Fidencio Mezcal Pechuga

Fidencio is a Jiménez family house in Santiago Matatlan in Oaxaca, founded more than a century ago and now run by Enrique Jiménez. This is its pechuga, made by taking the Clasico, a single village Espadin, and running it through a third distillation with a charge of seasonal fruit and a raw chicken breast suspended in the still, then bottling it undiluted at 48.3%.
The Espadin is harvested between seven and twelve years and pit roasted for five days over black oak, a long roast that builds deep cooked agave and smoke. For the pechuga the maestro adds apples, bananas, pineapple and guava to the still, and the breast tempers and rounds the spirit rather than adding anything meaty. The fruit comes through clearly as mango, pineapple and coconut over light smoke, maple sweetness and a smoked cocoa note, the batch shifting a little each year with the fruit.