lencho”, as his family likes to call him), remembers how the military would show up without warning and seize his distilling equipment. Specifically, Don Lencho recalls how they took the valuable copper pieces like the coil and the turbante tube, because those were the most expensive and hardest to replace. Creative problem solving ensued. Don Lencho innovated and used a hollowed out quiote (the flowering stalk of agave plants) to replace the copper turbante.
It was challenging at first. The quiote, part of an agave plant’s natural growth cycle, is organic. It is not a perfectly empty and hollow tube, ready for mezcal distillation. The quiote needed to be – but was not naturally – sufficiently hollow for the mezcal vapor to travel unobstructed.
Don Lencho first tried cutting the quiote in half, in order to remove the insides before rejoining the pieces with tree barks. That proved ineffective, because the mezcal vapor leaked excessively during distillation. He eventually solved the problem by keeping the quiote whole, and hollowing it with a long wooden rod.
The García family used this unique method of mezcal distillation for about a decade, from the end of the 1960’s through the 1970’s. The quiote fell out of use around 1980 when the military stopped confiscating their distillation equipment. Don Lencho had acquired a copper turbante tube by then, with less fear that his investment would be taken away by force.
The quiote technique had been forgotten for more than forty years in the García family … until now. Silverio García, Don Lencho’s son, has resuscitated this innovative family tradition.
Erstwhile Mezcal
Erstwhile Mezcal is a Brooklyn-based mezcal brand specializing in small-batch artisanal and ancestral mezcal. It was founded in 2017 by Yuan Ji (lawyer-turned-empresaria) and Kevin J. Brown (antiquarian map expert and Owner of Geographicus Rare Antique Maps). Their mission is to discover, curate, and connect both connoisseurs and novices with small-batch mezcal of the highest caliber. The team behind Erstwhile Mezcal is committed to mezcal education, transparency, sustainability and fair trade. Erstwhile Mezcal is a woman-owned business that supports fellow women in mezcal production. The first batches of Erstwhile Mezcal arrived in New York and California in the fall of 2018.
In the US, Erstwhile Mezcal can be purchased directly from their online store.
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149 reviewsReview #102: The nose has chlorine, dandelions, milk chocolate, a bit butyric, and rosemary. The palate has leather, dandelion, milk chocolate, dried honeydew, milk, caramel, and the finish has rosemary and oregano.
A weirder tobala for sure. Usually I tend to find some sort of dominant note of florals, fruits, or pine, but this had lots of leather, chocolate, and herbs. Sure, a bit of a weird dandelions note and a soft melon, but definitely not what I expected from it. Anyway, the flavors work well besides some noticeable off notes I found that keep this from being great.
Review #102: The nose has chlorine, dandelions, milk chocolate, a bit butyric, and rosemary. The palate has leather, dandelion, milk chocolate, dried honeydew, milk, caramel, and the finish has rosemary and oregano.
A weirder tobala for sure. Usually I tend to find some sort of dominant note of florals, fruits, or pine, but this had lots of leather, chocolate, and herbs. Sure, a bit of a weird dandelions note and a soft melon, but definitely not what I expected from it. Anyway, the flavors work