Maiz Nation Seleccion Barbieri Single Barrel Mexican Whiskey (700ml)

Maiz Nation Seleccion Barbieri Single Barrel Mexican Whiskey (700ml)Seleccin Barbieri is where Jonathan Barbieri pushes things further. These are small releases, often single barrels, built around experimentation with mashbills and aging, and bottled when he feels theyre ready rather than on a fixed timeline. Like the Blanco, it starts with native corn, but here its layered with rye, wheat, and malted barley, with proportions shifting from batch to batch. The distillate is produced the same way, stone milled, long

Selección Barbieri is where Jonathan Barbieri pushes things further. These are small releases, often single barrels, built around experimentation with mashbills and aging, and bottled when he feels they’re ready rather than on a fixed timeline.

Like the Blanco, it starts with native corn, but here it’s layered with rye, wheat, and malted barley, with proportions shifting from batch to batch. The distillate is produced the same way, stone-milled, long fermentation, and slow distillation on copper alembics, before going into new American oak barrels with a heavy char and aging for a minimum of two years.

Barrel entry is set at 50% ABV, and if proof is adjusted, it’s done with collected rainwater. The result is more structured and developed, with oak bringing in spice, toast, and depth, but the underlying corn character still drives the profile.

ABOUT MAIZ NATION

Maíz Nation is a whiskey project out of Oaxaca built around one central idea: start with the right raw material and everything else follows.

The foundation here is native corn, sourced directly from farming families across regions like the Central Valleys, Chinantla, the Sierra Mixteca, and the Oaxacan Coast. These are traditional varieties that have been cultivated and selected over thousands of years, grown in milpa systems alongside beans and squash without chemical inputs. It’s a very different starting point from the commodity grain used in most whiskey production, and it shows up clearly in the final spirit.

The project was founded by Maestro Destilador Jonathan Barbieri and Yira Vallejo. Barbieri is best known for Pierde Almas, where the focus has always been on traditional methods and respect for raw materials. That same mindset carries through here, just applied to corn instead of agave.

Everything is produced at the Solcraft distillery, a fully off-grid facility powered entirely by solar energy. Water is collected from rainfall, stored, and used throughout production, then treated through a natural filtration system before being returned to the environment. It’s a closed-loop approach that’s rare in spirits, and it aligns with the agricultural philosophy behind the corn itself.