Ancestral agave harvesting methods in Oaxaca, in rugged regions with no road access.
In November 2024, we visited a region known as El Carrizal, where we harvested 9 mountain green agaves, as the local community calls them, ranging in age from 12 to 15 years depending on the amount of sun and water provided by their environment.
Although these agaves are wild, they are the property of the community or of the person who works that section of the mountain. Therefore, authorization from both the communal land commissioner and the land steward or owner is required to carry out this activity.
As can be seen, these agaves grow in very steep parts of the sierra, making their harvest an extremely arduous and dangerous task. Access to these regions is often only possible on foot or by pack animal, which means the activity can take several days and demands extraordinary skill from the local farmers and workers.
The production of mezcal from this type of agave is not very common. Despite its extraordinary flavor, the difficulty of harvesting and transport, along with its low sugar content at maturity—between 11–14 Brix units—result in very low yields, leading most maestros to prefer other agaves like Sierra Negra or Tobalá, which are also abundant in the region.
In ancestral distillation, as practiced in the Sierra Norte using clay pots with a capacity of only 80 liters, yields can be as low as 50 liters per ton of agave. This 1,035 kg batch will be available for national sale starting in March 2025.
Don’t miss the chance to get a bottle and taste it!
