Destilado de Agave, Pechuga con Tobala/Largo/Barril - 9th Floor Skurnik Selection

• Destilado de agave produced in Santa Catarina Minas, Oaxaca
• Selected by the Skurnik Spirits Portfolio and bottled exclusively for Skurnik Wines & Spirits
• Maestro Mezcaleros Edgar Angeles Carreño & Lorenzo Angeles Mendoza
• Distilled from 42% Tobalá (A. potatorum), 31% Barril (A. karwinskii), and 27% Largo (A. karwinskii)
• Cooked in a traditional earthen pit oven
• Milled both by hand and with a small mechanical grinder
• Open-air fermented in sabino (cypress) wooden tanks (tinas)
• Distilled twice in 2016 and once in 2022 using traditional Filipino-style clay pot stills
• Fruits and botanicals added on third distillation featuring banana, apricot, raisin, apple, pineapple, cinnamon bark, almond, and star anise; raw chicken breast also added
• Rested in glass 8 months after third distillation
• Aromas of toasted cinnamon, hazelnut, milk chocolate, biscotti, sun-dried tomato, cream cheese, stewed plum and guava, with a bright, herbaceous palate full of white flowers, walnut skin, pine sap, green apple, burnt sugar, coriander, and a memory of pencil shavings
• 95 liters produced
• 53% ABV

Since Don Lorenzo passed away tragically in 2016, his family has been holding onto an array of his final batches, storing them in glass both as heirlooms and as future special edition releases. In 2020, Don Lorenzo’s son Edgar and daughter Graciela paid tribute by using one of their father’s final distillations of Espadín agave to make a pechuga—a style of mezcal historically consumed most at family-centric gatherings and celebrations. Edgar distilled it a third time and added the family’s traditional pechuga recipe, which Don Lorenzo had shared with Graciela, creating a batch of pechuga that connected the generations and their shared cultural heritage.

Since then, Edgar has continued to explore his father’s final productions, distilling unique batches of pechuga as tribute. This 9th Floor – Skurnik Selection is one of those batches. Continued in 2022 with an ensamble Don Lorenzo distilled in 2016, featuring three rare varieties of agave (the coveted Tobalá alongside two examples of A. karwinskii), this pechuga is immediately exciting and one of just a handful of batches ever to hit the US market that was distilled without a base of A. angustifolia (most commonly known as Espadín). An exceedingly rare pechuga in both concept and execution.

Tasting Notes

What began as a unique intergenerational batch of pechuga from Real Minero, a posthumous collaboration between a father and his son and daughter, has evolved into a series of experimental and deeply personal mezcales.

Since Don Lorenzo passed away tragically in 2016, the family has been holding onto an array of his final batches, storing them in glass both as heirlooms and as future special edition releases. In 2020, Don Lorenzo’s son Edgar and daughter Graciela paid tribute by using one of their father’s final distillations of Espadín agave to make a pechuga—a style of mezcal historically consumed most at family-centric gatherings and celebrations. Edgar distilled it a third time and added the family’s traditional pechuga recipe, which Don Lorenzo had shared with Graciela, creating a batch of pechuga that connected the generations and their shared cultural heritage.

Since then, Edgar has continued to explore his father’s final productions by  using many of the batches—even some of the most complicated and rare—to make unique tribute pechugas, creating posthumous works of art that blur the boundaries of time, heredity, and even mortality. It’s an incredibly romantic idea.

This 9th Floor – Skurnik Selection is one of those batches. Continued in 2022 with an ensamble Don Lorenzo distilled in 2016 (featuring three rare varieties of agave including the coveted Tobalá alongside two examples of A. karwinskii), this pechuga is immediately exciting and one of just a handful ever to hit the US market that was distilled without a base of A. angustifolia (commonly known as Espadín). It is particularly uncommon to see a pechuga made using Barril or Largo!

But wilder still is the thought that these intergenerational pechugas have an extremely finite limit. The dwindling reserves of Don Lorenzo’s last batches will eventually run dry. Each release is a unique gift, by nature offering an opportunity in every sip to reflect upon and commune with the memory of a loved one gone too early.