Cascahuin organized for us to receive agave from their preferred agave farmer at that moment. It was harvested in late February seven-year, hand-selected agave, sixteen tons. It arrived at the distillery on Saturday morning, was split, and then sat in the courtyard awaiting roasting on the Tuesday. It had a brix of 40 upon arrival, and the few days of sitting prior to roasting intensified the sugars, though this went unrecorded. The agave was roasted, with a third going to tahona extraction and two-thirds to the roller mill. The tahona extraction was fermented in a 10,000-gallon pine wood tank, and the roller mill extraction was fermented in open cement tanks with loose agave bagasse.

We did have plans to take some of the musto to Arturo Campos for distillation in clay at his palenque, as we did with our first production, but his truck broke down on his way to pick up the musto.

We distilled the tahona/wood-fermented batch and the roller mill/cement-tank-fermented batch separately. A few liters of puntas from both were bottled at 75% ABV at the very beginning of the hearts in the distillation. We also retained 20 liters of the tahona and roller mill distillations separately to sample for our own learning, and we buried those in glass at Cascahuin.

We host a lunch for everyone who worked at Cascahuin after every production we do with them served as a bánh mì–style sandwich, with plenty of beer and our new tequila.

We stood around and tasted with Maestro Dany and Tetsu at the lunch. The difference between the cement and wood fermentations is quite profound; both have specific elements to them, and wood fermentation is not the norm at Cascahuin to the point where we had to have a technician come in and ready the wooden tank for fermentation, as it had been so long since it was last used. We will, more often than not, continue to wood-ferment part of our future productions at Cascahuin, as there is a quality to wood fermentation that resonates with our palates. Given that we also rest our productions for so long before bottling, we find that wood-fermentation productions benefit greatly from the extra rest.

When tasting with Tetsu, Dany, Javi, and me, we decided that, for us, the quality of the blanco at still strength warranted bottling only at that mark. We also discussed our aging program at that point, and since we had the barrels on site, we walked with Dany to inspect them and stick our noses in. These were ex-Chardonnay French oak barrels that had never been used for tequila or any other spirit's aging program before this, and had held the Chardonnay for 36 months. When we sniffed the barrels, we discussed the thought that these were going to be a good fit for aging.

We had five barrels and decided to immediately fill two with the still-strength blanco. Dany mentioned that at high proof it would interact with the barrel more intensely, and that we should inspect no later than 30 days to see what had happened with the liquid. At 30 days the ABV was 53.9% and it was astringent, as predicted. We'd planned on mixing blanco we'd reduced down to 44% ABV with this liquid, but instead, under Dany's guidance and because of the astringency, we dropped the blanco to 42%. We then spread the high-proof liquid that had been in the barrels for the last 30 days across four barrels, leaving each with 100 liters of this high-proof tequila.

We then added 100 liters of the 42% ABV liquid to each of these four barrels, leaving a mix of 100 liters at 53.9% ABV and 100 liters at 42% ABV in each of the four barrels. We also added roasted agave to each of the barrels, in what is best thought of as a giant natural cotton tea bag or sock. We're connected to organic Mexican cotton farmers via Javi's mother-in-law, Toosi, who makes the socks for us.

A sample of all four barrels was taken about halfway into their official reposado journey, and all four were quite different — one particularly in color, and the others in terms of their interaction with the barrels. What was clear was that the barrels that held the high-proof liquid for that first 30 days were vastly different from the other two. The higher-proof barrels were far drier in mouthfeel, as Dany had suggested — the still-strength liquid would go deeper into the barrel and this continued even after we'd lowered the ABV mix in the barrels.

At around 75 days we did our next tasting, and the characteristics had again almost flipped in terms of what they'd initially sampled as, and where they were now. The drier barrels still had that feel but had shifted between that and the prominence of the agave. The other barrels, not having held the initial high-proof liquid, had moved toward a greater balance among all the elements of the aging program — a quality not featured by any of them at 30 days.

We again sat with Dany as we sampled all of these different barrels, and the choices were made on next steps for each one, with them going to rest in glass to stabilize for a minimum of 30 days. We discussed the Joven we were to produce, and Dany suggested 70% blanco at 48% and 30% reposado at 47–48% ABV at that point. We decided on a particular barrel — the driest — as we planned on resting the liquid in a stainless steel tank once combined, again adding roasted agave while it rested, as a thought toward balancing the dryness with the extra caramelization that comes from resting it with roasted agave in the tank.

Javi and I, prior to this tasting, had driven to Puerto Vallarta to pick up some raicilla, and Javi raised the point of how some cognac and brandy producers always keep a production/bottling that holds some liquid from every production they have ever done. As part of our first production, we retained 60 liters of our first-ever production at Cascahuin in glass carafes. We also retained some bottles of our first-ever reposado as well,  the one and only barrel from our first production.

We decided on that drive that, as part of all our upcoming productions, we will release a very limited "El Madre" bottling. For this very first release, we are retaining 80 liters of our Still Strength Blanco from production 2 and mixing that with some still-strength blanco from production 1 in 2021, resting that in glass together. We have also started another barrel at 48%, with our production 2 blanco, some still-strength blanco from our first production, and some of our first-ever reposado production at 42%, all in the favorite of our barrels from this most recent aging program from production 2.

We are monitoring how this ages in the barrel. It is again sitting with roasted agave as it rests, and at some point in the future we will release our first "El Madre" bottling from our years of work with Cascahuin — and will continue to top it up for as long as we continue to work together.