Six Mezcals, One Maestro, and a Damn Good Ending
From fine pours to a masterclass finish—Oaxaca delivers again
Friday, February 28th, 2025
Let me try to paint you a picture—no, scratch that. Let me pour you a nice shot of it straight down the hatch: On our first day in my favorite mezcal region, my brain went sideways. Blotto. Fried like a tlayuda left too long on the comal. I emerged from two of the three palenques we visited with no usable memory whatsoever. Just vapor and vague impressions. And then—on our last palenque day—the gods of delay conspired. It took forever to get there, slashing our fun time short. The place was beautiful and people delightful, sure, but the lineup was limited: pretty much one mezcal variety. Uno.
Nobody’s fault, really—unless you want to count mine, which I do. Because I wanted more. Much more.
Enter Arturo García of Garcia’s Mezcal Artesanal. This young maestro had been lighting up my inbox for three solid years. No joke. Since I started this Substack, I’ve had a whole army of mezcaleros sliding into the DMs, all with the same hopeful pitch: Come visit. Come taste. Come see. And we’ve been doing our damnedest, moving through the mezcal motherland like thirsty conquistadors—but there’s just so much ground to cover. Oaxaca alone could eat your calendar alive.
Unlike many baby-faced maestros, Arturo isn’t working from a lineage soaked in mezcal tradition. He’s 25, learned the craft young from a rotating cast of producing legends, and he doesn’t have his own palenque. Instead, he’s a mezcal mercenary—renting palenques wherever the agave calls. It’s a roving operation powered by grit and gumption. A Palenque Pop-up.
Arturo cranks out around 800 liters per year from wild or endemic agaves, but the Espadín river runs deeper. He’s also brought in by other brands when they need someone to coax magic out of maguey.
To his credit, Arturo never gave up on me. While we were shaking the Ixcatlán dust from our boots, he messaged again. Said he was in Centro and could swing by our Airbnb with a few bottles. I politely declined—still in mezcal recovery mode. But when I realized the mezcal itch hadn’t been properly scratched, I hit him back Thursday night.
He showed up Friday at 2 p.m., smiling and armed to the teeth.
And damn, did he bring the juice: An Espadilla. An ensamble of Pelón Verde, Gavilán and Espadilla. A Tobasiche. A Mexicano de Castilla. A Tepextate. And the crowd favorite, a Chato. ABV? 48 to 50% across the board. No training wheels.
Now, here’s something deliciously weird: Arturo explained that the Chato was a hybrid of all three agaves commonly known as Tobalá—potatorum, seemanniana, and nussoviorum. Scientifically distinct, but regionally entangled. And apparently, they’d all gotten hot under the collar at the right time, pulling off a full-on maguey ménage à trois.
Sound improbable that somehow only those 3 agaves that are somehow called Tobalá just so happened to get it on? Sure. But the thing is they grow in similar microclimates, flower in overlapping seasons, and are genetically similar enough that hybridization isn’t some random accident—it’s practically destiny. However it happened, the Chato was a symphony—bright, balanced, with a whisper of sweetness that plays nice rather than steals the show. Fred, Bryan, and I bought almost all he had back at the bodega.
Me? I was on a mission to redeem the week. I grabbed the Tobasiche, the offbeat but stimulatingly herbal Tepextate and the Mexicano de Castilla. Arturo confirmed that last one’s a rhodacantha, with the "de Castilla" suffix signifying it had been genetically cultivated for pest resistance and other improvements.
At that moment, I felt like we’d distilled victory from the jaws of defeat. The stash would make it back home. The Mezcal Maniacs would be pleased. And Arturo? He walked away with a well-earned chunk of change. Everybody won.
The Rough Work of Making Mezcal
Every so often, I like to remind myself just how brutal this work is. Mezcal doesn’t make itself. And if you think it’s just piñas and fire, watch the video (below) of Arturo and crew trying to strap three agave piñas to a horse who clearly had other plans. That beast nearly turned Arturo into a footnote—one well-placed kick shy of the obituary.
There’s a story in every bottle. Sometimes it includes a mezcalero, three unwilling piñas, and a horse with homicide in his heart.
In Situ Mezcalería
The best part? No long drive afterward. We headed to dinner, then made our way to In Situ, one of the most fabled mezcalerías in Oaxaca—which is saying something. Somehow, I’d never been. I have no excuse. Never again though.
Founded by Ulises Torrentera, a respected mezcal author, and Sandra Ortíz Brena, an editor, In Situ is a shrine to traditional mezcal—without a lot of extraneous noise to distract you. Over 180 bottles? Try more. I got lost in the shelves like a kid in a candy store—if the candy were high-proof, small-batch, and came with handwritten labels. I finally locked in on a Madrecuixe from Miahuatlán (where the real Cuixe hitters come from), and followed it with a Tepextate from Nicasio García from Güila. Didn’t ring a bell… until I posted a photo on Facebook.
Next morning, boom—a message from Manuel Gamboa, another young maestro who’s been chasing my shadow for a couple years. “Ya probaste uno de los míos! Ya sabes de lo bueno!” he wrote. (“You tried one of mine! You know how good it is!”) Turns out Nicasio is his uncle. Small world, big flavors.
And as Fred always says, “That guy sure knows his way around a piña.”
I think Güila might need to be included in our next trip.
There’s more to tell, but you don’t need the minutiae. Just know this: Oaxaca delivered, as it always does. And ever on my mind: how soon can I go back? That night, I climbed to the terraza, beheld the city’s flickering lights, and whispered goodnight to the statues that stood guard over our weeklong home base.
I sure hope these stories encourage you to make the trip to Oaxaca for yourself. And if you're ever rolling through San Miguel de Allende, look me up. I’ll pour you something rebellious from my flask.
And omg the pinas and horses. What an effort.
This is so great. I'm about to publish a mezcal beginners guide as part of a cdmx series and would love to cross post with a a bit more in depth like this or similar.