What a Number Promises

There is a number on the underside of every Enredadera vessel. It is small, painted by the same hand that painted the front, and it goes up to seven hundred.

People assume the number is a decision. It is not. It is an outcome.

Where the number came from

The mesquite bloomed. The bees worked it for the short weeks it lasted. What came out of the hives was weighed, and that weight, divided by what a vessel holds, is seven hundred. If the rain had come three weeks earlier the number would be different, and we would have written a different number.

A limit that comes from a spreadsheet can be raised. A limit that comes from a tree cannot be argued with, which is the only reason it means anything.

What it promises the person holding it

Not exclusivity. Exclusivity is a feeling manufactured by a marketing department, and most people can smell it.

What the number promises is narrower and more useful: that this honey came from one bloom, in one season, in one place, and that nobody will be able to reproduce it. Number 412 tastes like 411 and like nothing that will exist next year.

Why it is painted and not printed

A printed number is inventory control. A painted number is a person, at a bench in Santa María Canchesdá, deciding how the four looks. Some of the sevens have a crossbar and some do not, depending on who was working that afternoon.

This is the part that tends to land at a table. Someone turns the vessel over, reads the number, and asks what it means. The answer takes about fifteen seconds and it is entirely true.

When it is gone

Then it is gone, and we wait for the tree. There is no second run of the same honey, and we will not pretend otherwise by putting the same name on a different year without saying so.

See Enredadera, or read about the tree the number depends on.