Tepextate

About This Expression

Tepextate is one of the most sought-after wild agaves in the mezcal world, and for good reason. Agave marmorata grows on rocky cliff faces and steep hillsides in Oaxaca, anchoring itself into crevices where almost nothing else can survive. It cannot be cultivated — or rather, it can, but cultivated tepextate lacks the character of the wild plant. The stress of the terrain, the minerals in the rock, the decades of slow growth — all of this shapes the sugar profile that ultimately becomes the spirit.

A tepextate piña can take fifteen to twenty-five years to reach maturity. You cannot plan for it. You can only walk the hills, check the plants, and wait. When Felipe Garcia harvests tepextate, he selects plants that have reached full maturity but have not yet sent up their quiote. The window is narrow — perhaps a few weeks in a plant's quarter-century life.

This particular batch produced just 75 litres — enough for 57 bottles at 500ml. The spirit is intensely aromatic: green coffee and dry grass on the nose, giving way to cedar, toasted fennel, and a long herbal finish that keeps evolving in the copita for minutes after your last sip. There is a mineral quality underneath everything — a sense of the rock the plant grew from.