Sotol Coyote Durango

Sotol Coyote Durango is made by Alejandro Solis in Cuencame, Durango, from Dasylirion cedrosanum. Sotol is not a mezcal and not an agave spirit, it is distilled from the desert spoon, a plant of a separate desert lineage that the catalogue often confuses for maguey. The cedrosanum here is a grassland species, hand harvested after as much as fifteen years in the ground.

The piñas are steamed in an autoclave, the same gentle indirect cook used in tequila plants, then fermented in stainless lined wooden vats and double distilled in stainless stills before bottling unaged at 43 percent. That clean cook keeps it half sweet and medium bodied, with dried fruit and almond over a light mineral note and a buttery, faintly yeasty finish. An easygoing introduction to the category.