Can I Guess the Agave? Don Amado Mezcal Blind Tasting!

[00:00:00] I talk about how much agave matters in mezcal, but if you take the labels off, can I tell which agave I'm drinking today? We're going to find out in a blind. I just finished listening to the Whiskey Tequila Fridays podcast where the guys interviewed Jake Lustig. And Jake was talking about these Don Amato mezcals. And I actually interviewed Jake myself. You can check that interview out on my channel. And listening to him talk about these bottles today made me want to pull them back out. And I've been sipping on them and really trying to learn the different flavors of each agave. Today I want to make this a little harder on me. I got all 4 non amato mezcals poured completely blind. We have orenqueno, tapazate, tobalao, and bayakushe. And we have the largo. And for me, I poured the espadine to use it kind of as a base because I drink a lot of espadine. So that one I'll be able to maybe tell the differences between each one. One thing that makes this experiment interesting is donna motto itself. These are made in Santa Cantarina Molinas, Oaxaca, by the Arenas family, a family with generations of mezcal production behind him. They roast agaves in underground pits for four days. They, they ferment with agave fibers and pine vats. We're using naturally occurring airborne yeast, and they double distill in those incredible ceramic clay pot stills. So they're keeping a lot of this old school production there, making a great mezcal. So first of all, we're going to, of course, spin around the solar blind. Everybody knows how it works. Now pull these out. Okay, guys, here goes nothing. Let's start with the first one again. Fruity nose. Some flowers, some earthiness. [00:01:27] Maybe a little dried citrus. Let's dive into this next one. [00:01:33] This one is more like ripe fruits, some floral notes. Again, that earthiness, that roasted agave smell. [00:01:50] This one's more vegetal. This one's earthy, vegetal. [00:01:53] A lot of minerality. [00:02:00] Flowers, tea, earth, dried citrus. Okay. [00:02:10] Espadine. [00:02:15] Okay. [00:02:25] It's a real sweet floral note. [00:02:28] There's an earthy minerality to it. [00:02:36] It's fruity in the, in the up front. [00:02:39] And then it kind of dives off into this minerality. [00:02:42] So that's really good. I think I have an idea of what that one is. [00:02:51] Really nice. Cooked agave. [00:02:53] Tropical, tropical fruit. [00:02:59] Some mangoes, some citrus. [00:03:05] An earthiness to it. Okay. [00:03:13] Earthy, dry. Vegetables. Vegetables, vegetables. Vegetable notes. This is the creamiest one. And this is the. One of the most pepper. [00:03:25] I don't know what that one is. [00:03:27] I think I know what this one is. [00:03:38] Barrel aromatic. [00:03:40] I got. There's a lot of nose in this one. Now, when I smelled it before, I took a drink. Very vegetal. A little bit of citrus peel, a little bit of green pepper. [00:03:51] Okay, I. I'm. I'm confused on just one of them, so it must be the one that I drink the least of. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna give this a shot. I'm gonna say this one I'm pretty positive is largo. [00:04:06] Largo. Okay. So that it's the most vegetal of all of them to me. And every time I bust this out and taste it, there's just a lot of vegetal notes. [00:04:16] Oh. [00:04:17] The one that I feel is really the most complex is going to be this one. And the biok part of this that I think it is is, for me, always really earthy. And Toba is always really fruity and. And has lots of floral notes and a lot of, like, citrus to it and fruit. So I. I think this one is the Toa by a tb. Okay. I got my first two right. That is completely freaking shocking. Now, between these two, I drink tepesate more than any of the mezcals. It's got just some really great vegetal notes and a little bit of citrus and minerality. I always pick up, like, a nice green pepper note, and it's always really spicy. So I really think this one is the tepes ate. [00:05:11] So that means this last one is arqueno or. Or it's really good. It had a lot of different flavors to it. It had a lot of fruit. It really made me kind of think it possibly was the Toba la. It has really neat citrus notes, but the earthiness and the cooked agave was way more than what I've ever picked up in, like, a Toba law. So this was probably the earthiest one of all of them. So. Wow. I cannot believe I got that right. Sitting with these and sipping on them. I will say I sipped on them before I did the video. So I kind of looked at each one as I was tasting it and memorized some of the flavor profile in each one before I did it blind because I. I never sip on these together. I always sip on each one individually. So today I wanted to sip on them together and then see if I could identify those flavors in the blanche. So it worked. Our acquaintance was the only one I was unsure of. Honestly, this is what makes Mezcal so fun for me. Same producer, same general production philosophy, same traditional clay pot distillation. The only thing you change is the agave, and that agave brings so much more. So for me to get four out of four today, my mind is blown. And I only could do it because I've been sipping on these a lot. I definitely want to say thank you to Jake Lustig for sending these out to me. I've been really learning a lot about Mezcal lately, and sipping on all of these has helped me learn so much more and train my palate to understand it. Now, I want you guys to tell me something. If I put these four up against all of them together and you had to do it in a blind, is there any way that you could identify each one of them? I'm shocked that I did. It's fun. You definitely should try it. Tell me if you like this video. Hit that. Like, subscribe. Share this with your friends if you haven't already. Cheers. Have a fantastic night. Thanks.