Maiz Nation Selección Barbieri

The house of Maiz Nation, SolCraft Distillery, is located at an altitude of 1,600 meters in the foothills of San Agustín Etla in Oaxaca, Mexico. Powered by 102 solar panels, SolCraft Distillery is completely off-grid. All grain used to produce Maíz Nation whiskey and distilled grain spirits is stone-ground on the premises. Their Native corn spirits are mashed and proofed with rainwater. Production is limited to small, unique batches. Distillation is performed on small, 600-liter, locally-crafted, copper pot alembics.

Maestro Destilador Jonathan Barbieri of Maiz Nation intended the Blanco to highlight the rich, baroque flavors of true, ancestral corn while the aged spirits are matured under the unique Mexican climatic conditions on new, deep-charred American oak. All of their Native corn, high alpine rye and antique wheat are completely traceable back to the communities of smallholding indigenous farmers with whom they have been collaborating for many years.

The earliest remains of domesticated corn on the planet were found in Oaxaca at the prehistoric caves of Guila Naquitz. Corn, which unlike wheat or rice, does not occur in nature, was invented here by the Mesoamerican ancestors of the people who still cultivate the land 7,000 years later. The Zapotec, Chinantec and Mixtec families and communities from whom they buy their corn have been curating and diversifying their seeds through careful selection year after year since time immemorial.

At Maíz Nation, terroir is about much more than altitude, climate, soil, or intersecting biology. Terroir is rooted in the traditions and practices of the communities that have lived and worked in these eco-systems for 350 generations.