More than a year ago I shared my mezcal origin story in a Mezcal Maniac article, entitled, “The Story of Job: How an Enlightened Young Bohemian Baptized me with Mezcal.” Gathering my thoughts for that piece brought up a lot of memories.
Job had taken me around to palenques in Oaxaca, explained everything he knew about both the process of making artesanal mezcal—as well as the culture surrounding it. He was actually living on the palenque of Daniel and Cosme Hernández in San Baltazar Guelavila and soaking up every bit of knowledge he could, including a fair amount of the Zapotec language. As previously explained, Job was wanted on a marijuana charge in the US, so living remotely wasn’t such a bad idea for him then. But eventually he had to face the music, which meant 3 years in the pokey back in the US.
Those 3 years were up some time ago, and Job (actual name Max) went back to his stomping grounds of Idaho, Oregon and California. He reconnected with a female friend named Becca, fell in love, married her and they produced baby Juniper in super short order! But these interruptions—one a 3 year bummer, the other a lovely blessing—did nothing to destroy his love of Oaxaca and artesanal mezcal.
Then, as my friends and I were planning our February trip, I found out he, Becca and Juniper were all heading down during the same time. What luck!
Reconnecting with Job
So, Monday, the day after our palenque adventure to Sola de Vega was a scheduled off day. I could do a few voiceovers with my mobile studio, and the others could hit centro, hang out or do whatever. And that day “The Artist Formerly Known as Job” came to our Airbnb for a visit.
There are a fair number of folks here in San Miguel de Allende who became acquainted with Job on his visits several years ago, but most of my Mezcal Maniac friends had only heard my stories. So I was glad my friend Fred Collins was there and could meet him too.
When I was first getting to know him, I came to realize that although Job was a real hustler—a natural salesman—he was quite uncomfortable imposing upon others personally. For instance, Cecilia and I wanted to take him to dinner, and we had reservations at Casa Oaxaca, which is a pretty nice place. I got the impression he wasn’t completely comfortable there though, and when I told him to order something he ended up getting this tiny appetizer that looked like a few cocoa pastry puffs spread across a plate.
“Job! I wanted to buy you dinner for introducing me to Oaxaca, and you get Cocoa Puffs? Come on, man. Get a steak.”
But he hated the idea of our paying for a substantial dinner for him at this fairly swank restaurant.
There was also the story relayed to me by Hermogenes Vásquez García awhile back. He said that Job got adventurous one day and decided to walk all the way from San Baltazar Guelavila to Mogen’s palenque in Logoche. To give you some idea, ordinarily by car this would take 2 hours and 45 minutes. But it’s a circuitous route, and Job didn’t have a car at that time. So accepting the principle that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, he just set out on foot. Google Maps is telling me that would take nineteen hours!
Job told me he actually slept for the night in a certain field along the way, but by morning realized what kind of field it was. 🌿 😧 Mogen expressed that he has lived in Logoche his entire life, and even he would never have attempted such a thing, knowing there is a certain number of these field owners who don’t cotton to pedestrians just passing through!
But somehow Job made it to Mogen’s without arousing suspicions.
Another really impressive thing with this dude… At some point, like others who realized increasing mezcal demand means more agaves must be planted NOW, he started promoting the idea of reforesting agave. For awhile he’d planned to walk all of Mexico, document the various agave varieties along the way and harvest seeds from those plants that were ready. It was all part of what he called the “Proyecto Flor de la Vida,” or “Flower of Life Project.” (see photo)
In addition to promoting the replanting of agave far and wide, he also made some personal deals with various mezcalero landowners. He’d provide seeds and even plant thousands of agaves on their land, and when the harvest came in he’d get a share of it and/or the mezcal made from it.
In one case, he’d planted a few thousand Tobalá on a large hillside field on Daniel and Cosme’s land in 2014, and has already been making mezcal from it for the past two years.
Ok, stopping down: I wonder…did that last statement strike you as odd? It did me. Aren’t we always told that Tobalá takes from 12 to 15 years to mature? Well, Job tells me they can take that long, sure. But some of them were ready to go last year—after only about 8. And even more were sprouting quiotes in the last few months at 9 years.
So part of his trip to Oaxaca this year involved working with Daniel and Cosme on a nice big batch of Tobalá from those very agaves. I followed him on social media to see how it was going. The first day the maestros asked him if he was sure he was ready to work. Perhaps the last several years away had made him soft? Job affirmed he was ready to hit it. So his first task: the lowly work of cleaning the bagasso, the spent agave fiber that’s used for, among other things, insulating roasting agaves from the fiery rocks in the horno.
