Mezcal Artesanal
The middle production tier under NOM-070-SCFI-2016. Permits more equipment than Ancestral (stainless ferment, copper stills, mechanical shredders) but still bars the diffuser and column. The largest tier by volume.
Mezcal Artesanal is the middle of the three production tiers established by 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).. The tier defines a process envelope, not a quality grade: it specifies which pieces of equipment a producer may use, not how the resulting spirit must taste.
In the Artesanal tier, cooking is done in an earthen pit oven or an above-ground stone or masonry oven fired with wood or charcoal. Milling may be by tahona (the volcanic-stone wheel pulled by a horse or mule), by hand mallet, or by mechanical shredder, but the diffuser is excluded. Fermentation happens in any traditional vessel including wooden vats, stone tanks, or stainless steel. Distillation is in a copper or clay alembic with direct fire.
The tier above (Mezcal Ancestral) tightens the equipment envelope further: clay still only, wooden mallet or tahona milling, no stainless. The tier below (Mezcal, with no qualifier) permits the diffuser and column distillation. Artesanal is the largest of the three by volume and the most common designation seen on export shelves.
The regulation chapter walks the three tiers in detail and the unresolved disclosure question: a bottle labeled simply "Mezcal" may have used a diffuser, and the norm does not require that to be declared on the label.