The business of 2020: the shift to a virtual world
This the second of our series looking at the business of mezcal in 2020. Part one, looking at the shift to retail, can be found here. 2020 was the year we all had to embrace living life online. It wasn’t like
The 2020 business story of Mezcal: the retail market
This is part one of a multipart series. You can read part two here. First the obvious, 2020 created unprecedented challenges for the world of mezcal. If you had asked anyone in January or February of 2020 what the sales
COVID-era innovations in Oaxaca’s service industry has it reimagining its post-pandemic future, now
I would say that survival is the best measure of success in any pandemic, and it is an imperative that is not achieved alone. In Oaxaca, during COVID-19 times, I have seen an incredible amount of innovation, support, and resilience
A Dia de los Muertos Mezcal dinner for 2020
We have lost so much in 2020 that turning our heads to a Dia de los Muertos celebration feels simultaneously perfect and impossible. We are just at the beginning of our grief and trying to even wrap our heads around
Ultimate Spirits Challenge Mezcal Results 2020
For the last decade Ultimate Spirits Challenge (USC) has been the go-to spirits competition for industry professionals as well as savvy consumers. This is thanks to the unwavering integrity of the director and chairman Paul Pacult, and co-founders Sue Woodley
En memoriam – Don Aquilino García López
The mezcal family suffered an immense loss this week with the passing of Don Aquilino García López, patriarch of Mezcal Vago. From the Vago family: To those in the mezcal community, he was an absolute legend. To a lucky few, he
A virtual program platform for the times – Conversations in Agave
What happens when the world is forced to shut down and all of the usual gathering places and events to learn about agave spirits are shuttered? Well, we get creative and put together an online program platform of interactive talks
Agave blind tasting #2
Taking advantage of being in the backyard of Khrys Maxwell we developed some programming around Mexico in a Bottle San Diego by co-hosting a blind tasting of agave distillates at Tahona Bar in Old Town San Diego last Monday. It was
Trending: The House Mezcal
There is irony here. For eons in Mexico at bars and restaurants, most carried house mezcales, note lower case and not Mezcales. Someone usually had a connection through family or friends and offered them in glass or plastic jugs behind
Transparency in mezcal (and quality too) – Vago’s Sierra Negra story
[caption id="attachment_25071" align="aligncenter" width="1500"]
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[/media-credit] A close up of Mezcal Vago's limited edition Sierra Negra bottle.[/caption]
Vago’s latest release, an incredibly small batch of Sierra Negra by Aquilino Garcia Lopez highlights smart and ethical behavior in the mezcal world. Each bottle that Vago releases is accompanied by a blog post that includes a highly detailed tech sheet that delves into everything you’d want to know about the bottle, the agaves and processes that produced it, and the people who made it. Dig into that, spend some time with it, think it over. All that information helps you put the scope of work that brought that bottle to you into perspective.