Alambique Serrano

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Country of Origin: Mexico
Location: Santa Maria Tlalixtac, Cañada
People: Krassel Family, Owners & Distillers
Viticulture: Practicing Organic

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Alambique Serrano is a collection of artisanal, agricole-style rums from the cloud forest of Oaxaca. These are unique blends and single cask selections of rums from organic sugarcane grown the steep hillsides of the Oaxacan Cañada region.

Alambique Serrano is the older brother of Cañada. There are a few differences between the two. While the Cañada rum fermentation occurs in stainless steel, Alambique Serrano rums can be a mixture of stainless steel and pine vats. Alambique Serrano rums are either distilled in the Krassel Still or a copper pot alembic still, whereas Cañada rum is produced only via the Krassel Still. Many Alambique Serrano rums are aged. The Krassel family has four aging areas: a dry bodega located 5,600 feet above sea level, a humid bodega located in the cellar of the distillery at 2,000 feet above sea level; an even more humid bodega 100 meters from Rio Blanco, and a fourth, small cave that is exposed to the elements at the foot of Rio Blanco. Both Krassel Still and pot still rums are aged in a combination of barrels, including ex-whisky, ex-cognac, new French oak, ex-sherry and ex-mezcal.

History
Brothers Isidoro, Rommel, William, and Axel Krassel Peralta continue the work that their grandfather Max started in the 1930s. An immigrant who fled his home country of Germany at the start of WWI, 16-year-old Max landed on the Gulf Coast of Veracruz in 1917.

With no knowledge of Spanish, Max began working any odd job that he could find. He eventually found himself in the mountainous Cañada region of Oaxaca, where he met and married his wife. It wasn’t long before he began distilling aguardiente on a coffee farm (at that time it was common for the haciendas to distill their own cane). After learning the ropes, Max set out on his own to begin distilling his own aguardiente, using a still he designed and built himself.

Max’s three sons followed in his footsteps, improving upon his still design and increasing aguardiente production. Word began to spread far away from Santa Maria Tlalixtac about the quality of the rum produced by the family. There was only one problem: there were no roads to Santa Maria Tlalixtac! Max’s family members began to literally mule the aguardiente to communities far and near, sometimes traveling for weeks at a time with mules loaded with 40-liter jugs of aguardiente.

But one of Max’s sons, also named Max, knew there had to be a better way. He studied to get his pilot’s license in Tehuacan, Puebla and came home to serve his community as an aero-taxista. It wasn’t long before roadless communities began carving out runways in the rare patches of flat land that were found in the region. Throughout the 1970s, Max Jr. and his brothers would fly around the region with their Cessna plane loaded with aguardiente, dropping off orders as large as 300 liters for small towns' regional fiestas.

Nowadays, Santa Maria Tlalixtac has a road into town, which is a four-hour unpaved trek from the nearest highway that is as stunning as it is treacherous. Grandpa Max has passed away, but his son Isidoro and four grandsons Rommel, Axel, William, and Isidoro keep the family tradition alive, working alongside one another in every aspect of production. Thanks to their hard work, aguardiente aficionados no longer need to hike for days to try a rum that has been three generations in the making.

Agriculture
Cañada, Oaxaca, is a region with as much biological diversity as there is linguistic variety. The region is made up of Mazateco, Mixteco, Chinanteco, and Cuicateco farmers who grow an amazing array of organic crops. Apart from sugarcane, you will find many varieties of maize, beans, and chile. In the lower altitude regions with higher humidity, farmers plant plantains, oranges, guavas, zapote negro, and mandarins.

Farming in the region is labor intensive because of two important natural factors. The first is the steep hillsides that can have gradients as high as 20 degrees, meaning that all harvesting and planting must be done by hand rather than by machine or animal. The second factor is the clay loam soil characteristic of the region. Clay loam has a propensity to retain a lot of water, which makes it denser and less malleable for planting.

Despite these geographic challenges, farmers in the region persist. The Krassel family in particular plant an impressive amount of sugarcane. The plants stretch further than the eye can see. In lower altitude plots, the cane is harvested annually, and the soil of the plots is regenerated once per decade when the family plants legumes in place of cane as a method to restore nitrogen to the soil. For higher altitude plots, the cane takes 16 months to mature. On one hectare, 10,000 cane plants can be planted, and they will each give birth to 4-6 rhizomes. The canes are cared for manually. The fields where they grow will be manually weeded with a machete.

After the canes have been cut, the excess leaves and stalks are left behind at the point of harvest. They will naturally integrate with the soil and serve as a protectorate against weeds that compete with the younger cane that will begin to grow. To complete the cycle, the bagasse (spent fiber) generated from the milling of the cane is collected and permitted to degrade. In about a year’s time, that bagasse will deteriorate to the point of sediment. That sediment will be collected and added to the cane fields as a form of natural fertilizer, and keep the cyclical nature of cane cultivation alive.