Pierde Almas Espadin Mezcal

Over the course of more than four centuries, in rustic stills dotting the countryside of Southern Mexico, the lore of handcrafting fine Mezcal has been handed down from generation to generation. Behind each bottle of Pierde Almas is a time-honored recipe kept alive with humility and painstaking care. From the old masters – the Maestros Mezcaleros – Pierde Almas brings you rare, 100% artisan-made Mezcals, crafted using methods that have remained unchanged since the end of the 16th Century. Pierde Almas still bakes their Agave hearts for up to ten days in earthen ovens, and still mills them under a great stone wheel drawn by horses. Fermentation is slow, careful, and chemicalfree. Distillation takes place in a wood-fired, serpentine copper alembic whose design hasn’t changed appreciably since when the Moors occupied the Spanish Peninsula. Pierde Almas is a hyper-gourmet, artisan-made, small-batch mezcal produced in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca from 100% naturally fermented agave.

The agave hearts (piñas) are placed in underground earthen pits where they are baked over river rocks heated on a wood fire using only fallen timber – we never cut a tree to fuel the fire. The piñas are covered with earth and left to cook slowly for three days. A typical batch consists of 10 tons of agave hearts, yielding approximately 1,200 liters of Mezcal for cultivated varieties (25 to 30% less for wild varieties)

Distillery:
Our home distillery is in San Baltazar Chichicapam in the hills above the Ocotlán Valley, one of the 5 "Valles Centrales" of the State of Oaxaca. We recently started working with a collective made up of of five Maestros from San Juan del Rio, located in the lower regions of the Sierra Mije, south and east of the Valle de Tlocolula - we only do our Espadin at San Juan del Rio.

Family Run
Run by the Familia Sanchez Altamirano - Don Fausto being the original Maestro Mezcalero - now his son is in charge.