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Palenque

Palenque: the best artisanal agave spirits

The Palenque Spirits Project is the brainchild of Luca Gargano, President of Velier, who in 2018 got to know five producers of agave spirits from the State of Oaxaca in Mexico, bottling the fruit of their labour in the Palenqueros series and putting their faces on the label for the first time. 2024 marks the return of the Palenqueros series, with 5 producers involved and 8 Pure Single Palenque selected.

The idea behind it is to valorise, by means of top-quality bottlings, the history and the hidden protagonists of one of the last truly artisanal spirits: a truly unrecognised treasure, with deep roots in indigenous culture, which has long remained sheltered from commercial logic.

The producers come from various villages in the State of Oaxaca, and draw a detailed map of the terroir of Oaxaca, the diversity of agave species and the natural conditions that give the agave a wealth of information during its long growing process. These producers operate with an artisanal approach, some introducing innovative touches at various stages of production, always paying attention to the quality of the soil, the agave and the production process, based on their personal recipe.

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Palenque Project: the heart of Oaxaca.

This series of bottlings is a crucial project in preserving the quality of artisanal agave distillates. One of the most notable results has been to push mezcal producers to transform themselves from local artisans into true entrepreneurs in the industry, despite an initially more rural and genuinely peasant approach.

Another achievement concerns the natural ecosystem. Every day, in fact, due to human intervention the agave in Oaxaca is slowly transforming the landscape from wild to agricultural, with a drastic decrease in wild specimens, although this has not yet been achieved in Tequila. The artisans involved in the project also take care of the different cycles in Mexican food production, following the milpa diet, based on corn but also beans, huitlacoche (edible mushroom), squash, zucchini and quelites (edible herb leaves). These plants are sown after every rainstorm between the grooves of agaves and also form the food for the farm. Similarly, farm animals are not only a source of food but also contribute to the overall well-being. Thanks to the absence of chemical fertilizers and the economic support provided to producers, a sustainable balance is maintained.

The agave distillates featured here range from mezcla, which comes from blending different agave varieties, to types produced from the Espadín, Sierra Negra, Tepextate, Mexicano, Coyote, Mexicanito, Cuishe and Madrecuishe agave varieties, as well as Tobaziche, an increasingly rare variety, in two different processes.