Ensamble Madrecuixe + Tobaziche | October 2020 | Tomás García Cruz | ENSTGC2010 | Spring 2022 Release | 60 bottles
Over the last two decades, Tomás Garcia Cruz has become renowned in the region of Miahuatlán and throughout the state of Oaxaca for his profound knowledge and skill surrounding the cultivation and reproduction of maguey. As such, he is often sought out by other growers who wish to reproduce rare and endemic types that they themselves are on the brink of losing. Working a medias in this fashion has allowed Don Tomás to keep half of the total seed or bulbil clone production, and expand his efforts to preserve and revive old mezcalero agave types – many of which are A. americana and A. karwinskii varieties.
In late 2019, he received an uprooted but giant and nearly mature “Amatlán type” Tobaziche for bulbil propagation, a technique that involves plucking the agave flowers just prior to pollination in order to naturally force the vegetative production of clones in place of seed pods. After harvesting the hundreds of baby Tobaziche bulbils for planting in the nursery, it was decided that the piña of the mother plant would be added to the next horno. The general consensus is that an agave no longer maintains sufficient sugar for distillation after it has fully flowered and reproduced, but Tomás was curious to see how sweet this particular Tobaziche was; the machete passed through the pencas with ease, indicating that the plant still had water and sugars in its heart. His intuition was correct, and the maguey was separated along with five piñas of homegrown Madrecuixe quiotudo that had been harvested from a red earth parcel, amassing about 300kg of cooked agave in total.
The dry fibers were fermented for 48 hours before around 250L of well water was added. The open-air fermentation continued for another eight days before the maestro deemed it ready for distillation. Making a series cuts during the process, a careful blend of puntas and común (around 30% abv liquid) were added to the hearts, until Don Tomás was satisfied with the perlas and the apparition of a cordón cerrado, composing 50L. This small batch was selected by and bottled exclusively for the Bien Trucha Group
§ Maguey(es): Five piñas of Madrecuixe and one piña of Tobaziche
§ Provenance of the maguey: Homegrown Tobaziche/ Madrecuixe from neighboring village of Tecolote
§ Producer: Tomás García Cruz
§ Region: Logoche, Miahuatlán
§ Soil type: Tobaziche from white earth and Madrecuixe from red tierra colorada
§ Rest time after harvest: Six days
§ Oven: Conical earthen pit; Five days with mesquite and oak
§ Rest time after oven: Four days
§ Maceration: Machete and shredder
§ Fermentation: Native yeasts; one 1200L Montezuma cypress sabino wood tank containing approximately 300kg of agave
§ Dry fermentation time: 48 hours
§ Wet fermentation time: 8 days
§ Distillation: 2x in copper pot stills
§ Final composition: Heads, hearts, and tails
§ Batch size: 50L
§ Date of distillation: October 2020
§ ABV: 48.4%