Spirit Of The Week: Eterno Embrujo Raicilla
The new label offers agave fanatics a chance to experience a legendary mezcalero’s final spirit.
Last week the spirits world lost a true Titan. No, Hidelgardo Joya wasn’t the Master Distiller of some massive Kentucky whiskeymaking enterprise, batching up some 20,000 barrels of bourbon every week. Nor was he some lofty titled executive from a massive international conglomerate overseeing an army of 50 different labels, with plants and marketing offices branching across the planet like an oil and power concern.
No, ‘El Japo’ — as he was lovingly known by friends, family, and agaveheads worldwide — wasn’t any of that. El Japo was a Raicillero; a humble custodian of an ancient art of alchemy. One of the last chosen holders of a magical flame, an esoteric art of manifesting spirits into the bottle using only agaves, natural yeast, and water bubbling up from the ground under his feet. Add only sun, fire and time, and voilà: Raicilla, a rare and particular style of Mezcal.
Well, not “officially” a Mezcal as raicilla does not fall onto the denomination of origin (DOM) Mexico defined for Mezcal – as raicilla is only crafted in Jalisco, more famously the home of tequila, but not one of the 10 states recognized to make mezcal. But it is in every traditional definition a mezcal: a Mexican spirit distilled from agaves, plain and simple. In only 2019, raicilla received its own DOM protection from Mexico.
On Tuesday May 13, 2025 Don Japo passed away at his home at the age of 92, as reported by our friend Javier Cabral at LA Taco. And while that is indeed a healthy age to break from the mortal coil, it is a sad day for fanatics of Raicilla who will never, ever again taste his potions.
I, for one, count my lucky stars I was able to visit his legendary workshop last summer. Just as they dub a mezcal distillery a palenque, and fábrica for tequila, a Raicilla’s home is termed a taberna — and Don Japo’s nestled at the top of the dusty hills of the remote Cabo Corrientes coast of Puerto Vallarta might as well be on the sixth moon of Jupiter. To get there requires an all-day journey, starting at dawn with a one-hour zip across Vallarta Bay. “These guys we’re going to visit, Hidelgardo Joya and Adrián Rodríguez, experienced their generational handover years ago; they understood their role in keeping raicilla alive in their families and communities,” our guide Arturo Dávila told us as we glided across the third biggest bay in the world, blue-footed boobies dipping and elegantly dancing with our an 18-foot-long panga. As guinea pig to the nearby five-star Naviva, A Four Seasons Resort inaugural “Road to Raicilla” experience, we were to visit not only Joya that day but also another vaunted raicillero, the aforementioned Rodríguez.
“They represent the raicilla of different communities, keeping their own secrets and special profiles that nobody else has,” Dávila continued. In our guide’s view, who used to be Puerto Vallarta’s Director of the Department of Culture, witnessing the crafting of raicilla is not industry, or even artistry. Witnessing first-hand how this ancient spirit is conjured from the juice of the local agaves is nothing less than the lifting of a sorcerer’s veil, a chance to observe ceremonies and brujeria passed along for countless generations.
Once we landed at the tiny fishing village of Chimo we joined our other guide Larissa Carrillo, El Japo’s niece and local specialist. Her isolated hometown of Chimo looks not much different than when she grew up here decades ago. There we all climbed into a tiny Toyota van and began a long 4×4 wobble up treacherously steep dirt roads to get to El Japo’s taberna. The whole ride there giddy with anticipation, like schoolgirls en route to a K-Pop concert.
A quick note on the clandestine nature of raicilla, and why the spirit began with and continues to enjoy/suffer from an outlaw aura. When King Carlos III banned all mezcals and pulques in 1785 to favor his country’s brandy imports, the Spanish ruler unknowingly created a bootleg corridor delivering raicilla to Puerto Vallarta via small pangas that ran missions under the dark cloak of night. This illicit spirit was more easily made in the remote southern coastal shore of Cabo Corrientes where we’re headed, where the moonshine could be more safely brewed in hidden pueblitos.
But brutal prison sentences meant raicilleros were thought of more as banditos than shamans. Even with its eventual legality, the raicilla now made in the hills overlooking Puerto Vallarta, dubbed Sierra style (mountain) versus the Costal (coastal) version here, is widely more prolific and popular because of the modern infrastructure of the area; high-traffic roads easily allow transportation of both ingredients and final product from the Sierra tabernas to the bustling port. Sierra raicilleros also use the far more efficient alembic stills, and focus on “lechugilla,” aka agave maximiliana. Meanwhile Costal raicilleros utilize primitive Filipino stills and a much greater variety of agaves. Because of the Lord of the Rings journey required to access the area, these villages are visited by tourists with the frequency of pop stars breaking the Kármán line.
