Next Wave Awards Spirits Brand of the Year: Mezcal Los Siete Misterios
Mezcal is the one category of spirits where it seems nearly impossible to build big brands.
Brands are built by growing and scaling up and mezcal is a spirit inherently impossible to quickly make bigger: It is made of agave that takes years to grow; it is produced in slow, labor-intensive and non-factory ways; and it is almost always distilled in small batches.
So that’s what makes it all the more remarkable how Los Siete Misterios has been able to ascend to the top of the category in the last half decade or so.
While one brand might have had first-mover advantage and has dominated the category for the past 20-odd years, a recent industry poll found that Los Siete Misterios has become the most sold and served mezcal at the world’s most influential bars. In fact, almost two-thirds of the bars polled ranked the brand as one of their top three sellers in the category.
Credit: Anna Bruce
How did this little brand go from unknown to ubiquitous in such a short time?
Los Siete Misterios was started in 2008 by entrepreneurial brothers Julio and Eduardo Mestre who initially endeavored for it simply to be a hobby. The Mexico City natives enjoyed drinking mezcal and had become fascinated by the way that different agaves, regions, and even production processes could express themself in the flavor profile of different mezcals.
“We rented a car and traveled from Puerto Escondido to Oaxaca City going through Sola de Vega and just stopping by any village we could to buy mezcal and learn more about it,” recalls Eduardo.
Credit: Anna Bruce
They were particularly enamored by those distilled in clay pots and eventually had purchased around 40 liters of it. They would have tastings in their homes, inviting friends to try their bottles with amateur-printed labels. When they would take these bottles to their favorite restaurants and bars, the employees and even fellow customers would become curious, wanting to purchase more from them.
“That’s when we spoke with the families we had been having relationships with for a couple of years and told them, ‘Hey guys, this is happening,’” says Eduardo. “We are not sure what’s going to happen. But what we can commit to is buying all the mezcal production you can do.”
These were small mom-and-pop producers, using traditional practices — underground baking, natural fermentation, and at least double distillation in clay pots or copper stills — while also highlighting single agave varietals. (Yes, these are those same inherent qualities that, as mentioned, can make large brand-building nearly impossible in the mezcal world.)
Credit: Anna Bruce
By 2008 the Los Siete Misterios brand was in the works. Unlike other brands, they were able to stay small and respect the traditions of mezcal production because they, too, were a very small company — just Julio and Eduardo.
“We started with one family. Then after one year, when customers wanted more mezcal, we talked with their cousin and then the other cousin and then the next,” says Eduardo. “So the idea was to invite more families that could be part of Siete Misterios so we could supply all the market demands. It was never about just working with one family and taking them to the limit. It was working with a lot of families that wanted to have the opportunity to have a new way of income.”
By 2011 the brothers were taking ProMéxico-funded trips to U.S. cities to try and sell their wares. They slowly began gathering distributors in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Texas. Unlike other mezcal brands focused purely on neat-sipping, the brothers believed mezcal could reach more people by diversifying how it’s enjoyed — namely, in cocktails. In fact, one of their earliest releases, DOBA-YEJ, was a copper pot still mezcal specifically designed to be used in cocktails.
Credit: Anna Bruce
In 2021 the Mestre family partnered with Chatham Imports (the owner of acclaimed whiskey brand Michter’s); it had become too much of a task for the two brothers to run the company themselves and they felt Chatham had similar corporate values.
With Chatham, their ascent was supercharged as the company would handle global sales and marketing, helping get them into many 50 Best-caliber cocktail bars, while the Mestres could continue to focus on production and mezcal made the right way.
Once just a little hobby, their mezcal has now exploded to being distributed to 25 international markets across the globe. And though DOBA-YEJ still accounts for around 70 percent of total sales, the Mestres remain committed to focusing heavily on those small-batch, artisanal products that make up the other 30 percent of sales.
“Mezcal still is a niche product,” says Eduardo. “The people that consumed it then when we started out, and I still think the people that consume it now, are people that care about the spirit. They care about the history, about how it is made, and about who are the people behind our brand.”
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