Oaxaca, MX | Ancestral Mezcal Tour
Airbnb Experiences came through with an amazing tour of traditional pre-Hispanic family owned Mezcal distilleries. There are three diff kinds of distilleries- ancestral (traditional & authentic), artisanal (trying to replicate the original process w/ nuanced techniques) and industrial (big companies valuing quantity over quality). The town of Santa Catarina Minas is one of the only places left that practices ancestral distilling & there are roughly 28 distilleries in a town of 3,000. We caught a bus to take us a few hours out of town and then were dropped off on the side of the road and picked up by a pick-up truck soon after for the final stretch of our journey to the agave farms. Tequila & Mezcal both come from the Agave plant but while Tequila can only be made from blue agave in a few varieties, Mezcal can be made from many different types of agave, creating over 80 different kinds of finished Mezcal. We learned so many fascinating things about the process and you'l...