The espadín maguey dominates mezcal production for practical reasons, but Maestro Antonio Manuel Cirino also experiments with rarer, more labor-intensive varieties.
There are several practical reasons why the espadín maguey is most popular for making mezcal. The elegant gray/green explosion of giant, toothed, sword-blade leaves grows rapidly, grows huge, and cultivates easily. If you wonder why tobalá, cuishe, jabalí, and others are more expensive, compare the espadín piña in the photo with the tobalá ones behind it. The tobalá are about the size of a soccer ball, and the espadín weighs 500lbs.
Eléctrico Mezcal’s Maestro, Antonio Manuel Cirino, loves experimenting with other varieties. He is one of the few mezcaleros nearby who will even attempt to squeeze a bottle out of jabalí. It takes five distillations compared to Espadín’s two, and the yield is small even then. Two tons of piñas yields between 10 and 15 liters… but, oh, it’s so worth the extra effort and cost.
However, Cirino is a practical man, and for the world to experience the perfection of his craft, he also makes the finest Espadín Mezcal, both the fresh Joven and the mellow, rounded 3-year-old Matured in Glass.
Scattered across the hills surrounding San Baltazar Guelavila, Cirino tends his cultivated espadín in small, stony parcels of rust-coloured soil. He leaves the leaves long to funnel the rain into the roots of each plant, avoiding chemicals or unnecessary irrigation. After eight years, he harvests with a machete, a much-loved coa jima, and a sledgehammer.
The ‘450’ came from a small plantation up a hill off the road into San Baltazar. The plants stand twice as high as Cirino himself as he weighs in, his machete blade flashing in the sunlight, swiftly slicing through the plant’s long, succulent saber blades. Within minutes, the piña, the heart of the maguey, stands naked and exposed, its leaves scattered around on the soil.
The piña is so large that it takes minutes to cut through and push it off its roots. Three men push it to Cirino’s El Rojito (The Little Red), his treasured 20-year-old Nissan pick-up. They weigh it: 204 kilograms, 450 lbs. Cirino hits the piña with his mallet and guesses the sugar content: ‘27%,’ he says. Omar measures it with a BRIX refractometer. Cirino was right: 27%.
‘Not bad,’ says Cirino, casually. ‘If it had been April, it would have been more like 40%. And I’ve had bigger.’