Community, Culture, and Tradition

June 3, 2021

We can hardly believe that it’s been more than a year since we launched Bad Hombre Importing to bring you some of the best agave spirits from Mexico. Over the past few months, we’ve seen tremendous energy and enthusiasm for collaboration as the hospitality industry continues to re-open. We are forever grateful to you, our friends, colleagues, and connoisseurs who geek out and imbibe with us. 

Between the virtual tastings, cocktails to-go, and more recent on-premise events, Nick and Fred have been all over the place. In fact, Nick just got back from Tijuana with samples of our new expressions from Agua del Sol. More on these later!

Community

In our January newsletter, we announced the arrival of Agua del Sol, a line of agave spirits aimed at making traditional mezcal accessible to local producing communities again. They do so by subsidizing the domestic cost with export profits as well as selling it at wholesale prices in refillable handmade glass “garrafones.”

Culture

Prior to hosting our first public tasting in the U.S., Rocio Flores of Mezcalting recorded an interview (in Spanish) with Agua del Sol co-founders, Félix Monterroza and Adriana Correa. Listen here! In the way of background, Adriana and Fred first met in 2014 as co-workers at Teach for Mexico in Mexico City. Later that year, Adriana moved back home to Oaxaca, and Fred stopped by to visit her at Mezcalillera, her new place of work. He left Oaxaca with a suitcase full of mezcal and plans for sharing that cultural experience. 

In the run-up to the U.S. launch of Agua del Sol, Susan Coss of Mezcalistas hosted Maestra Berta Vásquez as part of their Conversations in Agave series. Watch it here! Max Garrone, also of Mezcalistas, wrote a little introduction to the new destilado de agave project as well. The short read on the name and background is available here.  

Tradition

Almost immediately upon entering the U.S. market, Sabrina Lessard and Gabriel Velazquez Zazueta of TuyoNYC caught wind of Agua del Sol and invited us to appear on their podcast, Hey Hey Agave. On the podcast, Félix shares his family’s history of selling mezcal; Adriana dives deeper into the meaning behind the brand; and we discuss our thinking on sustainability in the context of the mezcal community. Have a listen here!

Finally, the word on the Gram is true--there is fresh juice coming to you from Agua del Sol. We picked three batches for you that represent the absolute best from Oaxaca. We have a true Espadin from Santiago Matatlán that is 48%, a beautiful Bicuishe from Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz (46%), and a tiny batch of Tobalá from San Baltazar Chichicapam (45%) that will be allocated. 

Saludos virtuales de Fred, Nick, Félix, Adriana, y Emilia!