Mezcal Grulani
In a world where mezcal brands currently seem to proliferate like wildfire across Oaxaca, leading those of us who are big geeks for this spirit to ask questions, like: where is all this agave coming from? Who’s actually distilling it and how? How can we know anything about what we’re drinking? And we’ve seen some brands which are collectors and bottlers of tiny-batch, handmade spirits do a lot of great work to be transparent: this mezcalero, this village, this variety, quantity in liters produced, this still, etc. But it’s still super rare to have an entire brand of mezcal come from one family, one farm, and to have everything be entirely estate-operated: enter Grulani, named with the Zapotec word for ‘fire in the mouth.’
Grulani is a brand founded in 2017 by farmer and well-respected mezcalero Leo Hernández, from the small village of San Baltazar Guelavilla, in the central valley of Oaxaca. Hernández is fifth-generation; his forebears have been farming agave and making mezcal in this village – without interruption – for over a century. The company owns 20 hectares of land, on which seven different wild varieties are cultivated, fully organically, and by the company itself. In fact, all the farming, harvesting, distilling, bottling, labeling, and import/export is done completely by Hernández and his team at Grulani, which is a marked departure from many brands that outsource nearly everything, from purchasing pre-made spirits to the actual folks harvesting and making the mezcales.
Production is as traditional as can be on the Grulani mezcales: harvest of the agaves, or jima, takes around a week, with nearly 1.5 tons of maguey brought in each day. The cooking process begins immediately after, in the house palenque—cooked over oak wood in an earthen oven, then left covered to rest for some four-five days. Crush follows, which is carried out by horse on a traditional stone mill—an aspect Grulani emphasizes as maintaining delicacy and nuance in the final spirits. Fermentation follows, which is done spontaneously inside of open-air pine vats and lasts three to five days. Distillation and rectification are the final steps—each spirit is distilled two to three times in the house’s own copper stills, depending on the agave variety. Ultimately, this entire process requires around thirty days to produce just a single liter of mezcal; the distillery maxes out at 25,000L per year of entirely estate and handmade spirits.
We’re so impressed by the commitment to quality and integrity we see in the Grulani processes and bottlings: it’s a rare artisanal producer that combines the intimate understanding of place, agave variety, and farming along with technical prowess in distillation, without compromising on the traditions of how this spirit has been cultivated and produced for many, many generations. Each spirit is deeply unique, focusing on how each wild agave variety expresses in this high-altitude locale, and we’re very pleased to be able newly to offer them here.
