Erstwhile Jabalí Mezcal by Silverio García (2023 Ancestral Limited Edition)

Only 100 liters made. Triple-distilled in clay pot and agave quiote. Jabalí agaves are the most difficult, temperamental agave varietal to work with due to the foam – resulting from saponins, a naturally occuring compound in jabalí agaves – generated at every stage of production from roasting to fermentation to distillation.

Jabalí requires much more work and yields much less mezcal, compared to other agave varietals.  It took about fifty-five pounds of raw Jabalí agave to make one liter of mezcal (or 1 metric ton of raw agave for every forty liters of mezcal) for this particular batch.

A legacy of the era when Mezcal production was illegal in Oaxaca, this batch of Jabalí crafted by Silverio García Luis – a 2023 Ancestral Limited Release – rescues a García family tradition that had been forgotten for almost fifty years.

Don Lencho, Silverio’s father, used a hollowed out quiote (the flowering stalk of agave plants) instead of a copper turbante, to evade the military that would come and seize his distillation equipment by force.

Now you too can partake in this unique mezcal tradition from the García family in Rancho Blanco Güilá, Oaxaca, available for the first time in the United States in partnership with Erstwhile Mezcal.