The people who walk the streets and inhabit the houses have been long dead, though they remain as real as if they still breathed the stifling hot air. In the mother’s words, “Make him pay, son, for all those years he put us out of his mind.” His father is Pedro Páramo, but Comala, where he lived, is literally a ghost town. The book is set in the Mexican village of Comala, to which Juan Preciado arrives, having made a promise to his dying mother that he would search out his father whom he has not known since he was a young child. It proved to be a profound influence on major writers who followed, including Gabriel García Márquez. Don Augustín is its limited, reserved line of tequila.įirst published in Mexico in 1955, Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo is considered one of the greatest works of Latin American literature. It has grown to the fourth largest in Mexico, with over one thousand hectares and three million agave plants under cultivation. The distillery itself dates from 1938, the vision of Don Augustín Camarena (that’s his picture on the bottle). It is estate bottled at the distillery in Arandas, the town co-founded by the Camarena family 250 years ago. Don Agustín is aged in American white oak barrels for 12 months. It is the middle distillate, the corazon, that makes up the body of the tequila. Diverted to vats, the juice ferments over several days, before ending up in stainless steel pot stills where a double distillation takes place. The piñas are split and slow roasted in wood and clay ovens for several days, using a traditional steam method, then shredded and the juice extracted. Harvesting is done by experienced “jimadores” who extract the weighty, rounded core of the plant, the piña, using a special circular blade on a long pole. Here, at elevations nearing 2,500 metres, there is less rain and cooler temperatures, allowing the plants to mature more slowly and resulting in more intense flavours. (40% abv)ĭon Agustín añejo is made from premium blue agave grown in the eastern Los Altos (The Highlands) region of Jalisco. Lovely on its own, or with a thin wedge of lime.

Toasted warm on the palate, with a creamy, balanced mix of spice.

Pale gold in the glass, from where its aromas arise - spicy, oak-tinted, honey. (Some would argue Mexico’s best writer, ever.) If the drink in one hand was distilled in the state of Jalisco in Mexico (as almost all the best tequilas are), then it only makes sense that the book in the other hand was written by Jalisco’s best writer ever. The Books: Pedro Páramo and The Plain in Flames by Juan Rulfo

Pedro paramo juan