Chef Lupita
Agua de Chilacayota
Oaxaca's market agua fresca built on chilacayota squash, piloncillo, and Mexican canela, served cold with the spaghetti-like strands of squash and toasted seeds floating in the glass.
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Aguardiente Curado de Damiana de Tlaxiaco
Created by
Tlaxiaco's home digestif from the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, cane aguardiente steeped for two months with wild damiana, piloncillo, and canela, served in copitas at the end of the night.
Beverages
Mexican
Make Ahead
Special Occasion
Dinner Party
20 min
Active Time
15 min cook•PT60D total
YieldAbout 1 liter (roughly 30 small copitas)
This is from Tlaxiaco. The Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, eight hours by road from the capital, sitting in the cold mountains where the women still wrap themselves in wool rebozos and where the Sunday tianguis spreads across half the town. The damiana grows wild on the dry hillsides above the valley. People here have been steeping it in cane aguardiente for as long as anyone remembers.
A curado is not a cocktail. There is no shaker, no ice, no mixology. A curado is a household preparation, a bottle that lives in a cupboard for two months while the alcohol pulls the oils out of the leaves and the piloncillo waits its turn. Every Mixteca household I have visited has its own version. Some add anise. Some add a few hojas de naranjo. Some add a piece of cocoa. The constants are the aguardiente, the damiana, and the patience. La cocina no es decoracion, es trabajo, and that goes for what you drink as much as what you eat.
The damiana matters. It is sold across Mexico as an aphrodisiac, packaged as a tea in Baja, bottled into commercial liqueurs in Guadalajara, but the leaves that grow in the Mixteca have a sharper, more resinous quality that the commercial stuff does not match. If you can find Oaxacan damiana from an herbolaria, use it. If not, the Baja kind will work, but you are making a cousin of this drink, not the drink itself. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
My mother did not make curados. She was from Jalisco and the Jalisciense way is tequila, served direct, with sangrita on the side. But I learned this preparation from a senora named Dona Rufina in a small kitchen on the edge of Tlaxiaco, who poured me a copita at eleven in the morning and told me that a proper curado is what gets a Mixteco family through a wedding, a funeral, and a long winter. Saber cocinar es saber vivir. That includes knowing what to pour at the end of the night.
Damiana (Turnera diffusa) is a native plant of arid Mexico used by the Guaycura and other indigenous peoples of the Baja California peninsula long before contact, valued both as a stimulant tea and as a reputed aphrodisiac, with the earliest written Spanish references appearing in the missionary records of the 18th century. Cane aguardiente arrived in Oaxaca with the colonial sugar trade and rapidly displaced earlier indigenous fermented beverages in many Mixteca and Zapoteca households as a base for medicinal and ceremonial preparations called curados, the Spanish word literally meaning 'cured' in the sense of seasoned or steeped. The Tlaxiaco region in particular developed a reputation in the 19th century for its damiana curados, traded in small bottles at the Saturday tianguis as both a household digestif and a folk remedy.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
aguardiente de cana (40 to 45% ABV)
Quantity
1 liter
Oaxacan if you can find it
dried damiana leaves (Turnera diffusa)
Quantity
30 grams
preferably from the Mixteca or northern Oaxaca
piloncillo
Quantity
120 grams (about 1 cone)
chopped into small pieces
filtered water
Quantity
1/2 cup
Mexican canela (true Ceylon cinnamon)
Quantity
1 stick (about 4 inches)
whole cloves
Quantity
3
fresh orange peel
Quantity
1 strip (about 3 inches)
no white pith
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| aguardiente de cana (40 to 45% ABV)Oaxacan if you can find it | 1 liter |
| dried damiana leaves (Turnera diffusa)preferably from the Mixteca or northern Oaxaca | 30 grams |
| piloncillochopped into small pieces | 120 grams (about 1 cone) |
| filtered water | 1/2 cup |
| Mexican canela (true Ceylon cinnamon) | 1 stick (about 4 inches) |
| whole cloves | 3 |
| fresh orange peelno white pith | 1 strip (about 3 inches) |
Equipment Needed
- •1.5-liter glass jar with a tight-sealing lid
- •Fine-mesh strainer
- •Double layer of clean cheesecloth
- •Small saucepan for the syrup
- •Glass funnel
- •Clean glass bottle for storage
- •Small clay or thin-glass copitas for serving
Instructions
- 1
Inspect the damiana
Spread the dried damiana on a clean cloth and pick through it. Pull out any twigs thicker than a matchstick, any seed pods, any brown leaves that crumble to dust. You want the small green-gray leaves and the soft tips of the stems. The Mixteca damiana, harvested wild on the dry hillsides above Tlaxiaco, is more aromatic than the commercial Baja damiana you find in herb shops. If you can get the Oaxacan kind, use it. If not, buy from an herbolaria, not a tea aisle.
