Casona Sforza

Above the Carrizalillo Beach at Puerto Escondido on the Oaxacan coast, Casona Sforza is a boutique property of ten rooms and suites designed with the sensibility of a private Mexican coastal house — whitewashed walls, terracotta tile, handwoven textiles from the Oaxacan sierra, and outdoor living spaces that place the Pacific horizon as the primary visual subject throughout the day. Puerto Escondido’s identity is shaped by the Zicatela beach break, one of the most powerful in the world, and by the creative and culinary community that has gathered around it over decades, with the town’s concentration of Oaxacan cuisine, mezcalería culture, and surf lifestyle giving it a character distinct from the more developed Mexican resort coast to the north. The hotel’s cliff position above the quieter Carrizalillo bay provides a contemplative remove from the Zicatela action.

The kitchen’s menus draw on the extraordinary diversity of the Oaxacan culinary tradition — the moles of the Central Valleys, the tlayudas and tasajos of the coast, and the seafood of the Pacific landing directly from the boats at Puerto Escondido’s fishing cove — in a cooking programme that treats the Oaxacan coast as a specific gastronomy rather than generic Mexican food. The hotel’s rooftop terrace serves mezcal from the small-batch producers of the Sierra Juárez mountains above the coast in a tasting programme that documents the agave species and production traditions of specific Oaxacan communities. Surf lessons at Carrizalillo, guided mezcal tours to the palenques of the sierra, and visits to the Monte Albán and Mitla archaeological sites in the Oaxacan valley are among the activities the hotel arranges.

Casona Sforza’s relationship with the Puerto Escondido community is expressed through its sourcing from local fishermen, mezcaleros, and Zapotec textile producers whose work supplies both the kitchen and the hotel’s interior design, and through the property’s support for the Oaxacan art and cultural programming that gives Puerto Escondido an intellectual dimension beyond its surf tourism identity.