Mal Bien - Zacate Limon (750ml)
Mal Bien Description
We first tasted Don Lucio’s zacate limón mezcal in 2018. We'd visited him and his son Oscar several times by that point, and bought at least one batch of espadín from them. In our experience, people in San Dionisio tend to be a bit more reserved than folks in some of the neighboring communities, and while everyone in the Morales family had been perfectly nice to us, their short, direct answers to our open ended attempts at conversation hadn’t given us the feeling that we knew them well.
If we didn’t know them well personally, we still knew the high quality of their work. Their palenque was typical of the region, and so were the offerings - mostly espadín, a little tobalá, a bit of cuishe. As we’ve done too many times before and since, we made the mistake of thinking that all the batches of mezcal we’d been offered at Lucio’s home were all the batches of mezcal he had.
Dropping by Lucio’s home, which doubles as the family’s bodega (storage) / envasadora (bottling line), Lucio went through the standard routine of inviting us in, offering us seats and a bottle of mezcal, and deflecting our attempts at small talk (AKA disrupting his enjoyment of a peaceful afternoon) by calling his son and saying, “Oscar can tell you about that,” and handing me his phone while it was still ringing.
While we waited for Oscar to make his way over to his parents’ place, we noticed a medida (5-liter plastic jug) with yellowish liquid sitting atop some larger containers of mezcal. “Is that gasoline?” I asked, somewhat confused.
“No, no that’s Agustina's mezcal,” Lucio answered, referring to his wife.
“Your wife makes mezcal?” We’d never seen her in the palenque, but she was the daughter, wife and mother of mezcaleros, so it wouldn’t have been a total shock.
“It’s the mezcal I make for her. Distilled with zacate limón."
Herbal abocados (mezcal macerated with various botanicals) are something you’ll find in many homes throughout México. Sometimes with citrus peels, often with various medicinal herbs, the bottles turn chartreuse in color, and are often sipped as a digestivo. What Lucio poured us was totally different from these, it had a depth, balance and aromatic potency that can only come from distillation. And for a couple guys with deep love of Southeast Asian food, it dialed up some very happy sense memories.
As he explained, fresh lemongrass was added to the stills before the second distillation, and the resulting distillate was rested with a bit more fresh lemongrass to give it some color, and an extra pop of aromatics.
Where had all this lemongrass come from?
Unsurprisingly, our untrained, city eyes had seen only “decorative” plants growing around the Morales family’s patio without realizing they were all comestibles. As Agustina gave us a guided botanical tour of her home's garden, she picked leaves from different plants for us to smell and taste, noting their various medicinal properties. Lemongrass, she said, was a favorite both for its flavor and many reputed powers in everything from arthritis to cholesterol to cancer. She put lemongrass in tea, aguafrescas, salsas, and being in a mezcal family, it was only a matter of time before some went into the stills as well.
Lucio’s experiments with his wife’s favorite herb had been popular with the family, and eventually with the rest of the town, when he and Oscar made a large batch to share with guests at Oscar’s son’s baptism. Over the course of 20 minutes and a couple pours of zacate limón, we'd learned more about the Morales family and the history of San Dionisio, than in all of our previous visits. It was a good herb, indeed.
We left that day with a liter of zacate limón from Agustina’s personal collection, but having just launched Mal Bien in the USA, there was a long list of expressions and projects we had on deck before we could think about what, if anything, we could do with zacate limón. Like so many of the other cool one-off batches we taste, it just wound up being something fun to share with friends.
Cut to summer of 2022, Anthony and I were thinking about what a new release of Agave Mixtape might look like, and zacate limón came to mind. Oscar hadn’t made any since his parents had passed away the year before, and revisiting the older batches he still had, we all agreed that a lot of the herbaceous qualities had faded with age. While we didn’t wind up putting any in Mixtape, it sparked some excitement among the three of us, and we decided to get to work on figuring out how to bring it to market.
Oscar recreated his father’s recipe, and we tasted the new batch at a few different ABVs. The different strengths presented all the same flavors and aromas, configured slightly differently, and despite our naturally snobby instincts, we found ourselves enjoying the balance of the 40%, which Agustina enjoyed, and we’d first tasted in 2018. The lower ABV also meant we’d be able to get it on shelves at an approachable price.
We think it’s a fun addition to the lineup that works great as a summertime sipper, in simple highballs with soda water, and in all our favorite mezcal and gin cocktails. We hope you like it. too.
