Details
- Location: Zacapendo, Michoacan
- Agave: Cultivated Agave tequilana, 50% blue weber, 50% criollo
- Maestro Mezcalero: Edgar Perez, Sergio Cruz, and Patricio Arreaga Peña
- Lot 2
- Vintage: 2019
- ABV: 50%
- Tasting Keywords: Rich, fall flavors
- NOM: M278C
- Buy it today
Nose
A touch of that classic blue agave with more roasty notes.
Taste
Warm and fresh, this could easily be the mezcal of Thanksgiving because of all those associations with caramelized pecan pies and candy apples. The contrast between low viscosity and round mouth feel makes it a distinct experience.
Method
The La Luna Tequilana was roasted for 168 hours, rested for 144 hours, fermented for 288 hours, and then distilled over 7-9 days . The brix on criollo registered at 35 compared with 25 for their blue webers which is quite significant.
Background
The new tequilana isn’t just your standard blue agave, it’s a 50/50 mix of blue weber and criollo which is a tiny tequilana variant. Criollo has been making inroads into some tequilas recently like Calle 23 and the tequila that David Suro makes at Cascahuin.
Salvador got to make this mezcal based on a photographic fluke: He’d developed an estate of blue webers with partners which he was determined to distill artisanally. Then, one day his right hand man, Adriane, “sent me a picture and said we just landed some new agaves which were all cupreata but in the background I could see there were a bunch of really small agaves. I asked about them because they looked like tobalas, he said they were rejects but actually criollo and I told him to get them all for an experiment.”
The criollos all ended up mixed into this new tequilana label for La Luna. It’s quite impressive because the criollos are so expressive, light, bright, sweeter than blue agave without being cloying. The Calle 23 bottle was my first hint that something amazing was happening, the La Luna carries that heritage forward.
Leave a Comment