ContemplativeFox
Del Maguey Chichicapa Mezcal
Mezcal Joven — Oaxaca, Mexico
Reviewed
November 15, 2020 (edited March 6, 2022)
Rating: 17/23
The last quarter has been sitting in this bottle for about 9 months now and the bottle has been open for more like 18, so I'm sure it's changed a lot. Let's see how it is.
N: Richer than Los Vecinos Espadin, with a little bit of a bourbony American Oak influence. I get some dark brown sugar here alongside the usual mezcal smoke, herbaceousness, and tartness. I get sort of a suggestion of Limousin oak as the lemon and mellow wood intersect. Not the most complex nose, but an enjoyable one. There's sort of a pastry quality to the nose even that reminds me a tad of a buttery lemon curd danish. Weird.
P: Also richer than Lost Vecinos Espadin. This is very rich for a mezcal. I get this big, rich citrus flavor that has enough sweetness to balance it out so that it isn't excessively tart. There's then a nice 50% dark chocolate flavor here to really enhance the richness and pull the whole thing together. Getting past those key flavors, the complexity comes out a bit with some herbal flavors that make the citrus taste kind of like a fruity gin (think Roku, a bit), while allowing a bit of meatiness in. There's a bit of mint/menthol in there too. Obviously, there's smoke and gasoline, but after so long open at least, the gasoline is less choking. This is now a very hedonistic dram that reminds me of regular mezcal with rye (Jim Beam Pre-Prohibition mixed with George Dickel's young MGP - a bit like Whistlepig PiggyBack, but richer with some interesting new dimensions and not as dusty) and mild Ardbeg influences (for the chocolate and tar, as well as that faint hint of cherry from the Corryvreckan). It's a very nice palate. At times I think that it might be less complex than it should be, but then I discover new flavors and perspectives on those that were already there. A very fine palate.
F: Smoke, gasoline, citrus, refreshing-yet-crisp mint, chocolate. It's good, maintaining the hedonistic richness of the palate for a long time, despite obviously having a weaker presence overall. The wood remains as well, providing a mellow French oak backing.
This is an excellent mezcal. It is very enjoyably balanced with some terrific richness. While there is not really such a thing as an approachable mezcal, this is about as close as it comes for a whiskey drinker. It's powerful, so it would likely be the wrong choice for fans of other spirits though. For fans of tequila, Casamigos Mezcal would probably be a better bet.
For $60, this is definitely worth the money. At $80, it gets borderline. At $100, it's a hard no. The thing is, I'd rather have the Ardbeg Corryvreckan or Uigeadail than this. They both have higher ABV and before the tariffs, the Corryvreckan was only about $65, so I wouldn't be making this my shelf staple. Los Vecinos Espadin is also only about $25 and it's a very solid mezcal, making it an easy choice as a staple mezcal for whenever mezcal seems appropriate (rarely, though I must say that I do appreciate it).
In terms of score, this is at minimum a 16. I think that a 17 is more likely and an 18 is possible. 19 seems a bit out of reach. I would take this over Los Vecinos, but not by more than 2 points. I think I've landed on this as a 17. I can see it being a really high 16, but I doubt that it is an 18. It's either a high 16 or low 17. A 17 it is.
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Second to @Soba45 's statement about your storage setup @PBMichiganWolverine - quite professional! It sounds like they will last very well :)
I'm not personally able to attest to the time scale over which whiskey ages in the (unopened) bottle, but I believe @cascode's assessment of decades (or at least 1). The statement about organic material is very compelling because wine certainly does age in the bottle before it is opened. Obviously, the differences in ABV are quite large, but I'd be hard pressed to believe that sitting in the bottle had no effect on whiskey.
@PBMichiganWolverine Sounds very professional:-). I no longer have that issue with whisky as only 1 unopened bottle left, 1 open and couple of minor remnants!
@cascode Interesting, thanks! Wine improves in the bottle and as you say whiskey has organic material and with small bit of oxygen you would think it would result in some change over a long period of time.
@Soba45 @ContemplativeFox that’s a bit reassuring that it decays only a bit over time, as long as it’s properly stored. My rare, ghosted, and expensive bottles are all sealed with paraffin and stored upright in temp control. I was afraid I’d have to chug down 10 or so rare mezcals that I have...
@Soba45 @ContemplativeFox As far as whisk(e)y is concerned, from what I've tasted over an extended period, and the odd very old bottle I've had, IMHO it just gets better with time in the bottle, BUT only as long as the bottle has been upright, in good conditions and the stopper does not decay, as you said. In those conditions whisk(e)y should last centuries. The conventional wisdom is the whisk(e)y also only ages in the cask and maturation stops once bottled. That's absolutely true, but I do believe ther is a very subtle "bottle-age" effect that happens after a very long time - we're talking decades. It's not any of the types of maturation that happen in the cask, more a sort of mellowing that is just a product of the liquid sitting undisturbed for a long time. Whisk(e)y is an organic thing, so to say it would be unchanged for an infinite time does not quite make sense to me, but sure any such "bottle-age" effect would be very subtle.
@ContemplativeFox I think the science shows very minor changes over time with bottled unopened whisky but that's assuming it's been stored correctly, cork not eaten away, not in direct light or high temperatures..endless variables :-)
Thanks for that clarification and insight @Soba45 . Sounds like not much to worry about so long as the bottles aren't open @PBMichiganWolverine :)
Keep in mind you can use argon gas wine savor on your liquors too.
@ContemplativeFox The bottles of scotch i've tasted from the 70s were different due to how they were made back then. it's hard to tell how much time in bottle would have aged them but the flavour profile was stronger than variants today so i'm thinking not much. Mezcal just seems really delicate to the influence of oxygen.
I'd bet that mezcal will start showing some effects of storage within 5 years (10 tops) @PBMichiganWolverine. I wish I could take a good guess at how extreme the effect would be l, but I honestly don't know. I think that the real problem is the near unanimous consensus that mezcal declines in quality with age - moreso than I've heard for any other spirit. Conversely, if you told me that my bourbon would change after 5 years unopened I'd probably shrug and hope it changed for the better.
I think you're probably right @cascode. I recall @Soba45 found a couple bottles of scotch from the 70s in some store and they didn't at all taste like they would have back then. That's an extreme example, but I think it's a good reason to believe that mezcal will age when unopened. Had they been opened though, I imagine they'd have been half empty.
@cascode likewise, I have some rather hard to get mezcals ...wondering if I should move them to the front of the line for opening
@PBMichiganWolverine That's a very good question, and I've been wondering recently as I have one unopened bottle of mezcal left from my deep dive into the stuff 3 years ago. It's a Del Maguey San Jose Rio MInas, but as I've never tasted it before my judgement will just have to be based on what it's like now. It's supposed to be a particularly rich and fruity mezcal, but we'll see. The days are getting hotter here so as we are moving into mezcal weather I'll probably open this soon. My gut feeling is that they probably do "mellow"a bit when unopened, but nothing like how they go flat once lots of fresh oxygen gets into the bottle.
@ContemplativeFox @cascode what if the bottle is unopened? Do you guys think you’d see the same decline?
I strongly suspect that you are right about the dramatic change in profile @cascode. This was much mellower than I remembered, but also less complex. I can't say that I disliked that profile (mine was still quite sippable), but I'm definitely considering getting a new bottle to try.
@ContemplativeFox Sadly, at 18 months in the bottle, half of which has been low level, I can almost guarantee that this is a shadow of its former self. I went through precisely this experience myself a while ago, and after two years of being open my Chichicapa was only suitable for mixing - if that.