San Luis Potosi’s mezcal renaissance

San Luis Potosi’s mezcal renaissance is more than just a point of pride

Published May 18, 2022

By Shannon Collins

Mexico’s most famous drink is, of course, mezcal, which everyone knows originated in…San Luis Potosí?

Though more than 70% of mezcal is produced in the state of Oaxaca, recent years have seen an upsurge in mezcals of exceptionally high quality from elsewhere in the country, most notably San Luis Potosí.

To those in the know, however, this is nothing new: San Luis Potosí has an illustrious heritage of mezcal production, which carried on until Mexico’s revolutionary period, when it fell into underproduced obscurity.

But San Luis Potosí is one of 12 Mexican states of designated origin, and the state and the drink were thrust back into the media spotlight in 2019 in the wake of Mezcal Júrame, a mezcalería opened in the 1990s that won a medal in the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles México selection competition that year. It won medals at the competition for the next two consecutive years — in 2021, it won a gold medal.

Produced using the wild agave salmiana in the Potosino highlands at La Flor mezcaleria, Júrame honors the connection between the land, the producers, and the consumers of mezcal. The wild agave is at the mercy of the seasons; if there are no rains, there will be no crop, and the plant takes between six and 10 years to mature, meaning patience is built into every facet of production.

Unlike tequila, mezcal is rarely subject to industrial processes and is mostly produced by artisans who have handed the idiosyncrasies of their methods down through generations. A village in a mezcal-producing region may contain a number of production houses, also known as palenques, each with its own unique spin on the process.

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