If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (MXN14,789.92), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Nothing is too loud at boutique eco retreat Casa Silencio – and we don’t just mean its serene setting, where the agave-dotted plains of Xaagá roll towards the sierra. A quiet seduction awaits at this art-adorned stay of tactile industrial-chic interiors, featuring a garden-to-table restaurant, speakeasy bar and panoramic plunge pool. At its heart is a traditional mezcal distillery (a tour and tastings are included with your stay) – the perfect convivial foil to peaceful days lounging in the grounds, hiking in the hills or visiting the Mitla archaeological site.
Noon; earliest check-in, 3pm. Both are flexible subject to availability and a fee of $75 each, excluding food and drink. Guests arriving ahead of check-in from noon are welcome to have lunch.
Prices
Double rooms from £821.30 (MXN17,600), including tax at 19 per cent.
More details
Rates include breakfast, lunch and dinner, most drinks (excluding wine, cocktails and special-edition mezcals), plus a tour of the distillery and mezcal tasting.
Also
Unfortunately this rural distillery stay is not suitable for guests with mobility issues.
At the hotel
Mezcal distillery, gardens, outdoor fire pits, shop, and library. In rooms: free WiFi, Bose speaker, bathrobes and slippers, free bottled water, and L’Occitane bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Four of Casa Silencio’s six suites are on two levels and are distinguishable by their art rather than layout, although Sol has a mezzanine bedroom and loftier living room, with a bathroom that’s integrated into the hotel’s courtyard tower. Of the two single-storey suites, we love the romance of Tierra with its open-plan layout and antique bath tub; although smallest-of-the-bunch, Aire impresses with a glass-walled bedroom that has incredible vistas on three sides.
Poolside
All six suites open onto a courtyard in the grounds where you’ll find a raised-edge square plunge pool – ideal for refreshing dips rather than swimming – open from 8am until 7pm (heated and chlorinated).
Spa
Casa Silencio has teamed up with the spa at Hotel Casa Regina (a short drive away), where there’s a temazcal sweat lodge, and there’s no need to leave the grounds for an in-room massage treatment or yoga session (available with notice).
Packing tips
Simply cut slub linens and hemp pieces to match the textural drama of your surroundings. On a practical note, you may want to channel Indiana Jones for hikes into the sierra, cave visits and archaeological tours.
Also
The hotel’s speakeasy bar, Rhino, is a tucked-away den, which you can book for a private candle-lit dinner (at extra cost).
Children
As you’d expect from a hotel with its own distillery, Casa Silencio is an adults-only stay.
Sustainability efforts
Despite the desert locale, Casa Silencio is green from its foundations all the way to its day-to-day practices. It was built using local tapial techniques (with compacted clay walls), and 90 per cent of the wood used in construction and for custom furniture is reclaimed, including some from the build’s scaffolding that was upcycled at a later stage. The architecture is modular, so that there was not only a low impact on this Oaxacan stay’s surroundings but minimal waste. The hotel has reduced its energy consumption with solar panels, as well as clever use of natural light, and its earthen construction provides naturally energy-efficient insulation. Then there are the two eye-catching towers, which are made from recycled glass mezcal bottles. The distillery, too, is an environmental pioneer, using a solar-powered mechanical mill to crush its agave, and limiting water consumption with reuse and rain-harvesting. And the hotel uses bio-digesters to treat its waste. The hotel’s ties with the local community are also robust. Many of Casa Silencio’s contemporary furnishings were hand-crafted within an hour’s radius of the casa. And other suppliers are local where possible, bolstered by produce from the hotel orchard and gardens. With zero-food-miles mezcal on offer, too, there’s plenty to raise a glass to…
The valley views may suggest outdoor tables would be the finest, but the grandeur of the communal stone table indoors is irrefutable.
Dress Code
Dark colourways, raw textures and oversized jewellery to match the mood of Casa Silencio’s extraordinary architecture.
Hotel restaurant
It’s a tough call to say which is more impressive at the Tasting Room – the food or the setting. The latter is a high-ceilinged space with superlative valley views that flows into tables alfresco. Indoors, it’s dominated by a banquet-worthy stone table hewn from the same basalt that the distillery’s milling wheel is made from. Copper stills stand either side of the entrance, but true to Casa Silencio’s aesthetic, these traditional vessels have been given an artistic makeover with decorative clay tiles. Their geometric shape matches not only the patterns on the polished concrete floor but also the Japanese-style joinery on the ornate wooden ceiling (which is self-supporting and entirely free of nails or screws). Chef Daniel Robles Sumano presides over garden-to-table cuisine, inspired by whatever’s in season, which means that options are updated regularly but may feature caprese salad made with Oaxacan ‘mozzarella’, grilled beef tlayuda, and smoked turkey mole. (The menu can be adapted with vegetarian or vegan options as required.) Desserts include a cardamom and coconut tapioca served with mezcal-laced pineapple flambé. A candle-lit private dinner for two at speakeasy bar Rhino in the grounds is available at extra cost. Breakfast is served in the Tasting Room and combines a buffet of fresh fruit, juices, coffee and pastries with cooked choices including memelitas, chilaquiles, avocado on toast, and eggs however you like them.
