Mono de Calenda

At a glance

Mono de Calenda is a mezcal brand based in Oaxaca City, founded around 2014 out of a stated passion for pure, traditional, sustainable mezcal. Rather than owning a single distillery, it draws its spirit from family producers in the surrounding countryside and presents it under one label, with a tiny tasting room, the Mezcalería Mono de Calenda, on Morelos in the historic centre where visitors can sample the range.

The name is a piece of Oaxaca itself. A mono de calenda is one of the giant papier-mâché puppets, worn on a frame over the dancer's shoulders, that twirl through the city's calendas, the festive street processions that mark weddings, saints' days, and celebrations. The brand ties two old Oaxacan traditions together, the puppets and the mezcal, and even carries the idea into its packaging, which imagines peeling the papier-mâché off a mono and wrapping it around the bottle. For a newcomer, that is the frame: a culturally rooted Oaxaca City house built around traditional mezcal from many hands.

How the mezcal is made

Mono de Calenda's spirits are made by the traditional artisanal method of the Oaxacan valleys. The agave hearts, the piñasPiña: the central core of the agave plant once its leaves are cut away, named for its pineapple-like shape. Roasting the piña turns its starches into the sugars that ferment into alcohol., are roasted in a wood-fired pit oven that lends the gentle smoke characteristic of the style, then crushed, fermented in open vats, and distilled. Because the brand works with several family producers rather than one still, individual releases reflect the hand and village of the maker as much as a single house recipe.

This is mezcal in the artisanal mould recognised by the mezcal standard (NOM-070-SCFI-2016A regulatory-standard NOM is a federal Mexican product norm. Unlike facility NOMs (4-digit identifiers of specific distilleries), a standard NOM defines the rules for an entire category of product: which raw materials are permitted, where the product may be made, how it must be processed, and how the bottle must be labeled. Standard NOMs are written as "NOM-XXX-SCFI-YYYY" where XXX is the standard number and YYYY is the year. NOM-070-SCFI-2016 (Mezcal). The official Mexican standard for mezcal production. Defines three production tiers (Mezcal Industrial, Mezcal Artesanal, Mezcal Ancestral) with specific equipment and method requirements for each, lists the permitted agave species and states, and governs labeling. Enforced by the Consejo Regulador del Mezcal (CRM).): pit-roasted, traditionally milled and fermented, and distilled without industrial shortcuts.

The range

The backbone is espadín (Agave angustifolia), the cultivated agave behind most Oaxacan mezcal, here a clean and approachable everyday pour. Around it sits an unusually broad cast of wild and semi-wild agaves: tobalá (Agave potatorum), small, high-altitude, and floral; madrecuixe (a form of Agave karwinskii), columnar and mineral with a savoury, earthy depth; tepeztate (Agave marmorata), bright, green, and herbaceous; mexicano, prized for a soft, fruity, vegetal profile; and jabalí, the famously hard-to-distill agave that yields a sharp, fruity, sometimes funky spirit. A cucharillo, distilled from a rosette-leaved succulent rather than a true agave, appears as a rarer curiosity.

Because the wild varietals take many years longer to mature than espadín, single-varietal bottlings of them are scarce and command a premium, and the tasting room is one of the easier places to meet several of them side by side.

Where Mono de Calenda sits

Mono de Calenda belongs to the family of Oaxaca City mezcal brands that act as a curated front for traditional family production, putting their name on the bottle while the spirit is distilled by producers in the villages. In that, it sits near houses like Wahaka and the cooperative model of Banhez, and at the opposite end from the celebrity-founded, multinational-owned brands elsewhere on this site. Its distinguishing notes are its strong cultural framing and its city-centre tasting room, which make it as much an entry point to Oaxacan mezcal for visitors as a label on a shelf. Independent documentation is lighter than for the larger names, so the specifics here lean on the brand's own account alongside local coverage.

See also