Forests around Oaxaca were burning for the last several weeks. Many farmers were killed. The fires are mostly controlled but the damage has been horrific.

If you haven’t noticed yet, there’s been a crazy agave boom and celebrities from The Rock to George Clooney to one of the Kardashians have been getting rich shilling agave products and for some reason don’t seem to be around to help financially when the country of Mexico needs help. We haven’t been getting rich off it, but we do use a lot of mezcal and tequila. We also have a rich history of employing people either directly from Oaxaca or people whose relatives are from there. At the moment we have four employees from Oaxaca. So in order to help, we’re donating 25% of the proceeds of each one of these cocktails to the cause to help rebuild.

Coa de Jima

1 oz. Mezcal

1 oz. Guajilla Mezcal

1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

.5 oz. Corn Milk

.5 oz. Sort of Fermented Pineapple Piloncillo

.25 oz. Guava Syrup

Shake, strain onto BFR. Dust with grated cinnamon.

It’s about as Oaxaca as we can get?

This’ll be on the menu tomorrow. We’re still working on it a bit, but it’s 95% done.

The corn milk is, you guessed it, a koji fermentation mixed with a touch of condensed milk. Guava is fresh from the farmer’s market. The pineapple, yeah I know, it’s technically an illegal item behind our bar but I had one stashed from the wedding last week (I actually bought one unripe to have for later…).

I sat equal parts piloncillo chunks by weight with the pineapple and let it sit more than a few days until it got all bubbly and funky. Piloncillo is nice to work with because it’s not super sweet but owns that nice little hogo fragrance we’ve all come to love in our pot still rums. What is it? Oh, it’s evaporated sugar cane juice. Yeah. Yummy.

Oh, and stop calling it meZZ-cal. It’s pronounced mes-call.