What it is

Dark Matter Coffee conditioned green catui coffee beans with mezcal espadin from Cruz De Fuego — basically pressured-infused the two together, in holy matrimony. Then they roasted the beans, ground them, and heat-extracted them with filtered water. The result was pumped into the cutest li’l 8oz aluminum cans, made cuter still by label art from the miraculous Chema Skandal. (And, yes, that’s the same art that we used for our “Secret Origin of Mezcal episode. If you had a piece of art this beautiful, would you only use it once?)

How you can get it

Chances are, you can’t. There were only around 850 cans produced. I took a bunch to New York City — Chava and I poured samples from growlers at Bowl of Zole on October 23, 2021, and then handed out cans at our Mezcal Sunday Brunch at The Cabinet the next day. The rest are being sold at Dark Matter locations in Chicago now. They do offer mail-order.

How did this happen

Yeah, that’s the fun part. It starts in 2015. Two things happened that same year. First, I was in a bar at 4pm on a Tuesday (don’t judge me) explaining mezcal to a friend. There were only two other people in that bar, and about 20 minutes into my “sermon,” they came over and asked me who I was. One of those guys was Ismael Gomez, the founder of Mezcal Cruz De Fuego. He was there to impress the beverage director with his knowledge of mezcal. He said I kind of blew his pitch. Regardless, we talked for a couple hours — five months later, we traveled to Oaxaca together. I’d say we became fast friends, but it was more like fast family.

Anyway, that same year, during a two-week period, three people suggested that, given my obsession with mezcal, I should “know the guys at Dark Matter.” So I showed up at their Mothership that third week with five green-tape bottles. They were somewhat suspicious of this old white guy bearing gifts, but after a couple years of drinking with them, we, too, wound up on a trip down to Oaxaca together — so I guess this was more slow family than fast family.

Then there’s Chema, the artist who makes this package so freaking beautiful! I loved his art the first time I saw it and reached out to him via his website. We dreamed up a project that we’ve still not completed — though, one day, expect to see an Agave Road Trip Colorforms version of a palenque. But we’ve done much simpler projects together since that first lunch. If you don’t recognize his art in the Agave Road Trip logo or the Swift Brown Fox memes, you’re not paying enough attention to Chema.

Something I like to say is that agave makes the world so small. The unexpected connections and intersections that have arisen because of the time I have spent walking among the agave — the new friends, the old friends, and the unexpected reconnections — are among the greatest blessings in my life. And something well worth reflecting on … over a can of coffee cold!