Neta, Mezcal Madrecuixe Capon Hermongenes, NV

Madrecuixe barely looks like an agave: instead of the fat pineapple most people picture, it grows a long, narrow trunk more like a fence post, and it takes its sweet time getting there. Hermogenes, a palenquero working outside Miahuatlan in Oaxaca, pushed it a step further with a capon harvest, meaning the flower stalk was cut before it could bloom so the plant sent its sugars back down into the pina. What comes out is one of mezcal's most distinctive raw materials, handled the slow way: pit-roasted, fermented with ambient yeast, twice distilled in small stills. Neta bottles it under the name of the person who made it, which tells you where the priorities sit. Drink it neat, at room temperature, in small pours, and let it open up in the glass.