Rating: 10/23 N: Kind of vegetal with a bit of spice, a little herbal funk, some sweetness (squash?) from the vegetables, and a hint of smoke. The complexity is decent, but the profile is all over the place and I'm not picking up a lot of smoke here. P: I get sort of a spicy wood flavor with a smoky element, sort of like a charred barrel, but also kind of sulphuric. I get some restrained lemon juice at points with a dash of salinity. It's not bad, but not what I expect of mezcal either. There's quite a bit of minerality that makes me think kind of of Patrón and there's this kind of sweet funkiness that reminds me of El Jimador. The flavor strikes me as immature and more like tequila than mezcal. There are some herbal, sort of vegetal, dirt flavors going on here. The palate is kind of harsh, yet watery (likely due to the low proof). I appreciate the complexity, but the overall impression it leaves me with is negative because of the harshness and kind of off character. I would probably have guessed that this was a reposado. F: The finish shows off more of the harshness while highlighting some spice, the bitter, dregs of the herbal and vegetal flavors, and minerality. This is my least favorite part of the experience. - Conclusion - This is a tough one to judge. It's interesting, but it's challenging and also clearly inferior to Los Vecinos Espadin. The harshness doesn't help either. With Los Vecinos being a 15 and this being definitely worse, I think that something in the 9 to 13 range is appropriate. The muddled nature of the various flavors combined with the sulphur pushes me toward the lower end of that range. I'm looking at a 9 to 10 for this now. I'm thinking a 10.