Hotel bar
The bar-to-room ratio is strong at Casa Silencio: only six suites in total, served by a choice of two drinking holes. First up is the imaginatively titled La Barra, an extension of the tasting room that you’ll remember for its inverted-canoe lightshade above the counter, as well as an excellent selection of mezcals and cocktails – try the signature bell-pepper-infused Red Rooster. Across the grounds is a glass-walled speakeasy: Rhino is in a secluded spot that comes into its own after sunset, when its cosy lounge of two Chesterfield leather sofas is candle-lit and the music’s turned up (also available for private dinners).
Last orders
Breakfast is served 7am until 11am; for lunch, it’s noon until 4pm, and dinner’s available 5pm till 10pm.
Room service
There’s no room service at the hotel, but the restaurant is open most of the day for when you feel peckish.
Casa Silencio is in the peaceful pueblo of Xaagá in Oaxaca province, very close to the Mitla archeological site and around 90 minutes from downtown Oaxaca.
Planes
Oaxaca is the nearest airport, an hour’s drive from Casa Silencio, and is served by international flights from the southern United States, or connections via Mexico City. The hotel can arrange private transfers from $250 for two people one-way.
Automobiles
There’s a free private carpark at the hotel, but this is a stay where you’re more likely to either stay put, set out on foot or take guided trips where the transport’s taken care of for you, so hiring wheels is not your best option.
Worth getting out of bed for
Xaagá, a pueblo in Oaxaca province, is neighbours with Mitla (‘place of the dead’) – a millennia-old religious site of temple ruins and a central plaza with a grisly past – and staff at Casa Silencio are happy to arrange a tour of its mosaic-clad walls and gigantic stone pillars. Equally nearby, nature reserve Hierve el Agua takes its name from the cascade-like rock formations standing sentry amid its arid wilds. And you can take a guided hike to the mountain that’s visible from the hotel, where there are ancient cave paintings tucked into its geology. Back at the palenque, be guided by your appetite to sign up for mixology classes or a cookery workshop. Although you’ll want to schedule plenty of time to lounge and dip in the pool, you can slow the pace still further with an in-room massage or request a yoga session. And a tour of the distillery and mezcal tasting (featuring five El Silencio varieties) is included with your stay.
Local restaurants
In Oaxaca, global cuisine is given a Mexican twist in artistically arranged plates by Rodolfo Castellanos at Origen. Mexican-spiced ceviche, soft-shell-crab tacos and margarita oysters are followed by refined mains such as green pozole with shrimps, fish with mole negro sauce, and organic chicken with sauté cauliflower. Also in the city, blue-fronted Sabina Sabe is primarily a bar, specialising in mezcal and derivative cocktails, but also whipping up accompanying small plates including a daily-changing taco special and delicious-sounding garnachitas (bite-sized loaded tortillas).
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this desert-valley retreat in Mexico and unpacked their hand-woven textiles and special-edition mezcals, a full account of their distillery break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Casa Silencio in Oaxaca…
Distillery stay Casa Silencio is a lo-fi retreat where the tempo drops and slow living replaces the daily hustle. Mezcal lovers and curious newcomers alike come to this six-suite escape to check in and chill out. Of course sampling El Silencio’s hand-crafted spirits is high on the agenda, as is savouring garden-to-table plates by Daniel Robles Sumano. There’s much to admire in the hotel’s architecture: Mezcal El Silencio’s founders Fausto Zapata and Vicente Cisneros commissioned Alejandro D’Acosta to create a stay that would encapsulate the same artisanal flavours, pride of place and reverence for tradition they distil in their spirits. And he did – using compacted earth (a traditional Oaxacan technique), reclaimed steel, stone and timber, as well as sculptural towers made with upcycled mezcal bottles. An abundance of potted plants, hand-woven textiles and copper details soften its polished concrete and timber interiors, and a notable art collection comprises textural contemporary pieces. In Xaagá, you’re on the doorstep of the archaeological ruins at Mitla, and there are ancient cave paintings hiding in the neighbouring hills, but days spent by the pool or idling in the fragrant gardens are just as prized.
