Hand in hand: mezcal’s social responsibility
Mezcal is increasing in popularity, but what are brands doing to ensure their producers in Mexico are an integral part of the success and their employees are not being left behind?
*This feature was first published in the February issue of The Spirits Business magazine.
With great power comes great responsibility, a phrase now applicable to the mezcal business.
The liquid is reaching more markets, more consumers, and every big alcohol multinational now has a mezcal brand or two in its portfolio. Broadening interest and ever-increasing production has called sustainability into question, naturally, but what about the social aspect – a responsibility towards the people who are actually making the spirit in Mexico.
To Iván Saldaña, co-founder of Mexican spirits company Casa Lumbre, the standard needs to be elevated. “Sustainability should not be left in the hands of the communities,” he says, because mezcal is a long-term bet.
“There’s always a need to push for more social responsibility,” says John Rexer, founder of Bacardi-owned Ilegal Mezcal. Ilegal is built on a longterm handshake agreement between the firm and its producers, the Hernández family at the Mal de Amor palenque in Santiago Matatlán, Oaxaca.
The brand was a three-person operation to begin with and had just over 100 employees when the Bacardi transition happened in 2023. Now there are almost 200 members of staff. “They [Bacardi] said their goal was not just to make mezcal, but to bring people who come from the community back home from the US, and they honoured their word,” he says.
He notes Ilegal has shown that mezcal can still be artisanal, embedded in a community, and culturally intact, while achieving global reach and commercial success. “By having economic sustainability – consistent jobs, consistent income – people can continue to produce without cutting corners, doing the right thing by the brand and by artisanal mezcal.”
Win-win situation
As Ilegal widens its operation, Mal de Amor has grown considerably. The distillery started with two small stills and now has close to 70, with another 60 being built. Rexer notes little businesses have emerged around the palenque, including a restaurant, which has allowed money to flow back into the community, creating an “economic piece”.
“We all like to use the expression ‘win-win’, but when people have stable jobs that they’re not afraid of losing the next day and work in a place that sets an example of how employees are treated, and in transparency, it self-reinforces good community.”
Saldaña thinks specific factors in palenques can be better managed, such as the air workers breathe, ensuring every piece of distilling equipment is sufficiently sealed, and installing infrastructure that has less of a physical impact on workers. “Improving movements within the palenque is a big challenge mezcal has in order to be viable in the future,” he says, noting that for some brands that can sound like losing craftsmanship.
In Casa Lumbre’s case, the company’s facility in Puebla experiments with various tools and technologies to not only lessen environmental impact, but support workers amid the labour-intensive processes.
“We are able to manage most of our waste, but we are also playing to see how we can make it easier in taking out the steel wash, let’s say after the distillation, or how can we replace that enormous effort of mixing fibres together in a fermentation vat by using a piece of equipment or a machine. By doing that, you replace the most dangerous, long- term issues,” he says.
Saldaña also wants to move discussion away from “ego conversations” about numbers and different expressions, to “what are the fundamentals?” He feels too much attention is dedicated to the product, but not enough on who is in contact with it, how they benefit, or the implications of being in the palenques. He explains: “When you look at regulations, you see a very punitive and obsessive norm of mezcal, wanting to know where the agave comes from and if it’s registered, but for environmental and social issues, there isn’t the same interest.”
He acknowledges an opposing perspective though, where it’s not easy for producers that have invested in mezcal for a long time to change things one day after the other. “We’re in a time where taxes are crazy, particularly in Mexico. What is the incentive to change when that will create a cost issue that is really big?”
Saldaña also sees a gap in knowledge as mezcal continues to expand. “We need to create mezcal schools,” he says, believing universities lack programmes that “not only bring a technical solution but a more broad contextual understanding of what the business implies. The point is to complete the perspective of what details a brand being sold, how the taxation works and there’s no real and serious initiatives.”
This is something Saldaña would love to see Casa Lumbre more involved in: “We need to allow young people and those that want to have a relationship with mezcal to understand ratios, from wood per litre, water, things that are environmental but also commercial.”
Despite being one of the world’s biggest mezcal brands, Pernod Ricard-owned Del Maguey is deeply committed to cultural preservation. Its initiatives over the years include education and reforestation programmes, which Marijose Regules, sustainability and responsibility manager at Pernod Ricard’s House of Tequila, says are “protected projects that have been completed, but have a lasting impact”.
She says the focus for Del Maguey is more towards onsite situations linked to production and the circular infrastructure between the 10 families and the brand partners in Oaxaca and Puebla. “Social sustainability is interconnected with environmental pressures,” she says. “We cannot separate family livelihoods from the health of the ecosystem because they completely depend on the environment.”
Among these practices is collaboration with the Consultorio de Asesoría Arquitectónica to convert mezcal byproducts into materials benefitting the families, such as cement-free bricks that require fewer logs to heat the ovens (improving daily cooking needs). They are also used for tasting tables when families receive guests, as well as the construction of roofs and bathrooms.
