B-21 Top Recommendation
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If you're a mezcal fan or collector and you haven't jumped on board with Cinco Sentidos yet, you're missing out on some of the most compelling, artfully crafted offerings in the category. The brainchild of American Jason Cox, the project began as a collection of house mezcals selected for his upstart Oaxaca restaurant El Destilado. This transplant with an insatiable thirst for artisan agave spirits spent countless hours and miles traversing Oaxaca and its surrounding environs, scouting out the best artisan mezcal producers no one had yet heard of. We're talking true family operations that run on sweat and calloused hands and that produce stunningly complex, singular expressions you won't find anywhere else. Today, the Cinco Sentidos range offers a dizzying array of options and styles, and the two on offer here are just a glimpse of the full spectrum, but once you get a hold of them, you'll find yourself diving into the deep end.
The Arroqueńo from Pédro Hernandez is a masterpiece of clay-pot distillation, "a pure, handcrafted beauty and a reference-point for its style and varietal." This huge agave species is rarely cultivated due to its extremely long maturation period of 20+ years, so it's somewhat of a unicorn on the mezcal scene, and in the hands of a true maestro like Tio Pédro, it reaches its apex.
The Sierra Negra is equally singular, both in terms of rarity and character. Maestro Alberto Martinez knocks it out of the park with this rare agave species in an expression that communicates its origins like only the very finest mezcals can. As B-21 Spirits Buyer Andrew Kitz writes, "It’s arguably the most distinctive expression in the Cinco Sentidos line ... Any chance you have to get your hands on it, jump at it and don’t think twice."
If you're already familiar with Cinco Sentidos, you'll no doubt want to add these gems to your shelf at home, and if you haven't discovered them yet, this pair is the perfect introduction to the top-tier craftsmanship that goes into all of Jason Cox's selections. | 
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