Flor del Desierto "Cascabel" Sotol 750ml

Flor del Desierto was founded in 2011 in Chihuahua, Mexico, by a small group of friends, launched after one of the founders won a baking competition using sotol as her secret ingredient. The brand's sotols are produced by Master Sotelier Don Gerardo Ruelas, who works with wild-harvested Dasylirion leiophyllum plants rather than agave, since sotol is a distinct spirit category native to northern Mexico's desert highlands.

The Cascabel expression is made from plants between eighteen and twenty-two years old, wild-harvested at low elevation in the Coyame Desert. The hearts are roasted in a pit oven fired with willow and oak, then milled by hand using axe and knife before fermentation and triple distillation. During the final distillation, fresh rattlesnake meat is suspended above the still in the traditional pechuga method, lending the spirit its name (cascabel means rattlesnake in Spanish). The finished sotol rests for ninety days in forty-year-old neutral oak casks before bottling at 48% ABV.

The nose opens with citrus, quince, and ginger, layered with herbal and savory notes and a hint of funk. On the palate, salty pine resin and mineral character mingle with the natural sweetness of roasted piñas, rounded out by soft vanillin from the oak. The finish is long, elegant, and distinctly mineral, with traces of smoke and desert earth lingering throughout.