Burrito Fiestero Durango Tasting Notes

Burrito Fiestero The roasting pit that Burrito Fiestero uses for its agaves.

Details

Location: Nombre de Dios, Durango
Agave: Cenizo / A. durangensis
Maestro Mezcalero: Juan Conde
Batch: 014-A
ABV: 42%
Tasting keywords: Lactic, sage.
NOM: O316X
Buy it today

Nose

Rich sugars, rose water, and pickle juice

Taste

Very light, balsa wood, sage, lactic fermentation.

Production Details

Agave sources: Wild, 12 year old agaves.
Roast: Roasted underground in a volcanic rock oven for 72 hours.
Crush: Solar powered shredder.
Fermentation: Fermented with ambient yeasts in 600 liter wooden tanks for 5-8 days.
Distillation: Twice distilled with bagasse in copper pot alembic stills.

Background Notes

The Burrito Fiestero Cenizo is the flagship bottle of the a growing line from this new Durango brand. Their artisanal line features this Cenizo as well as an ensemble made from Cenizo and Verde agaves. Their ancestral line sports hand painted bottles and single agave varieties including Masparillo, I’gok, Castilla, Chacaleño, Tepemete, Flexispina, Inaquidens, Verde, and Lamparillo. The ancestral line is distilled in clay pots or wooden Filipino stills which they built from scratch especially for this project. Their company, Maguey Spirits, is also behind the Señor Sotol and Mezcal MG gin lines.

Burrito Fiestero An agave verde that is destined for Burrito Fiestero’s verde/cenizo ensemble.

The brand was founded by two brothers, Alejandro and Christian Rossbach; Alejandro handles marketing, Christian production. As their name suggests, they have German parentage, their grandfather emigrated to Mexico to create an optics factory and their family is steeped in engineering. They were introduced to the mezcal world by their uncle Toto Lavelle who founded Mezcal IBÁ. The brothers spent their late teens learning the ropes at the IBÁ palenque in San Pablo Huixtepec but, after three years, they started looking for their own project.

Burrito Fiestero The agave roast at Burrito Fiestero.

They landed in the state of Durango because they met the the Conde family who had a history distilling locally. Together they co-founded the company in 2013, launched the Burrito Fiestero brand in 2015 in the village of Pino Suarez and then expanded to the village of San Nicolas de Acevedo near Nombre de Dios in 2020. The San Nicolas de Acevedo project is a massive reconstruction of an old hacienda which they have christened the Hacienda Maguey complex.

Burrito Fiestero A drone view of the Hacienda Maguey where Burrito Fiestero is produced in Durango.

Two years into the project they have four vinatas (the Durango word for distillery) in the complex for each of their major labels. There is a small room that contains their botanical Mezcal MG gin. Then there’s a large area dedicated to the ancestral distillery. It starts with the local coffin style fermentation contains with 80 liter clay pot sills, eight custom constructed Filipino style wooden stills, and their hand milling area. Then they have a one distilling area devoted to Señor Sotol and another focused on the artisanal labels for Burrito Festiero.

Burrito Fiestero Agave bricks drying at the Hacienda Maguey where Burrito Fiestero is made. These bricks are part of the larger sustainability project at Hacienda Maguey and incorporate agave fibers from previous mezcal batches.

The larger vision for the Hacienda Maguey project is to become an environmental model with a variety of initiatives like recycling agave fiber into adobe bricks, a biodigestor for the vinazas (the solids leftover from fermentation and distillation), a solar powered mill, and many other projects.