Our process
ARTISAN MEZCAL
PRODUCTION PROCESS
Saca Espantos produces an artisan-style mezcal. Using the pre-Hispanic techniques, traditions and methods that our ancestors have been carrying out for more than 500 years.
This mezcal is made from the distillation of 100% maguey in its different varieties. Being 100% maguey, in the Saca Espantos artisan mezcal you can appreciate a mixture of unique flavors and natural aromatic essences of cooked agave, humid earth, mud, ash, flowers, citrus, herbal, fruit, among others.
Planting and harvesting
EspadÃn (cultivated agave)
EspadÃn is the only maguey that can be cultivated, and it takes 7 to 10 years to mature before harvesting it. Its cultivation is organic, since there’s no chemical products in it.
Wild agaves
All of the other agaves (tobalá, tepeztate, cuishe, wild boar, etc.) cannot be cultivated, since they grow naturally outdoors and require unique conditions (rocks, mount, grass , etc.) that provide exclusive and unique flavors from nature. Some of these agaves reach their optimal ripeness to be able to harvest them up to 35 or 40 years of age.
Cooking process
The agave hearts are cooked in open-air conical ovens lined with refractory stone for approximately three days. At the end of this phase, the agave changes color from white to caramel, indicating that the carbohydrates in the heart have been transformed into sugars.
Grinding
The pieces of the cooked agave hearts are transferred to a well with a circular base, which are crushed by a tahona stone that rotates due to the traction of a horse or mule.
Fermentation
The product from the mill (mostos) is deposited in oak wooden vats with a capacity of up to two thousand liters, water is added and they are left to rest for about 4 to 10 days depending on the environment temperature, which results in a cooked mosto called tepache.
Distillation
The tepache and bagasse are transferred to copper stills which are heated by oak firewood. When the mixture in the still is heated, it slowly evaporates and condenses through a coil that deposits its content in a piece called a montera.
Our artisan mezcal has a double distillation in order to obtain a higher quality product.
Packaging
The mezcal produced is bottled, corked and labeled, under the highest standards set by the Official Mexican Standard NOM-070-SCFI-2016, for alcoholic beverages – mezcal. To later be distributed nationally and internationally.
