Melinka

Guaitecas cypress is the southernmost conifer in the world, endemic to Patagonia, and it lives eight hundred years.

The first of the Seven Mestizos is built on it. 432 went to the Guaitecas Archipelago for fallen timber off century-old trees, dead for decades, and distilled it in copper alembics. Mosses hand-foraged in the Valdivian rainforest went in with it, and the lid is cut from the same cypress, salvaged from posts that stood for decades in Aconcagua vineyards.

The house is sold out and has given no date for another edition. This page is here so the release has somewhere to sit when there is one.

The one to ask after if the wet-wood end of Patagonia is the reason for any of this.

Joel L. Martínez grew up in Arica, or almost Peru, as the founder insists, among herb markets, Aymara elders, olive groves and desert beaches. Training came in Europe. The house says the real mastery came later, from distilling and foraging in the Andes. The method is to burn what was learned, mixing what Europe taught with shamanic teaching and yerbatero ritual, technical data sheets with Aymara grandmothers' recipes.

The name comes from a myth about 432 hertz, a frequency where the universe, the plant kingdom and human rhythm are said to converge. 432 researches, distills and bottles at the pace of the seasons, and each batch differs from the one before it, made from other plants that lived through other storms and droughts. Releases are handcrafted in small batches, with batch numbers and an artisan signature. Five of the seven Mestizos have been released.