Better watch your sips … er, six … all you celebrity moonshine moonlighters like George Clooney and Bryan Cranston. A (new-to-us) agave-based Mexican spirit sensation is gaining bar shelf space next to the liquorati.
Say que onda to raicilla, a spirit literally rooted (its name means “little root”) in Mexico’s southwestern, Pacific Ocean state of Jalisco.
One of the best and brightest raicilla tabernas (distilleries) is Aycya. Hidden away in the lush fields of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, raicilla now has a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) just like Champagne. Raicilla can only be made here, from a specific, ancient agave native to Jalisco (though Nayarit is allowed to get in on the action a wee bit, too).
As with mezcal, raicilla’s purity makes it smooth and fruitified to the nth degree — Aycya uses the Agave maximiliana species — while tequila can be a mixto, containing up to 49% non-agtave sugars. As a result, tequila is pugilistic in nature, thus the salt and lemon ritual. Raicilla, conversely, makes love, not war, to your insides and manages to be sweeter, brighter and more floral than (mostly Oaxaca-made) mezcal which, created underground, is smokier and heavier than this surface-level-made cousin.
But this now half-a-millennia-old Mexican fire water was banned for nearly a decade by the light-years-away Spanish Crown in the late 18th century (1785 to 1792) in order to protect the monarchy’s global wine and brandy industries. It never quite recovered.
These days, Aycya — whose first batch of raicilla started in 2022 — is run by the Fernandez del Valle family (brothers Diego and Pedro are the youthful faces of it, along with their lively grandmother, Charlotte) and its monocot-whispering maestro raicillero Jorge Luis. His grandfather, Don Guelo, was a honcho in this particular booze biz going way back.
Using old-school, clay ovens, Aycya’s production process takes three days of slow-cooking agave hearts, followed by another week, maybe even 10 days, of fermentation in stainless-steel tanks. The resulting raicilla come in multiple flavors like Maximiliana Joven (aged for 3 months with notes of fresh wood and hints of rosemary) and Maximiliana Madurada (aged for 12 months with notes of roasted agave, light oak and wild vanilla).
And, much like vodka, versatile raicilla can be mixed with basically any and everything. The low-key best co-pilot is kumquat (also grown onsite) juice, which might be the one and only thing to justify the oddball citrus’s existence. Drink that potent potable out of a copper cup and it makes for a mean mule replacement.
So why aren’t we seeing it on our side of the border?
Aycya is currently tussling with the kind of buzz-killing bureaucracy only Merika can do in snail-slow states like Texas and California when it comes to fun imported goods. “Red tape” is a frequent term you’ll hear from the Aycya team. And who knows what all of this tariff tumult will mean. (Although, as of press time, they have successfully shipped their first batch of raicilla stateside starting from $100 per bottle including shipping fees, etc.)
All the more reason to visit the taberna in the flesh at their 370-acre agave plantation in the small Jaliscan pueblito of La Estancia de Landeros, San Sebastián del Oeste, and indulge at the source.
Puerto Vallarta is the closet big city and where to fly into and drop anchor in order to visit Aycya after a 90-minute rustic road drive.
Velas Resorts’ properties are nearly as omnipresent up and down Mexico’s Pacific coast as farmacias. And the 80-room, hacienda-styled Casa Velas (from $361 a night), in downtown PV, is offering a package to its guests a “Raicilla Roots” experience.
It includes a round-trip Jeep commute eastward to and fro Aycya, a guided tour of their facility and agave fields and, best of all, a tasting (with chips and salsa, claro) of four of the distillery’s varietals plus a special edition raicilla only offered to partaking Casa guests.
And unlike what they’re selling over the counter at those farmacias, the “medicine” at Aycya is legal to take back home.
If that weren’t enough, when it’s about time to return to Casa Velas and nap it off by the pool, you’ll be happy to know the all-inclusive is also adults-only. ¡Salud!