Smell the leaves before you commit. Good damiana smells like dry hay with a sweet, almost fig-like edge. If it smells like nothing, it has lost its oils and your curado will taste flat. - 2
Prepare the jar
Choose a 1.5-liter glass jar with a tight-sealing lid. Wash it in hot soapy water, rinse, and let it air dry completely. Any moisture left inside will cloud the curado. Glass only. Plastic strips the alcohol of its character and metal reacts with the acids in the herbs.
- 3
Combine the maceration base
Place the damiana leaves, the canela stick, the cloves, and the orange peel into the dry jar. Pour the aguardiente over the herbs. The leaves will float at first. Push them down gently with a wooden spoon until they are fully submerged. Seal the jar and give it one slow turn to coat everything. Do not add the piloncillo yet. Sweetener at this stage stops the alcohol from pulling the oils out of the leaves cleanly.
- 4
Macerate in the dark
Store the jar in a dark cupboard, away from heat and direct light, for two months. Forty days is the minimum. Sixty days is right. Ninety days starts to push the damiana into bitterness, so do not forget about it. Turn the jar gently once a week. The liquid will go from clear to a deep amber-green over the first three weeks and will darken further as the weeks pass. No me vengas con atajos. There is no shortcut for this. The curado is the time.
- 5
Make the piloncillo syrup
About a week before the maceration is finished, prepare the syrup so it has time to cool and settle. Combine the chopped piloncillo and the filtered water in a small saucepan. Heat over low until the piloncillo dissolves completely, stirring with a wooden spoon. Do not let it boil hard. You want a thin syrup, not a candy. Once dissolved, pull it off the heat and let it cool to room temperature. Cover and hold at room temperature, not in the fridge.
- 6
Strain the curado
After the full maceration, line a fine-mesh strainer with a double layer of clean cheesecloth and set it over a clean bowl. Pour the contents of the jar through. Let it drip on its own for ten minutes before you press. Then gather the corners of the cheesecloth and squeeze firmly to extract the last of the liquid from the leaves. Discard the spent damiana, canela, cloves, and orange peel. The strained liquid should be clear, dark amber-green, and intensely aromatic.
- 7
Sweeten and balance
Stir the cooled piloncillo syrup into the strained aguardiente, a little at a time. Taste between additions, in tiny sips. The Tlaxiaco curado is sweet but not cloying. The piloncillo should round the edges of the alcohol and frame the damiana, not bury them. Most cooks use the full amount of syrup. A few stop at three-quarters. Trust your tongue. Asi se hace y punto.
If you over-sweeten, you cannot pull the sugar back out. Add the syrup slowly and remember that the curado will taste a touch sweeter after it rests for a week. - 8
Rest and bottle
Funnel the finished curado into a clean glass bottle and seal it. Let it rest in the cupboard for at least one more week before you serve it. The syrup needs time to marry with the alcohol and the damiana. Serve in tiny copitas of clay or thin glass, no ice, at room temperature. After dinner, after a heavy meal, with the conversation that comes at the end of the night. That is what this drink is for.
Chef Tips
- •The aguardiente is the foundation. Look for an Oaxacan cane aguardiente from a small producer if you can find one, ideally between 40 and 45 percent alcohol. Below 40 percent and the alcohol will not pull the oils out of the damiana cleanly. Above 50 percent and the curado will taste hot for months. If you cannot find Mexican aguardiente, an unaged cachaca or a clear caribbean cane spirit at the right proof will get you close. Vodka will not. It has no character to give back.
- •Piloncillo, not white sugar. The molasses notes in the piloncillo are part of the flavor. White sugar will sweeten the drink without adding any of the depth that makes a Tlaxiaco curado what it is. Buy the dark cones, not the light ones, and chop them small so they dissolve cleanly.
- •Date the jar with masking tape and a marker the day you start. Two months feels longer than it is, and a curado that gets pulled at six weeks will taste thin and grassy. The patience is part of the recipe.
- •Serve in copitas no larger than two ounces. This is a digestif, not a sipping spirit. The Mixteca pours are small on purpose, meant to follow a heavy meal of mole negro or barbacoa de chivo and to keep the conversation going.
Advance Preparation
- •This recipe is itself an exercise in advance preparation. From start to first pour you are looking at about ten weeks: two months for the maceration, one week for the syrup to be ready, and one more week of resting after sweetening.
- •Once bottled, the curado keeps indefinitely in a sealed glass bottle in a cool, dark cupboard. The flavor continues to round and deepen for the first six months, then holds steady. Many Mixteca households keep a bottle going for years, topping it up with fresh aguardiente and a pinch of damiana as it gets low.
- •Make a double batch in the fall to have ready for the December and January feast days. A bottle of damiana curado is a respectful gift in the Mixteca, more meaningful than anything you could buy in a store.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 37g)
Calories
95 calories
Total Fat
0 g
Saturated Fat
0 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
0 g
Cholesterol
0 mg
Sodium
1 mg
Total Carbohydrates
4 g
Dietary Fiber
0 g
Sugars
4 g
Protein
0 g
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