OUR STORY
Ever since we fell for mezcal we refused to over explain the reasons. Actually, there were no reasons. No sexy backstory, only the impulse to “mezcalize” ourselves. (If you haven’t felt it, you will).
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No reasons, only muses: the greatness of mezcal and the ageless aesthetics of Art Deco sophistication as promoted by Porfirio Diaz. (Yes, the Oaxaca born dictator).
And then there’s the musing over origins: rusticity, extreme conditions, even pain; how small batch distillers outsmarted three centuries of colonial prohibition by refining clandestine recipes from one generation to the next.
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Born in the very heart of mezcal country, Matatlán, Oaxaca, Santiago Family practices this unbroken tradition in each bottle of Delirio they instills with their feisty yet delicate character. (You'll get it when you drink it).
Delirium!
OAXACA IN A BOTTLE
Here’s how the rugged, sun drenched mystery that is Oaxaca turns into the purest of spirits.
YEARS OF SOLAR DELIRIUM
It takes each maguey almost a decade of scorching Oaxaca sun before maturing into the plant that will issue a tall flowery stem and the wither and die releasing thousands of seeds. Sometime during the 8th year a “jimador” will cut the thorny branches and strenuously remove the “piña”, the underground core weighing up to 330 pounds containing the moist and sugary stuff from which the elixir will be made.
RUSTIC FERMENTATION
The piñas are then cooked for three days in an underground stone oven heated with mesquite and copal. The cooked maguey is then mashed by the tahona method and naturally fermented in open pine vats. Fermentation takes its time and should not be hurried by added chemicals. Rushing it is the fastest way of spoiling a good mezcal.
Much of Mexico’s authenticity in craftwork owes its quality to the 300 year ban on industry enforced by the Spanish Rule. All industrial products like spirits or fabrics imported would come from Spain. For those who could not afford them, rustic “manta” clothes and pulque would have to do. The rest of the story is well known, after generations of artisanal preparation and popular consumption, small batch production necessarily overtook industrial repetition, not only in authenticity, but in sophistication. Made in small copper stills and heated by wood, Delirio Mezcal owes its remarkable transparency and purity to the ancestral double distillation process of one of the most revered characters in Oaxacan culture: the maestro mezcalero.
SMALL BATCH DISTILLATION
A PRISTINE BOTTLE FOR A PRISTINE MEZCAL
Molded in thick transparent glass, our Art Deco inspired bottle is, precisely, the sophisticated counterpoint to a story that starts in authenticity and ends in elegance.
