Celso Jaquez Perez was born in Ciudad Madera, Chihuahua on August 22, 1948.
Don Celso was an avid boxer, a Vietnam copilot, a civil engineer, a restaurateur, mayor of Janos, and the sotolero who made what's in this bottle. People called him Señor de la Vinata.
A train car in El Paso
At the age of four, the Jaquez family moved north. His parents bought a train car for $600 and that's where they lived. Years later Celso bought it back from his father so it would stay in the family. He was one of thirteen children.
As he got older, Don Celso spent time down south in Ciudad Madera with his grandfather, Don Cuco during school holidays. That's where his passion for sotol began. He learned it the way sotoleros for generations have always learned it, standing next to someone, digging their hands into the earth and doing the work.
The long way round
He boxed in El Paso and took the Golden Gloves at nineteen, then Champion of Champions shortly after. He was working at a local gas company when the draft came, and he flew as a copilot on a medical unit in Vietnam. He came home, became a US citizen, married, and had three children.
He kept going back to Don Cuco through all of it. Albuquerque to Ciudad Madera and back, still learning from his grandfather and his uncles. Something about being a sotolero intrigued him, and at this stage in his life, he was ready.
La Guadalupana
In 1985 he bought a ranch in Janos, Chihuahua. He chose that land for the water wells – full of rich, heavy minerals from the surrounding mountains, and mineral water makes much better sotol.
Don Celso built a distillery on the ranch and named it for his grandfather. Then he went and found the men who had worked alongside Don Cuco in Ciudad Madera and brought them to Janos with him. He was a strong believer in carrying on the tradition from his grandfather, and knew that if he surrounded himself with the best sotoleros in town – they could preserve his legacy.
Six barrels left alone
Sotol is almost always sold un-aged. The plant takes fifteen years to mature and be worthy of harvesting, and for most of the category's history nobody would pay anyone to wait longer than that.
Don Celso filled six barrels anyway and left them alone. Let them rest. Age.
Six years later there were roughly 1,100 bottles of something we have never found anywhere else. As far as we know it's the only six year aged sotol in existence.
What‘s in the bottle
He distilled it twice in copper, one pass fewer than our Blanco. The third pass makes a cleaner spirit, and this one needed room to pick things up in the barrel.
Six years in tequila barrels did the rest. Vanilla, clove, cinnamon, allspice and cardamom, at 42% ABV. 100% sotol, nothing added, the same as everything else we make. The tasting profile was written by a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, a title the French government awards to master craftspeople.
Don Ceslo died in El Paso on August 26, 2018, four days after his 70th birthday. He was surrounded by his sotolero family and extremely proud of what he had built.
Around 200 bottles left
Of the 1,100 that came out of those six barrels, roughly 200 remain. There is no second run coming, because there is no one who can make it the way Don Celso made it.
If you want to taste what he left behind, there's a bottle waiting.
Shop the 6 Year Reserva →
$215. 42% alcohol by volume, 84 proof. Six years in tequila barrels, from six barrels and no more.