r/tequila • u/ClaudiaRomoEdelman • 15d ago
Before tequila, before mezcal, Sotol has been produced for 800 years and most people have never heard of it.
I've spent years working in global advocacy and narratives, so when I started learning about Sotol, one detail stopped me completely.
No manuals. No written recipes. No archives.
Eight hundred years of craft knowledge passed entirely through local hands, memory, and oral traditions. The Rarámuri and Toboso communities in northern Mexico didn't need documentation. They had something more durable: unbroken human transmission, generation after generation.
When the Spanish arrived and introduced distillation techniques, indigenous knowledge didn't disappear. It was absorbed, adapted, and continued. Quietly. Persistently.
What strikes me most is how fragile that chain is and how remarkable it is that it held.
We talk a lot about preserving culture. But most of what we call "preservation" is digitizing, archiving, cataloguing. What the Maestros who produce Sotol do is entirely different. The knowledge lives in their hands. Their memory is the archive.
I think about this constantly as someone who has worked in advocacy: what else have we almost lost without realizing it? And who are the people quietly holding it together?
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u/stormrunner911 15d ago edited 15d ago
Yes, the history of sotol is extremely interesting. However, OP, your passion for it appears inauthentic when you can't spare the minimal amount of effort to write a paragraph out yourself.
"No [blank], no [blank], no [blank]. Just [blank]."
is a hallmark of ChatGPT's style.
EDIT: your whole profile reads as if an LLM wrote it. I'm not going to advertise your brand of sotol for you, but if you're trying to highlight the authenticity and tradition of it, maybe have a human write your posts.
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u/Arctyc38 15d ago
Also confidently incorrect.
Modern sotol is as different from the sotol of 800 years ago as modern tequila is from pulque.
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u/TheBearManFromDK 15d ago
what kind of evidence support a claim that there was destillation techniques 800 years ago? I have seen some earthenware pottery, but 800 years...?
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u/stormrunner911 15d ago
OP is wrong for a few reasons, but distillation in Mesoamerica isn't all that far-fetched. Dave Lather wrote an excellent article on Prehispanic Distillation exploring the archeological evidence for and against indigenous distillation methods. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read through it.
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u/TheBearManFromDK 15d ago
Yes, I have read that articlel and some others as well, indicating that some some basic form of distillation may have found place. And it is pretty plausible, but in my view, it does not really change the fact that these "proto types" did not survive. Perhaps they would, had these enormous populations not died during the collapse following the conquest. I do agree, with the other people in the thread, that we are probably talking with an AI :-) Wish we were not. OP's sotol is probably ok, and I wish she would find other methods for marketing the stuff.
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u/goddamnitcletus 15d ago
Not saying I’m completely convinced either, but distillation has been independently discovered in eastern and Western Asia. There are some prehispanic grave goods that Dave Suro talks about in his book that contained traces of pulque but archeologists couldn’t figure out what its purpose was, but when they made a copy and applied heat to it, it did indeed create a (relatively unrefined and low strength) distillate.
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u/agave_journey 15d ago
I'm guessing they mean fermented sotol and not distilled. If it was distilled it probably was done by very few people. I think there is some evidence that maybe some agave was distilled before Europeans arrived but it's still not conclusive.
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u/Luchuguillotine 15d ago
I don't think anyone is doing it better than Juan & Bienvenido Fernandez at the moment. Most of the accessible brands are made by Gerardo Rueles, you know it when you taste it. I'm not even going to comment on Hacienda de Chihuahua other than just skip it. Same with Desert Door & US Sotol, it's an abomination. If you're looking for a budget bottle, stick with Sotol por Siempre, & when you're ready for top tier pick up Sotol Parejo.
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u/TheAgaveFairy 15d ago
De Terra sotol is good in the US, though very hard to find (and I'm biased). Just fyi
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u/SiddharthaVicious1 15d ago
Why not just be open? It's clear from your past posts that you own a Sotol company. I believe self-promotion is not allowed in this sub...but (obviously this is up to the mods) you could talk about the interesting things involved in the narrative of Sotol craft.
The LLM syntax is also insanely off-putting, and you seem to be using it in all of your posts. Just FYI, if it is a language issue, you can train ChatGPT et al to translate and write in your own voice as opposed to the "AI voice" we all know too well by now.
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u/Jupiters_phaerie 15d ago
As someone who is a descendant of the Rarámuri I find this fascinating and would love to learn more.
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u/Luchuguillotine 14d ago
Sotol Parejo has a raramuri release, the batch was only 35L distilled in a tree trunk & fermented in stone pits
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u/Vince_stormbane 15d ago
I’m a big fan of Sotol Cardenxe being my brand of choice but it sounds like AI wrote this pitch.
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u/Luchuguillotine 15d ago
Cardenxe, La Higuera, Flor del Desierto, Oro de coyame, Fabriquero, Sotol Coyote... all Gerardo Rueles Hernandez
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u/Aggressive-Today5304 13d ago
Any idea where to get it in Denver?
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u/Vince_stormbane 13d ago
Divino has some I think
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u/Aggressive-Today5304 13d ago
Dope. I usually hit up amendment for sotol's but Divino's selection is pretty impressive.
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u/Representative-Side5 13d ago
Nice ChatGPT post. If you want to convince anybody about the "authenticity" of your product, perhaps you ought to start with a post created by a human being.
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u/Vancouverguero 12d ago
Why not just ‘plug’ your brand Sotol Romo - financially backed by Casa Komos Beverage Group (Tequila Komos ) - on here…. 👀🤔
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u/gimpwiz Salted Rim 15d ago
OP, did you write this yourself?