Planted with Patience
Agave has been cultivated in Oaxaca for over 2500 years. Our agave plants are harvested after ten years of maturation. It’s worth the wait.
We harvest no agave before its time, using only the finest and carefully selected 10-year-old plants for our small-batch production. We also let the land rest for three years after harvest. Doing so ensures healthy soil and stronger plants.
Harvesting an agave means pulling the plant from the soil and cutting the leaves and roots away to expose the piña, or heart. The work is done by skilled hands using a ‘coa’, a sharp metal tool that when wielded correctly is a formidable object. Many of our piñas weigh as much as 200 pounds.
Cooking & Crushing
MAXIMO Mezcal is made using traditional methods. Once harvested, our piñas are smoked for 3 days in six-ton earthen pits. That’s because to pull sugar from the agave, you must raise its temperature. We do so by using open-pit, wood-fired conical ovens made of stone. As the wood burns, it heats up the stone. Our mezcaleros know just when to put the piñas inside the oven: when the wood is burnt away and the stones are red hot. The oven is covered with earth and logs, and the piñas are left to bake for 72 hours.
After baking, our mezcaleros use their family machete to cut the piñas into smaller pieces for milling. The piñas are cooled, then crushed by a horse-drawn mill stone called a ‘tahona wheel’ that weighs over 1000 pounds. We grind the agave into a paste and bagasse. The result is then ready for fermentation.
Ferment & Distill
After baking, the roasted agave is placed in wooden vats with village water and fermented. The mash takes about eight days to ferment before it’s transferred to a wood-fired copper still where it’s vaporized, and condensed.
We place our ground-up agave in handmade, wooden holding tanks. The mix in the tanks is important: 75% full for the first few days, then 90% of capacity for just the right fermentation process and speed.
Local water is used…first cold, then warm. We ferment our mezcal naturally; no chemicals are added to accelerate the process. In 1o to 20 days, the mix is ready for distillation.
We use Spanish-style stills, thought to have been introduced to the Spaniards by the Arabs. Distillation means evaporating the alcohol and impurities, leaving it separated from the solid materials. As the gases are collected and returned to their natural state, mezcal is born. After distilling our spirit three times, We calibrate our alcohol content to achieve the exact degree for MAXIMO.
MAXIMO makes only premium, 100% agave mezcal.
After baking, our mezcaleros use their family machete to cut the piñas into smaller pieces for milling. The piñas are cooled, then crushed by a horse-drawn mill stone called a ‘tahona wheel’ that weighs over 1000 pounds. We grind the agave into a paste and bagasse. The result is then ready for fermentation.
