Maguey Melate: Pulquero Mezcal by Felix Hernandez Ruiz (375ml)

**Please note: these are 375ml bottles**

MAGUEY MELATE: Pulquero Mezcal by Felix Hernandez Ruiz

100% Maguey, 49.1% abv

Agaves harvested after 15-16 years, 4 day cook in earthen oven, mashed by a tahona, 4 day fermentation, double distilled in copper alambiques

300 Liters Produced, June 2020, Community: Matatlan

This mezcal shouldn’t exist — and Drammers Club bought it for its members because actually our club has a special, personal connection to it.

For over 6 years now, Drammers Club has made the annual trip to Oaxaca for Day of the Dead, where they would spend the days meeting with the great mezcaleros, and the nights in Oaxaca Centro drinking at their best mezcal bars. But those mezcal bars would normally close around midnight, and so just about every night they would end up at the same bar that was open until 3am — Mezcalerita. And after drinking mezcal all day — well, they’d still drink mezcal when they got to Mezcalerita, but they’d always start with a glass or two of their awesome pulque.

A quick aside on pulque. If you don’t know what pulque is, don’t feel bad — not a lot of folks outside of Mexico are familiar with it (and if you get a chance to try it, we highly recommend it, it’s delicious!). Although pulque is made from the same type of plants as mezcal (agaves), it is different because pulque ferments the sap of the agave plant, whereas with mezcal they cook and ultimately ferment the actual plant, not just the sap. Fun fact: a 15 year old pulquero agave plant produces 3 liters of pulque during the night and then another 3 liters during the day — the sap is created by the plant to try to heal itself, and removing the juice effectively keeps the “wound” open (to make more pulque!).

Anyway, back to our story. So, normally Drammers Club members drink rivers of pulque at the great mezcal bar Mezcalerita when they’re in Oaxaca, but of course in 2020 with covid, Oaxaca had taken a big hit, which meant (among other things) a lot less people drinking pulque at Mezcalerita and other pulque bars. So, of course, almost nobody was buying pulque from the producer, the master mezcalero Felix Hernandez Ruiz, and keep in mind that if the pulque isn’t consumed within 2 weeks, it expires. So, the question became — what was Ruiz to do with all the agaves he’d grown for 15 years expecting to turn it into pulque? He decided to turn it into a mezcal, and a fairly rare one at that, turning 10 of his 15 agaves produce this special batch of Pulquero mezcal.

When Drammers Club heard about this special mezcal, they took steps to secure the entire batch of this Pulquero mezcal for Drammers Club. As Drammers Club said, “We figured if we couldn’t be there in person to drink the pulque (which made us very sad!), at least we could do the next best thing and drink the same plants from afar, albeit in mezcal form. So that’s this mezcal and why it’s so personal to us.”

This release is only available to registered Members and Observers of Drammers Club - More Information at Drammers.com

Drammers Pick #21