The Big Piña

There are several practical reasons why the espadín maguey is most popular for making mezcal. The elegant gray/green explosion of giant, toothed, sword-blade leaves grows rapidly, grows huge, and cultivates easily. If you wonder why tobalá, cuishe, jabalí, and others are more expensive, compare the espadín piña in the photo with the tobalá ones behind it. The tobalá are about the size of a soccer ball, and the espadín weighs 500lbs.

Electrico Mezcal’s Maestro, Antonio Manuel Cirino, loves experimenting with other varieties. He is one of the few mezcaleros nearby who will even attempt to squeeze a bottle out of jabalí. It takes five distillations compared to Espadín’s two, and the yield is small even then. Two tons of piñas yields between 10 and 15 liters… but, oh, it’s so worth the extra effort and cost.

However, Cirino is a practical man, and for the world to experience the perfection of his craft, he also makes the finest Espadín Mezcal, both the fresh Joven and the mellow, rounded 3-year-old Matured in Glass.

Scattered across the hills surrounding San Baltazar Guelavila, Cirino tends his cultivated espadín in small, stony parcels of rust-coloured soil. He leaves the leaves long to funnel the rain into the roots of each plant, avoiding chemicals or unnecessary irrigation. After eight years, he harvests with a machete, a much-loved coa jima (harvesting hoe), and a sledgehammer.

The ‘450’ came from a small plantation up a hill off the road into San Baltazar, perched over the river valley along a rough, dirt track. Bursting from the soil in proud, stiff ranks, the plants make a striking statement amid the scrubby vegetation and short trees. They will also make a statement on the tongue.

They stand twice as high as Cirino himself as he weighs in, his machete blade flashing in the sunlight, swiftly slicing through the plant's long, succulent saber blades. A nascent hornet is disturbed on a neighboring plant, and there is a brief retreat from battle as they settle down. Within minutes, the piña, the heart of the maguey, stands naked and exposed, its leaves scattered around on the soil.

Cirino takes his coa; the hand-wrought circular blade sharpened to a razor edge on the rasp in his pocket. He thrusts it into the piña's base and begins hammering it home, fraying the head of the black-oak shaft as the coa bites into the tough, woody stem.

The piña is so large that it takes minutes to cut through and push it off its roots. It rolls down the slope, and Cirino and his father run to stop it. Three men push it to Cirino’s El Rojito (The Little Red), his treasured 20-year-old Nissan pick-up. Lifting it onto the truck bed takes even more muscle, and the suspension groans under the weight.

Strapped in, the 450 is triumphantly brought to the Electríco palenque, with Cirino’s son and brother standing sentry. They weigh it: 204 kilograms, 450 lbs. Cirino hits the piña with his mallet and guesses the sugar content: ‘27%,’ he says. Omar measures the sugar content with a BRIX refractometer. Cirino was right: 27%.

‘Not bad,’ says Cirino, casually. ‘If it had been April, it would have been more like 40%. And I’ve had bigger.’