Lamata Spirits: Here

Luis Loya started a small unregistered mezcal brand called Nacion de las Verdes Matas about 9 years ago. Luis grew up on a cattle ranch in Chihuahua and has always had a passion for exploring remote communities throughout Mexico, especially in the Northern States near where he grew up and now resides. His exploration has been based around traditional mezcal for many years now, and he has built great relationships with a number of traditional mezcal producers throughout the vast expanses of Northern Mexico. He has also participated in a number of exhibitions, talks, and educational events throughout Mexico and the US, and collaborated in a handful of publications, and documented various distillation styles throughout Mexico.

Luis loves learning about and trying the tiny traditional productions, the family recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation. He has become very good at selecting unique, stand out batches and his brand really is a vehicle that transports the sense of time, geography and tradition to people outside of these communities, via the tastes and aromas of these beautiful mezcales.

Lamata is the for-export arm of Nacion de Las Verdes Matas. We are really trying to bring in Mezcal from Northern Mexico from places that are under-represented in the Market, but have some of the most flavorful, interesting distillates in all of the country. We have solid relationships with producers in Durango, Nuevo Leon, Sonora, Chihuahua, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas among others. We believe that the only way for these traditional mezcales to remain unchanged while also being made available outside of the communities where they are distilled, is to ensure the producers are receiving a fair share of the profits and are not pushed to over exploit the natural resources in the area.

We generally sell Cenizo, Castilla, Tepemete and Masparillo from Durango, the very idiosyncratic 60% maguey 40% pulque distillate from Nuevo Leon, Lechuguilla from Sonora, and a very unique ensemble from a taberna in Tamaulipas that is being restored and brought back to a more rustic traditional production style. We have started to work with 2 producers in Oaxaca who were chosen because of their exemplary and unique mezcales - a Madrecuixe from Miahuatlan and a Cucharilla from the Mixteca Alta. The typical lot sizes that we work with range from about 40 liters to 200 liters and we do not plan on pushing the producers to make more than they historically have. For this reason we don’t plan to exceed much more than a total of 3 to 5 thousand liters per year.

With the rise in popularity of mezcal, Lamata looks to broaden the tastes and knowledge of the consumer base and show people the awesome diversity of agave distillates throughout Mexico with a focus on the northern states and underrepresented expressions. It is important to us that the consumers try un-manipulated, traditional mezcal, at the proof that it is consumed by the producer, without watering down or changing anything in the process. Lamata will continue to be a vehicle that transmits the “gusto historico”, the terroir, the liquid culture and history that is mezcal, to people beyond the borders of the places where it is made.