Bicuishe

About the Producer: Mtro. Macario Ríos

“When you are young, you think you are right and you know everything.” That happened to Félix Monterrosa before he met Francisco García León and the Unión de Palenqueros.

Félix grew up in mezcal shops, whether his uncles’, his grandmother’s or his parents’. Of course, 95% of the mezcal outlets in rural Oaxaca were from Santiago Matatlán. In their shops, his family sold traditional black clay jugs, “changos,” recycled bottles with a handwritten Memoria de Oaxaca label, and amphoras with erotic ceramic figures.

Félix also spent part of his childhood living on a palenque, one in Tehuacán Puebla, curiously, which was built by his uncle Melchor Monterrosa. “In my twenties,” he says, “I thought I knew everything about the business and the mezcals of Matatlán.” He knew that mezcal was produced with the espadín agave, and that it existed in various presentations such as “gusanito, añejo, reposado, de poleo, y el blanco. Y el especial o Tobalá.” 

Then in 2007 at the invitation of Cornelio Monterrosa, Félix met other producers in the Unión de Palenqueros, whose assemblies proved revelatory for him. Since then, Félix has continued to learn and explore the wild and confusing paths of mezcal.

“When I think I have found a great Maestro,” he says, “they tell me about another one in a more remote area, and so the endless exploration continues, in search of the best elixir from virgin regions.” 

An old friend had told Félix about "El Palmar" and a producer named Macario, who he was interested in meeting. So after a four-hour journey and winding and confusing dirt roads, they reached him. The stillness and calm prevailed, and to be honest, it was not a very interesting landscape but rather plain, the polar opposite of Macario’s Bicuishe.