Mezcal Unión Uno

Blue Agave

I've been seeing a lot of hype around this beast (and I have to admit: the branding is on-point), but not a lot of substantive tasting notes. So, some thoughts: smell is clean, mineral, slightly earthy (is "clean earthiness" oxymoronic?), with a light vegetal smoke. Pepper, with some fruit--oranges, citrus, prickly pear--and almost some crisp vegetables. Faint cucumber and a clean sort-of jalapeno pepper flesh character. Taste starts sweet, with the heat growing to a kind of (again, jalapeno-like) spice, with a backbone of citrus zest, earth notes, and light, almost peat-reaky smoke. Pepper, slight char, grilled pineapple. Slight salinity. Earth and char on the finish, pepper pith. Again, take this with a grain of salt, as I'm a relative mezcal novice, but--for the price, which is amongst the lowest I've ever found for a true mezcal--this juice is genuinely tasty. I could sip this all day (the caveat, of course, being that even the producer reports variation of flavours between batches).