Rey Campero Mezcal

Rey Campero is the label of Romulo Sánchez Parada, working in Candelaria Yegolé in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca. It is one of the few brands where a single mezcalero produces the entire range, which makes it unusually useful for tasting agave against agave with everything else held steady.

The house style is clean and structured: stone-oven roasting, natural fermentation in wooden vats, double distillation in copper, and bottling at high proof. Smoke sits in the background rather than leading.

The range covers espadín through some of the harder wild agaves — jabalí, tepextate, cuishe, mexicano, madrecuishe and tobalá — and Rey Campero's jabalí in particular is treated as a reference bottling for that famously difficult agave.