Moreover, Del Maguey also uses a government platform called Sistema de Información Geográfica to help it verify that the maguey it plants is not planted in a lot that has been deforested, while also working with a maguey nursery where the brand has around 2,000 species. “We have artisanal mezcal, so social responsibility isn’t separate from how the products exist,” she says. “We cannot talk about quality or growth without the people who make the mezcal, and the conditions in which it’s produced.”
Erick Rodríguez has been in the agave industry for 28 years. He runs a brand called Almamezcalera and travels around Mexico meeting mezcaleros and sourcing traditional mezcals. His work isn’t focused solely on the spirit, however, it’s also about developing relationships in the communities. “I’ve never believed that mezcal is meant to be mass produced,” he says. “You will see that it’s more than just mezcal that you can help with, and it’s impossible to ignore the things that they [the communities] need.”
Mezcal is not the priority, and Rodríguez has other concerns, like a scarcity of key resources that have fallen prey to overexploitation. “I worry about water and wood shortages, and we need the trees to hold the water in the ground,” he says, talking about deforestation in Oaxaca. “If you start over- producing, you start cutting more trees, and not just the right parts. You cut into fresh trees that hold a lot more extra water. We’re not gonna have enough water for later and when you don’t have water, you can’t do anything, no mezcal, nothing.”
Saldaña is also vocal about how mezcal sources its raw materials. Wood was abundant before mezcal grew in stature, but he says “we’ve diminished the sources of that, so it’s now very expensive – that’s why I have made a big point of changing wood, not in the pit roasting, but in the distillation.”
Rexer looks north to Jalisco to see where Tequila has gone right and wrong, especially with wild swings in agave pricing. “When agave prices drop too low, people who rely on this for an income and will simply stop growing as it doesn’t make any sense. Then you will arrive years later with the price spiking because no one grew sufficient amounts.” Rexer says the issue needs to be managed carefully. “Armando and Alvaro [Hernandez], owners of Mal de Amor, grow their own agave, and we’re working to maintain a pricing that works both for us and for them, rather than having to suffer those wild swings.”
Regules outlines the need for collaboration, highlighting a Sustainable Mezcal Alliance that Del Maguey formed with 14 other mezcal brands. The group works closely with Comercam (Consejo Mexicano Regulador de la Calidad del Mezcal) – a nongovernmental organisation that oversees mezcal’s regulation and certification – under three pillars.
The first is to protect the category globally, where it can lack recognition. The second is to turn mezcal into an aligned and informed sector so producers can act together on regulatory challenges. The third is sustainability, which Regules says is “our engine of growth, legitimacy and market access. It’s about shared standards and practical templates that communities can adapt to, and solutions that are replicable, respectful and real.”
She adds: “We share good practices between us, and that makes us progress quicker in piloting new innovations and solutions, and protecting the category as a whole.”
For transparency, along with the individual effort from a brand, Saldaña feels there has to also be “an honest curiosity” and a responsibility of consumers, bartenders and the trade to be inquisitive.
Kaylan Rexer, chief marketing officer at Ilegal, adds that its palenque is open six days a week for people to visit. “It’s not just us that can go down and see each step of this process,” she says. “You can walk in as a consumer, as a bartender, anyone, and take a tour. This is the facility where Ilegal is made. If you go today and then six months from now, you will see the growth of the stills and all the pieces. It is 100% transparent and those doors are open for people to see how the mezcal is being made, but also the growth of Mal de Amor.”
Regules says certifications for transparency are coming, but “credibility ultimately comes from visible outcomes on the ground, on site, on the families and the local partners that you can see, that they can see, and validate”.
Industry insights
How is your brand supporting local communities, workers and farmers as agave spirits continue to grow?
Marcos Leyes – head of operations and sustainability, Motel Mezcal
“Motel Mezcal is Mexican-owned, and our focus is simple: take care of agave and take care of our people. We support fair labour, producer formalisation, and gender equality, with women making up over half of our team. Rather than harvesting wild agave, we gather seeds and plant intentionally, allowing wild agave to regenerate naturally. We also bottle locally in Mexico using 100% recycled glass, with the future of Oaxaca always in mind.”
Richard Ryan – co-founder, Drinksology Kirker Greer
“It was important from the beginning that Del Suelo had joint ownership with the palenque owner to ensure authenticity, transparency, and shared success, creating an engaged producer aligned with engaged brand building.
“To support local communities and ecosystems, Kirker Greer Spirits and Del Suelo prioritise responsible, longterm growth through close collaboration with our producer in San Luis del Río. Agave is sourced from his own land and neighbouring small-scale farmers, helping keep economic value within the community without encouraging over-expansion.
“As a B Corp-certified company, sustainability underpins every decision, from natural fermentation, and composting byproducts, to using sustainable wood for roasting. We replant agave after each harvest and champion timehonoured, labourintensive methods alongside recycled glass packaging, ensuring longevity and positive impact rather than short- term commercial gain.”
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