Del Maguey Mezcal

Del Maguey was founded in 1995 by the American artist Ron Cooper, who began bottling mezcal from individual Oaxacan villages at a time when almost nothing artisanal reached the United States. Instead of blending across producers, each release names the village and the family that distilled it — an approach the label called Single Village Mezcal, and one that most of the modern artisanal category has since copied.

That structure is why the range reads the way it does. Chichicapa, Santo Domingo Albarradas, San Luis del Rio, Minero and San Pedro Taviche are not flavour names; they are places, each with its own water, altitude, agave stock, oven and still. Two bottles made from the same espadín can taste meaningfully different because the palenque, not a recipe, is the variable being expressed.

For most drinkers the entry point is Vida, the everyday, cocktail-friendly espadín bottling that turned up behind bars worldwide and remains the brand's best-known label. From there the range climbs through wild-agave releases — Tobalá, Madrecuixe, Tobaziche, Wild Jabalí, Wild Tepextate — and into ceremonial bottlings like Pechuga and Iberico, distilled with fruit, grain and meat suspended in the still.