Pal'alma Lamparillo Durango Mezcal 750ml

Pal'alma is the export label for Almamezcalera, the project of Mexico City-based Erick Rodriguez, known among collectors as the "Indiana Jones of Agave" for his relentless travels to remote distilling sites across Mexico. Rodriguez works with a single mezcalero in each state he visits, including several regions that fall outside the official Mezcal Denomination of Origin, bottling tiny, uncertified batches of agave spirit. This release comes from Ventura Gallegos, a maestro mezcalero and local community activist in Nombre de Dios, Durango, who took over full operation of his family's small vinata after two decades working there alongside relatives and neighbors, preserving a once-thriving cooperative distilling site.

Lamparillo, botanically Agave asperrima, is a rare and difficult variety more typical of northern Mexico that Gallegos champions alongside the region's more common Cenizo agave. The harvested piñas are cooked in a traditional earth-and-stone pit oven, then milled by hand in a stone pit using an axe. Fermentation happens naturally with ambient yeast in a shallow, wood-lined stone well, followed by two distillations in a "viejo" still, a hybrid copper pot topped with a conical wooden chamber. The spirit then rests a minimum of two years before bottling.

The nose offers sun-dried tomato, aged cheddar, coriander seed, wet lumber, and pineapple skin. The palate turns floral and savory, with jasmine, white peppercorn, pine ash, soft caramel, and broken slate lingering into the finish.