Raicilla Ninfa

Raicilla Ninfa is a Jalisco agave spirit from the family hacienda in the mountains around San Sebastian del Oeste, a sixteenth century mining village in the Sierra Madre Occidental. It is made from Agave maximiliana, a mystical mountain maguey rarely used in mezcal and largely the preserve of raicilla, which places this firmly in the sierra style. Raicilla earned its Denomination of Origin only in 2019, though the spirit itself reaches back centuries.
The agave is cooked for one to three days in a clay oven fired with local oak, then crushed, fermented in oak vats and twice distilled in a copper alembique. The 2017 harvest yielded a single batch of just 2,500 bottles. The result is floral and citrus led, with a balanced palate of light smoke, wet earth and freshly cut herbs and spice. Bottled at 40%, it shows the wild sierra character of Maximiliana.