Sotoleros Sotol Ensamble Lupe López

Lupe Lopez produces sotol and sotol agave ensembles at Madera in Chihuahua, and this bottling leans agave forward, thirty percent Dasylirion wheeleri sotol with seventy percent of the scarce wild Agave shrevei, a magnificent large species from the oak and pine highlands of northwestern Mexico. The release is lot seven from 2021, just 72 bottles, sometimes carrying the local name lechuguilla as a marker of its wild northern agave.
Lopez harvests the wild plants, cooks them three to four days underground with oak and hot stones, then ferments in underground wooden vats before double distilling in copper stills capped with a wooden lid, finally adjusting with distilled water. The spirit reads dusty and complex, smoky mint, dark chocolate and sage over mandarin, hay, fennel and rose, with chalk and desert soil minerality and a finish poised between chocolate and coffee. Profile varies by lot. Bottled at 45.7 percent.