“The [Costal] tradition survived in some families who honored their heritage, who continued producing raicilla for their communities and personal use,” Dávila told Maxim. He went on to say how the trio of revered raicilleros the ‘Road to Raicilla’ highlights, “represent pillars of resilience, love, and commitment to raicilla.”
When we finally arrived at the dusty ranch, what hits you first is the blazing sun’s white heat on your skin, a vivid punch of bright magenta bougainvillea lining the campus of small buildings, and the redolent scent of raicilla cooking in the nearby Filipino stills. I remember my first view of Hidelgardo Joya coming out of his home and walking down the uneven hill to us: at 92 years old he still moved with the deliberate yet solid gait of a walking oak. Cabo Corrientes’ most revered raicillero was too the ultimate rugged gentleman—quietly smiling to our small group, graciously inviting this stranger into his secret workshop.
Leading us into the dark, cool shelter of his taberna, Don Japo waved to his rare Filipino stills — remnants of the Galeón de Manila, a spectacularly bountiful trading route linking the Spanish ports of Manila and Acapulco. Since the Filipino sailors were mostly slaves, if and when the rare opportunity presented itself many would slip away, escape into these Nayarit hills and assimilate with the natives. Between 1565 and 1815, experts estimate some 75,000 Filipinos escaped and vanished into the villages of the area. Beyond their gene pools, they also brought with them the knowledge of their unique stills, from which they had learned to distill sugarcane, palm wine and fermented rice. It’s accurate to say many suspect El Japo, or ‘The Japanese,’ might descend from these welcomed immigrants.
Wood-fueled flames crackled under the still, water trickling into a clay pot from a hose connected to a spring hundreds of yards away. A slow drip of raicilla fills a glass jug, steaming from the contraption. What makes these Filipino versions unique is they’re constructed from hollowed-out parota trees, with a copper pot placed both above and below the trunks. The organic wood only lasts a couple runs each, and work slowly, making them an anathema to any commercial endeavor. However, they’re also a blessing to multi-generational maestros who know precisely how to tweak their magic to conjure a unique juice, one that pulls astonishing amounts of flavor from the host agaves.
Notably they’re also mobile, so Don Japo’s ancestors could make a quick run into the hills should the Spanish authorities come waving guns. He hands me a copita brimming with chereca — or puntas, the first distillation of his piping hot elixir. Meaning this spirit is as fresh — and potent — as it gets. The wall of aromatic vegetables and fresh cut grass slaps you in the face. Japo smiled amused at my reaction.
“Japo possesses one of the most distinctive raicillas, a craft he has perfected over time by refining techniques from the meticulous cleaning of his plots to the respect for the time each agave plant needs to be harvested,” Dávila explained, adding various esoteric elements to Japo’s sorcery — like how he only harvests under the light of a full moon, as the gods decree. “His methods of cooking, fermentation, and distillation contribute to giving his raicilla a unique touch highly appreciated by many.”
After watching Japo work his cauldron like Gandalf, the small group gathers outside under the shade of a giant eucalyptus tree and makes quick work of fresh moist queso his neighbor brought over earlier that morning. Man, the memories of seeing the master at work, and testing his chereca straight from the parota trunk still resonate.
“These masters exemplify a worldview and way of life vastly different from modern times,” Dávila shared in between bites of white cheese. Sitting in this primitive atelier, fire crackling nearby and chest-puffed roosters noisily asserting their dominance to no one in particular, not a single screen or electric appliance in site, it’s impossible not to feel like this taberna exists in a dimension outside of time. “Their knowledge and traditions are invaluable. And with their passing, much will be lost,” Dávila said that day, all too presciently. Well, there is no doubt a Library of Alexandria level of Raicilla knowledge was lost last week.
For those who obsess over mezcal at large and want a taste of El Japo’s work, the widely loved Mezonte mezcal label partnered with the maestro in 2019 for a highly coveted Raicilla Japo bottle that now fetches high hundreds of dollars in secondary markets. There is however a new option hitting the American market released by his niece, Eterno Embrujo Raicilla, which is our Maxim Spirit Of the Week.
“For me, this Eterno Embrujo project is simply a pretext—an opportunity that allows me to work, connect with, and support the community my father loved so deeply, and to which I now proudly belong,” Carissa tells me about her raicilla endeavor. “I am deeply grateful and happy that it was Don Japo who supported me in making this possible, as I learned so much from him. The time we spent working together was a true gift.”
Just wanted to share a bit from my brief encounter with Don Japo, and wish Señor Hidelgardo Joya a Valkyrie’s ride to wherever he’s off to next. Raicilla Is Power, good sir. If you scour away you just may be able to find your bottle of Eterno Embrujo Raicilla, bottled at 45-percent (90-proof) for $100.
Follow Deputy Editor Nicolas Stecher on Instagram at @nickstecher and @boozeoftheday.