Sign up with email

or

Already a member? Log in.

Trouble logging in?

Not a member? Sign up!

“When you like what you do, and you’re young, nothing is impossible,” says Doña Juanita Hernandez, one of a handful of female master distillers in Oaxaca, the heart of Mexico’s small-scale mezcal industry. She sits, tiny and relaxed on a wooden bench as we sip mezcal in her distillery, El Rey Zapoteco, in the Oaxacan town of Santiago Matatlan.

Doña Juanita herself was just a young girl when she started filling and labeling the bottles at her uncle’s distillery. He was the first person to bottle in the town, which has a long-held tradition of mezcal production. “[His brand was] Mezcal Matatlan,” she remembers. “He bought a bottling machine – a tiny one for four bottles at a time, and he had me fill the bottles and put on the labels.” Doña Juanita, who was cared for by her aunts and uncles when she was orphaned at a young age, eventually married Serafin Hernandez, at 21. Together, they built El Rey Zapoteco from the ground up.

In the 1990s, when tequila was just starting to boom on the international market, the state government started to promote a Ruta de Mezcal (Mezcal Route) that included Santiago Matatlán, some 50 kilometers from Oaxaca City, in the Oaxacan valley. Now, 30 years later, dozens of small distilleries line the main highway through town and El Rey Zapoteco is one of the first you come upon along the road. Juanita, a spry 71, is doing much more supervising than hard labor at this point, having spent years stoking the fires, carrying wood and caring for tanks of mezcal while her husband was out tending their agave fields a few kilometers away. Still, her presence is registered by all, as she questions the workers about the latest batch of mezcal and stops by to check on her three sons that run the business and marketing side of El Rey Zapoteco. She tells us how there are few women left in the mezcal industry, but since Serafin died in 2007, she has remained the doña of her domain.

Doña Juanita pours out some of their espadin mezcal into jicaras – glasses made from hollowed out gourds – and sets out a plate of orange slices with maguey worm salt, the classic accompaniment to Mexican mezcal. The mezcal is sharp, not as smoky as some we’ve tried along the Ruta de Mezcal, and the taste of the espadin – one of the types of agave that is used to make the spirit – comes through with just a sip. “It’s practice,” she says of mezcal production. “With each piece of land, the fermentation is different. There is land that grows very good maguey, but they have to be suave to distill and to give you a good mezcal” – that is, they should be just mature and tender enough to produce a good quantity of juice.

“Like everyone, we suffered a lot at the beginning,” Doña Juanita remembers. “My husband came from nothing. He inherited nothing. His parents were poor farmers and had nothing else. So, he started at the very bottom. He built this place over the years, paying it off bit by bit.” Today, the distillery includes a small shop and tasting room, as well as a large storage area in the back where massive tanks of mezcal sit waiting to be bottled. The distillation area has a rural ambiance, with large wooden fermentation tanks sitting in two lines, and two wood-fired stoves heating the clay distillation pots above them. A large stone mortar sits out front and when the agave hearts come in by the truckload, a horse slowly pulls a round mortar stone around and around until the hearts are fully mashed and ready to be transferred to the tanks.

The family has several acres that Serafin had planted with agave, which are now under the purview of one of their sons. “We have the whole [production] chain,” she explains. “Every year, my husband would plant maguey [agave americana]. This gave us the luxury of choosing only the most mature plants, something that not everyone was able to do in tough times.” She is speaking of the 1980s, when maguey prices dropped dramatically. She says the town’s maguey growers were saved by buyers from Jalisco, who came to Santiago Matatlán after the crop in the more northwest state were decimated by disease. Still, the price of maguey has never represented what it truly takes to grow it for mezcal. Sometimes, the wait is up to 10 years before a plant is mature enough to use.

El Rey Zapoteco mezcal has been in the making since the 1960s when Serafin opened the distillery. The Covid-19 pandemic brought a dip in their sales without tourists stopping by to sample, but the traffic is picking back up again and the doña is grateful. “God has rewarded me with a lot. My life, my health, to get to see my children working here. Also, my husband, who was a perfectionist and taught them how to work.”

On the day we visit, one of her grandsons is filling and labeling bottles, just like she once did. And even after a life lived in distilleries, Juanita hasn’t lost her love of the drink. “Instead of water, it’s mezcal. I don’t know why they even offered you this water…” she says looking disapprovingly at our water bottles, “when there’s mezcal!”

  • Slow DrinkingApril 2, 2021 Slow Drinking (0)
    Years ago, we were traveling with a friend through Belgium during a particularly cold […] Posted in Oaxaca
  • CB on the RoadSeptember 3, 2021 CB on the Road (0)
    San Diego de la Mesa Tochimiltzingo may not be the prettiest pueblo around, but people […] Posted in Mexico City
  • Building BlocksFebruary 27, 2024 Building Blocks (0)
    Every time we travel outside of Oaxaca, we get something we call “the tortilla blues.” […] Posted in Oaxaca
Lydia Carey

Published on August 03, 2021

Related stories

April 2, 2021

Slow Drinking: The Art of Sipping at Oaxaca’s Best Mezcalerias

Oaxaca | By María Ítaka
OaxacaYears ago, we were traveling with a friend through Belgium during a particularly cold spring when, after a long day, we decided to warm up at a local bar. We were happy – and a bit surprised – to find that they had a decent selection of Oaxacan mezcales. Filled with yearning for our warm homeland,…
September 3, 2021

CB on the Road: The Maestros of Mezcal in San Diego de la Mesa Tochimiltzingo

Mexico City | By Joseph Sorrentino
Mexico CitySan Diego de la Mesa Tochimiltzingo may not be the prettiest pueblo around, but people who know their mezcal certainly know about this town in the state of Puebla. Just three hours southeast of Mexico City, the pueblo is tiny and unprepossessing, tucked into the Atlixco Valley in the Sierra Mixteca. Almost all of its…
February 27, 2024

Building Blocks: Tortillas, A Culture’s DNA

Oaxaca | By María Ítaka
OaxacaEvery time we travel outside of Oaxaca, we get something we call “the tortilla blues.” Even if we move around inside of Mexico, particularly in the biggest cities, we cannot help missing the sweet aroma and feel of a warm tortilla almost melting in our hands. Sure, we might run into decadent tacos filled with…
Select your currency
USD United States (US) dollar
EUR Euro