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Justin Lane Briggs

@jlb802

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Jenkem connoisseur. Dad to Hazel & Sunny.
🇲🇽 for @skurnikwines

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El Jolgorio ‘Ancestral’ is produced in collaboration with the Ruiz family of Sola de Vega, one of just two widely exported communities in Oaxaca’s Central Valles where production remains focused on the exclusive use of traditional clay pot stills.

It’s a challenge to get to the Ruiz family palenque, high in the mountains, with minimal road access. Upon arrival in Sola de Vega, you proceed on foot, skirting and winding around the edge of precariously sheer hillside into the jungle beyond. At one point, a flock of wild turkeys descended upon us with a malevolent gleam in their eyes, threatening to drive us off our path and into the rocky hollows below. (No joke.)

The palenque itself is a marvel, among the most beautiful distilling sites I’ve seen. Hidden beneath low-hanging branches, it looks out over the dense green foliage of the valley below. Agave is cooked in small earthen pit ovens, and milled entirely by hand using wooden mallets. The clay pots are strung together with delicate love, and cracked or broken stills are repurposed elsewhere at the palenque – broken into shards to hold heat in the fires, or cracked into larger curving clay chunks and used in a makeshift grill to prepare lunch. Here the traditional jicara drinking vessel (the dried gourd of the calabash tree) is replaced instead with coconut shells, heftier in the hand, durable.

We were greeted by Justina Ruiz Perez, who helms the family operation and distills many of the batches, but as we sat and talked, more family members slowly emerged from the foliage, as though stepping out of the shadows, and copitas of mezcal were passed around to sample.

For me, the highlight that day was the Mexicano (A. rhodacantha) by Eustaquio, but each mezcal was deep and generous. Sometimes you love one batch most when you’re at the place of origin, and another seems to sing when you bring it home. All of these are excellent though, and transportive - snapshots of a time and place and flavor vanishing all too quickly.

#soladevega #mezcalancestral #oaxaca #mezcalesdeoaxaca #ancestral #olla #barro #dixeebe #junio23 taken in Sola De Vega, Oaxaca, Mexico by @jlb802

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2 years ago

Annual repotting of the hijuelos #agaveamericana #agavepotatorum gracias @reycampero por siempre taken in Candelaria Yegolé by @jlb802

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a month ago

Hot out here for dads in NYC, 88 5/17 taken in Queens, New York by @jlb802

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5 months ago

Ningún mezcal es igual a otro. 🌱
La especie de agave, la tierra, el clima y los años de espera; el horno, la molienda, la fermentación y la destilación—todo cambia en cada lote.
Barro o cobre, tahona o mazo, fermentos que viven su propio ritmo.
La diversidad no es un accidente: es la esencia.
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No two mezcals are the same. 🌱
Agave species, soil, climate, harvest age, ovens, crushing methods, fermentation, and stills—each step changes from one batch to another.
Clay or copper, tahona or mallet, wild or guided fermentation.
Variation isn’t a flaw—it’s the system.

#Mezcal #Oaxaca #VenAProbar #Experiencias #Bookings 🌿 by @jlb802

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5 months ago

Been meaning to post this for a minute, but @spy.worldwide and @converge ripped it a couple weeks back at @knockdowncenter - tbh SPY might have been my favorite part of the show 💪 Nice work, San Francisco! taken in Knockdown Center by @jlb802

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6 months ago

#oaxaca #nofılter @samadamsbostonbrewery #panopticon #stpatricks taken in Santiago Matatlán, Oaxaca, Mexico by @jlb802

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7 months ago

How it started / How it’s going. Yucca in front of my house, 24 hrs apart. NYC Blizzard 2026 #blizzard2026 taken in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens by @jlb802

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8 months ago

Coding taken in Hudson, New York by @jlb802

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8 months ago

taken in Queens, New York by @jlb802

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8 months ago

taken in Minneapolis, Minnesota by @jlb802

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9 months ago

Doing another birthday thing this year. Real casual. Roll through and listen to some records whilst enjoying some agave.
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Este año celebraré otro cumpleaños. Muy relajado. Pasen y escuchen algunos discos mientras disfrutan de un agave.
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7-Midnight @ Tokyo Record Bar, 127 MacDougal St, NYC. December 8, 2025 taken in Tokyo Record Bar by @jlb802

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10 months ago

It’s finally here! After over a year of patience, the second barrel selection from our visit to the Santa Rita Fabrica and Caballito Cerrero has arrived. We left it sitting in worn, decades old, heavily extracted American oak barrels long enough to pass the 2yr mark without losing sight of the agave at its heart… I’m extremely excited about this one.

Azul (A. tequilana)
19th century top-loading steam oven cook
Wild and proprietary yeast
Stainless and copper pot distillation January ‘23
29 months in American oak
Cask strength at 51.7% ABV

There’s not much of it, but it’s a gem.

@caballito_cerrero_destilado @heavy_metl @skurnikwines #9thfloor #destiladodeagave #jaliscoparaelmundo taken in New York, New York by @jlb802

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a year ago