Custodians
Of time and fire
Century-old gestures and timeless savoir-faire, passed down through generations, are the seal of Santo de Piedra.
More than a house
A place of transmission
Santo de Piedra is a house shaped by time, place, and transmission. Rooted in the mountains of southern Oaxaca, we draw our identity from our single domaine where altitude, dry air, and distant marine influences quietly converge. Here, the land is not directed but observed, allowing agaves to mature over nearly a decade in naturally enriched soil, guided by patience rather than intervention.
Within this landscape, our house preserves gestures refined across generations: the selection of woods, the rhythm of fire, wild fermentations carried by river water, and a deliberate double distillation that follows nature’s pace. These elements give rise to our mezcal collections that are singular and unrepeatable, each one marked by its own moment in time.
In the seclusion of our atelier distillery in San Luis del Río, a mountain village removed from excess and haste, Santo de Piedra remains intentionally small in scale. A limited number of bottles are crafted by hand each year by the men and women who embody the house—custodians of its knowledge, its discipline, and its spirit. Their presence is not an attribute of the house; it is its living foundation.
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Established in 2018
Founded in 2018, Santo de Piedra emerged from a curatorial vision shaped beyond the world of spirits. Long before the house took form, its founder, David S. Giles, worked as a museographer, conducting research within communities in Oaxaca—an immersion that led to an encounter with mezcal more than fifteen years earlier. That formative experience, grounded in observation and dialogue, shaped the house’s enduring understanding of terroir, time, and creation.
In that same year, the founder committed his lifetime savings, complemented by a family loan, to acquire the first hectare of the domaine plantation and to secure the Denomination of Origin for a small, secluded distillery set high in the mountains—an acknowledgment not of scale, but of place, rigor, and intent. Since its inception, the house has remained in constant evolution, guided not by acceleration but by refinement. Also in 2018, Santo de Piedra was discreetly introduced in London, where its first client was Dandelyan, then named the World’s Best Cocktail Bar. This curatorial discipline continues to guide every aspect of Santo de Piedra, from the deliberate decision to cultivate agaves on a mountain—where altitude, climate, and isolation confer depth of character, soul, and spirit—to their careful harvesting by hand and the quiet observation of traditional processes. The same sensibility extends to the choice of collaborators and to the dialogues undertaken with singular minds and maisons, including Anne-Sophie Pic, Massimo Bottura, and Lalique, as natural continuations of a shared universe grounded in rigor, sensitivity, and respect. In this spirit, Santo de Piedra operates closer to a haute couture maison than to a conventional distillery, conceiving collections rather than products. Each decanter is approached as a singular piece, attentive to time, place, and moment, shaped by discipline and restraint. Rarity is not pursued as scarcity, but preserved as the meaning of the creation moment.
Santo de Piedra translates literally as “a saint made of stone.” Our name honors a stone figure of Saint Louis King of France, which local tradition associates with the founding of San Luis del Río through a mythical journey. Rooted in legend rather than history, the symbol endures within the collective memory of the place.
For Santo de Piedra, its significance lies not in accuracy but in meaning. The figure evokes permanence, transmission, and faith carried through time—values that continue to resonate at the heart of the house.
At the service
of a living terroir
Production at Santo de Piedra is intentionally limited, as a gesture of respect towards a han-made manufacture, the living terroir and the agaves that grow in the mountains, fully immersed in their natural environment. Harvested by hand, the agaves are cooked in traditional underground ovens using a signature blend of woods developed specifically for each collection, then fermented with natural yeasts carried by the wind from the Atlantic and the Pacific, according to the rhythm of the seasons. They are carefully distilled twice in stills cooled by flowing river water—an ode to the pace of nature—before being bottled one by one in handmade decanters.
This restraint is not a limitation, but a discipline rooted in care. Each step is approached with the same devotion as an apprentice refining a gesture, allowing every collection to remain singular, precise, and progressively closer to its own expression of perfection—guided always by time, patience, and attention.
