The Delightful Del Maguey: A Must-Try Mezcal for Your Next Cocktail Party
Vida del Maguey: the best mezcal to make cocktails?
Vida Del Maguey mezcal is a delicious distillate with a smoky flavor that’s hard to resist and a range of rich, elegant aromas that change all the time, making a beautiful fresco.
It is not explosive or pyrotechnic; on the contrary, it is a delicate mezcal, with a soft step, and also on the palate, it offers excellent depth but with sweetness; it caresses the tongue with tropical flavors, a sharp and very rich, pulpy fruit; it almost bites into it.
The smoking then also frames the flavors, which are very fresh with notes of ginger and sweet spices. It is never prevaricating or an end in itself.
Very often, the smells and tastes of mezcal are very strong and overpoweringly smoky, almost as if they were trying to hide the basic qualities. Not here, though; the smoke brings out and enhances the sweetness.
Perhaps because it is a completely organic and artisanal mezcal, produced in wood-fired stills. When you say work slowly…
The company that produces it is the legendary Del Maguey, founded by Ron Cooper, an artist who loves to experiment, and in fact, after his success in the art world, he launched into the production of mezcal.
But his is true love; he searches for small producers and helps them produce; he produces with them and then markets their small, witty works of art.
And from this collaboration, this mezcal, Vida, was born in 2010, becoming the basic product of the Del Maguey distillery. Maguey is a type of agave, in case you were wondering.
And as a basic product, it is galactic, clean and precise, elegant and mottled, with a thousand faces. But above all, thanks to the fairly honest cost, it is one of the best mezcals for making cocktails, thanks to its delicate fruity charge and fine spiciness.
Especially if we are talking about cocktails with juices, nectars, and purees.
To tell the truth, with sweet vermouth, the red one suffers a little and gets lost in its herbaceous coils and earthy flavors, but all in all, with such an amazing value for money, you couldn’t ask for more.
The bouquet
Crystalline, of rare beauty. Notes of banana, freshly ripe fruit, citrus fruit, sandalwood, flowers, agave, and cinnamon. Traces of vanilla puffs. The dominant flavor is freshness, but the spicy and warm tones create arabesques in which it is a pleasure to get lost in dreaming. Dreamlike persistence.
The taste
Mouth set to pleasantness, round, which plays between smoky and underlying freshness.
The rainbow of smells that come from the fermentation of the agave is simply spellbinding: the flavors that change on the tongue are savory, herbaceous, tropical, mentholated, mentholated again, and then the taste of ginger and mace, always showing the direction of this wonderful mezcal.
It may not be the most flamboyant or complicated mezcal. In fact, it is quite simple, but it has a wonderful elegance.
Price
45 euros seems like a lot, but it’s worth.