Bozal Debuts Advent Calendar
Bozal Mezcal debuted its new, limited edition Bozal Advent Calendar featuring mezcals from Oaxaca, Durango, and Guerrero.
The calendar will be officially released to luxury gift buyers in late October/early November – just in time for the holiday season with a suggested retail price upwards of $1,300. The calendar includes 24 200ml versions of the label’s iconic ceramic bottles with both current and debut Bozal expressions, two proprietary copitas (traditional mezcal drinking vessels), and ceremonial tealights to be lit on the final day in reverence to mezcaleros and the traditions passed down from one generation to the next.
Bozal takes an artisanal approach towards production to create an unadulterated style in each of its mezcals. In keeping with 200-year-old tradition, the agave hearts are cooked in earthen pit ovens, later to be crushed and mashed by a stone tahona wheel. Open-air fermentation allows the sugars to ferment utilizing only naturally occurring yeast. The mezcal is then purified through a double distillation process in either copper or clay.
Bozal Mezcal is produced by 3 Badge Beverage Corp, a Sonoma-based négociant established in 2015 by fourth-generation vintner, August Sebastiani, who is bullish on the prospects of agave spirits and mezcal in particular.
“Our Bozal Advent Calendar is the ideal gift for any mezcal enthusiast – and especially for any collector of Bozal,” said Sebastiani. “Regularly traveling the backroads of Central and Southern Mexico means occasionally coming across rare mezcals in quantities so small that we can’t always justify a regular release. We’re thrilled to have creative new avenues like this Advent calendar to bring unusual, small batch mezcals to market for Bozal’s most ardent fans.”
With the addition of the new expressions featured in this calendar, Bozal has now introduced 29 unique mezcals made from varieties of agave indigenous to Oaxaca, Guerrero and Durango. Bozal plans to release one video per day during December featuring Sebastiani tasting through each expression in the calendar as they are revealed. Videos will be available on bozalmezcal.com as well as on the brand’s YouTube channel.
Bozal Mezcal’s lineup is characterized by exotic and intense flavors, with rich earth tones and savory smokiness. Though the profiles of each mezcal in the portfolio change drastically from the type and maturity of the maguey and production method, the tactile earth-tone ceramic bottles remain consistent and rustic with an artisanal design. Alluding to the traditional terra cotta copitas used for drinking mezcal, the colors of the ceramic bottles are used to signify whether the expression is Bozal’s Ensamble maguey blend (yellow) a Single Maguey (blue) a small-batch Sacrificio (brown) or a rare ancestral Reserva (black).