Tobola Joven Mezcal (700 ml)

Montelobos Tobalá is built around one of Mexico's most coveted wild agaves: Agave potatorum, harvested from the mountainous terrain of Oaxaca's Sierra Juárez and Sierra Sur ranges, where thin, rocky soils and elevations above 1,500 metres force the plant to concentrate sugars and aromatic compounds over a decade or more of growth. The scarcity of wild Tobalá — it cannot be commercially farmed at scale — makes each batch a finite, foraged resource.

Master distiller Iván Saldaña, a botanist by training, founded Montelobos with a deliberate mandate: apply scientific rigour to traditional Oaxacan mezcal craft without abandoning it. The Tobalá piñas are pit-roasted over mesquite and oak for several days, then crushed, open-air fermented with ambient wild yeasts in wooden vats, and double-distilled in direct-fired copper pot stills — a process that preserves the agave's volatile floral and mineral character while integrating smoke at a medium register rather than overwhelming it.

What separates this expression from the Montelobos Espadín is the Tobalá's naturally lower sugar yield, which demands more raw material per litre and produces a spirit of notably higher aromatic density — dried citrus peel, roasted root, and wild herb — at a restrained smoke level that lets the varietal terroir speak. Bottled as a Joven (unaged), the spirit retains full distillate character with no oak intervention.