Flor del Desierto "Carnei" Sotol Tequila 750ml

Flor del Desierto began in 2011 when a small group of friends started producing sotol after one of them, Flor, won a baking competition using the spirit as her secret ingredient. The brand works with sotoleros across different regions of Chihuahua, each distinguished by local terroir, still type, and individual technique. Carnei is distilled by maestro sotolero José "Chito" Fernández Flores in the mountains of Madera, where wild sotol has been harvested for generations using methods passed down through families in the region.

This is a pechuga-style expression made from 100% wild-harvested Dasylirion wheeleri, a desert plant related to but distinct from agave, aged in the wild for eighteen to twenty-two years before harvest. The plants are cooked in a conical underground pit fired with willow and oak, then shredded by hand with an axe and fermented for five to seven days in wooden vats. The mash is distilled three times in copper stills, and on the final run a raw cut of venison is suspended in the still's upper chamber alongside star anise, orange, raisin, apple, and walnuts, a technique carried over from traditional pechuga mezcal production.

The nose is intensely spiced, with star anise, cinnamon, clove, and hints of toasted nut and candied fruit. On the palate those same warm spices carry through, joined by an herbaceous, faintly anise-like sweetness and a citrus undercurrent, while the sotol's grassy backbone stays present beneath the layers of spice.