This newsletter is about mezcal; not voiceovers. But my ability to have a meaningful Oaxacan exploratory adventure has been rather limited by my career as a voice talent.
The conundrum: for most people work is work and leisure is leisure. You don’t mix the two. I get it. But when voiceovers come in and I can’t do them I’m out the income. The thing that makes it extra tantalizing? Recording voiceovers normally takes very little time—and is fairly lucrative. So if it only takes a little while, and makes me some solid bucks…it’s kinda hard to walk away from them on vacation.
Plus it pads my mezcal buying budget!
So in the past these trips were about 4 days. By letting my regular clients know in advance and by only taking this short time, I usually didn’t miss out on too much work. But how about a whole new concept? I’d been reading the story of another voice talent with a wife and kids who traveled frequently in a rather large vehicle with an extra nice mobile studio setup.
I figured I could overcome my aversion to long road trips and do the same. So Cecilia and I hatched a plan to drive from our home in San Miguel de Allende to Puebla, stay there Friday night, then onto Oaxaca Saturday. I even made room for a bunch of empty garrafones to limit our need to buy them there.
Then I found out about the Tri-Booth.
Understand that I’ve had at least three different portable studios over the course of 18 years. The previous versions were table-top models and sounded either horribly “boxy” or just didn’t work to keep out room reflections well, which is especially problematic with the abundance of high-energy retail commercial work I do. (See below video.)
But the Tri-Booth is a huge leap forward: it allows me to stand, utilizing excellent acoustic blankets, which surround me on all sides and at the top! It features a collapsible PVC frame that’s easily assembled, and everything fits into a duffel bag, weighing in at 40 pounds—not counting the laptop, mic and other accoutrements, which fit neatly into a messenger bag.
This puppy works! Nothing will be as good as my quiet, state-of-the art home studio, but this? This is as good as I ever dared to hope for. So I set it up in the extra bedroom we had in our AirBnb. Took about 35 minutes and I was sailing! The first two days I had about an hour and a half worth of work, which didn’t interrupt any of our plans. Then on Wednesday, when my wife and friends went to visit textile and black clay attractions—which I wasn’t interested in, I comfortably took care of some other jobs that came in. There were only minor things for the rest of the week. Then we hit Centro for the evening!
Levadura de Olla
My wife Cecilia loves going to the palenques as I do, but she also loves spending time in Centro…a lot! She’d been researching restaurant options and determined she really wanted to go to Levadura de Olla, which is apparently one of the most popular dining spots in Oaxaca right now. Not only do they feature a menu drawn from various, regional area styles, but they’re also known for having a number of especially healthy options too.
The food was good Saturday night, but who am I kidding? I was jonesing for the mezcal! I chose their house Arroqueño first. You know how I’m always looking for an Arroqueño to rival the first I ever had? Well this wasn’t it. Jajaja. Not bad at all, but the next option was a good deal better: their house Papalometl. Splendid Potatorum deliciousness!
But no visit to Oaxaca is ever complete without a certain favorite stop-off.
La Popular
One of the absolute best places to both eat and drink in Oaxaca centro, La Popular has always reminded me of little joints you typically find in US college towns: the opposite of pretentious, fun art for sale hanging on the walls—and, buddy, some of the best mezcal you’ll find at really great prices per shot!
La Popular is so “popular” they had to expand to a second location just up the street. More on that later.
Every house distillation I had was great—even the Mexicano they had that night, but the standout was a massive Jabalí that just knocked me for a loop! We’d have to stop in here again later in the week.
The AirBnb
For the past four years Cecilia and I have taken February Oaxaca trips with two other couples. This year it was our friends Fred & Barb—and new friends Dan & Jill. Cecilia and I like the idea of just getting a hotel room, but it’s been pretty undeniable that these AirBnbs are more economical—and provide other advantages; like a place to store our bottles and garrafones of mezcal!
I think every place we’ve booked has something nice about it—as well as something not so nice. This year Barb found a good deal on one in Centro, and Cecilia and I are of the mind that it may have been the best so far. In fact the only undesirable element is something the fabulous owner told us he could fix with no problem.
Months before the trip I’d started planning the palenque schedule, running the prospective regions by Barb and Fred. Previously we’d come to realize that consecutive, full days in the palenques probably wasn’t a good idea. This would give us a chance to experience centro and other aspects of Oaxaca in the days between—not to mention giving our aging organs a bit of rest. Which means we didn’t drink mezcal during those in-between days, right?
Well no.
But philosophically we may have drunk slightly less than, say, a visit to Félix Ángeles Arellenes’ Mezcal La Descendencia—where the ancestral mezcal samples come flying furiously at you by the dozen!
The one new region we’d planned on was where we’d be going the next morning: Sola de Vega. We’d been to several palenques in Santa Catarina Minas last year, and while it was an enchanting experience, we were a little surprised at the sticker price on most of the distillations. Like Minas, Sola de Vega is also known for it’s ancestral, clay-distilled mezcal. But, as some others had told me, the prices there were a fair amount less.
Tell you what: I’ve never had a tougher time planning a mezcal adventure than Sola de Vega. First of all, it seemed the palenques were VERY spread out. Some highly recommended options were a one to two hour drive away from the village. Clearly a meaningful trip there should include finding a hotel in the area, but since we were shuttling from our apartment in Oaxaca City, it was more of a challenge. But we had at least one outstanding palenque experience, one pretty damn good one—and another that was, well, rather weird. (Nothing terrible; just unlike any other as I’ll explain in the next article.)
Hang on, Mezcal Maniacs. There a LOT more to come!