Not only did he show he was ready to work, but Job also made the hardcore choice of actually SLEEPING right there in the palenque some nights on the concrete floor! No mames!
For more than a month he was busting his ass with the others, harvesting agaves, chopping, roasting, crushing, fermenting and distilling. He told me they decided upon an old-school distillation process that he said involved something called “cuerpo macizo.” (If that spelling is correct I’ll be shocked.) He tried to explain it, but I couldn’t faithfully relay it to you. Something about a somewhat more painstaking process of their stopping down frequently throughout the distillation and making cuts to it as they did.
This just in! Since starting on this article, I received a package from Daniel and Cosme. In addition to a sample bottle of Jabalí, which is elegantly awesome, and a Coyote, Tepextate, Jabalí, Tobalá, Tobasiche ensamble, which is totally divine, there was also a bottle of this very Tobalá they spent the month making. So I’ve spent the last 3 days sipping on it to make positively certain I comprehend it.
My impressions… Unlike many local friends—but much like many Mezcal Maniacs—I like a nice, strong flavor. You could call it a “bite.” I don’t like that bite too harsh, no. But, as I’ve written before, I’m not looking for something that’s supremely smoooooth, as so many who’ve spent years drinking bourbon appear to like. That said, I can admit to enjoying a mezcal that’s both full-flavored and on the softer side in the bite department. And this one has been beguiling me.
I’d love to create a graph to describe the strength of mezcal—strength of flavor mind you. On this graph I’d call everything above a certain point “Kicking,” meaning that’s where the bite starts. But everything below that point would be “Mellow.” And if I were plotting the line of this Tobalá on the graph it would weave gently from both the Kicking sector and back to the Mellow zone multiple times back and forth on a single sip.
I also bear in mind that this distillation is only a couple of weeks old! And in my experience a mezcal will virtually always improve with more time than that. I’m going to share some later today with some of my Mezcal Maniac friends at our Friday Mezcal Meetup here in San Miguel de Allende. Looking forward to getting their impressions, but at this point I’m pretty sure I’ll be ordering some of this!
Speaking of Tobalá, flashing back to maybe 7 or 8 years ago, there was a batch of such in which Daniel and Cosme had let Job act as maestro; so it was the first and only time I printed his fictitious name on a bottle label—and I still had a few of those bottles! I thought it would be cool for him to actually open up and enjoy something of his own that had been in glass for a good, long time.
So I guess it was a few hours we three sat at the dining room table, sipped, told stories, laughed—and occasionally slipped outside for a smoke. It had been several years since I’d actually seen Job, and it was great to hang out without any law enforcement specter hanging in the atmosphere.
Monday Night in Oaxaca Centro
Later that same day our group had reservations at Los Danzantes Restaurant, which we’ve enjoyed in the past.
The dining experiences in Oaxaca run the gamut. I’m normally happy at a little spot with a freshly made tlayuda, cerveza and a house mezcal, but a more posh place like Los Danzantes can be nice too. We didn’t notice much of a house mezcal list; so just ordered some of Alipus’ barro options.
Afterward our group had a bit of a time settling on a second spot. There’s no hiding from it: while mezcal prices have zoomed everywhere else, they’ve been creeping up in Oaxaca too. Gone are the days when virtually every place in centro had house options on mind blowing sylvestre distillations for 60 - 65 pesos per 2 ounce shot. We’ve already established that La Popular is still hanging in there, but a couple of the places we stopped into were featuring shots starting around 170, but averaging more like 270 - 300. In Oaxaca? 😑
Ah well. That IS life, right? On the one hand I don’t mind paying a bit more for a shot—especially if I knew it was somehow making it’s way back to the palenqueros. But I can only hope it is. Further, the issue is not a higher shot price specifically; it’s the thought that there’s another place around the corner with mezcal just as good or better at a lower price. Next trip I’m doing more research. And with a little help I found at least one more spot worth mentioning. But I’ll write about it later, as we went there later in the trip.
We did finally settle on La Mezcalerita, an old favorite—and actually the place Cecilia and I met Job on our first trip, and where we came up with the name, “Guiño Guiño,” for my little local mezcal brand. It’s a MUCH bigger place now with a good-sized terraza. Prices? Again, nowhere near what they used to be, but we still settled on a decent Espadín and pretty good Tobasiche.
All told, it was a fun day. I got to do a few voiceovers back at the apartment, got to hang out and drink with Job as well as enjoy Oaxaca’s beautiful centro. But I didn’t want to stay out too late, as our driver would be picking us up at 8:30 Tuesday morning for our trip to Logoche in Miahuatlán. You’ll definitely be hearing about that next!