When there’s no water, there’s no work. And when there’s no work, there are no adult males — they all have to leave to earn money, to send home to their families. That’s how it was described to us by maestro mezcalero Eduardo Angeles of Lalocura in Santa Catarina Minas, Oaxaca. And it’s why he led his community to build dozens of water reservoirs around his community. Whenever you visit Minas, even during a drought, you’ll see farming because of those water reservoirs — even as neighboring communities are unable to farm.

That enormous impact on Santa Catarina Minas is what inspired us to develop a rain-harvest system in Santa Maria Ixcatlan. Maestro mezcalero Amando Alvarado Alvarez was speaking to us of that same problem: his small town of fewer than 500 people is getting smaller, because it is getting drier. Climate change has made the rare rains rarer still.

Funded entirely by agave enthusiasts, in 2022 we built a rain-harvest system in Ixcatlan. It was one of the projects highlighted by Thrillist. The project was managed by Vinik Jure of Expresiones Bioculturales A.C. and designed and implemented by Mixterra. It was completed in 2022 and will be operational soon, just awaiting the transition of the municipal government.

Vamonos Riendo Mezcal came to us, in 2020, looking to fund 100% of a project, and here, too, we landed on water security. Through our friends at SiKanda, Vamonos Riendo was able to fund a rain-harvest system at an elementary school in Zaachila, Oaxaca — the community from which we purchase the agave seedlings we gift to mezcaleros. To watch a video about that project, click here.

Our latest water project is in San Isidro Guishe, in Miahuatlan, Oaxaca. Mezcalero Jose Garcia has invited Pensador Mezcal, Expresiones Bioculturales A.C., and SACRED to join the community in developing a well and planning new approaches to water use that are more sustainable.

That project launched earlier this year with a workshop on how to change behaviors to better work with the new reality – reconsidering forest management and land-use to directly impact the ground-water supply. The next phase is the build-out of a well, which only recently broke ground — watch for the progress on our Instagram page!

Great thanks to Jose Garcia and San Isidro Guishe for inviting us to participate; to Vinik Jure at Expresiones Bioculturales for managing the project, and to Mezcal Pensador for underwriting the venture.

When people talk about “giving back,” it feels like they are using the wrong words. We’re all one community, and we participate together to make this global community more livable. We’re honored to be part of this community.