The big interview: Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul tackle Tequila
“There have been a lot of charlatans,” say the Dos Hombres founders as they address celebrity stigma and their expansion into Tequila with The Spirits Business.
Actors Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul may have had a dysfunctional relationship on TV through their characters on Breaking Bad, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, but in real life the pair are best friends.
This is well-documented and a few years after the show ended, the duo were back in business via the drinks industry and Dos Hombres Mezcal, which is backed by Constellation Brands.
“We were trying to pitch each other ideas of what we could possibly do together because it was just too early to do another acting gig,“ Paul says to The Spirits Business, recalling how Dos Hombres came to be.
“We leaned into mezcal because it’s been my favorite spirit for north of 20 years,” he says, adding that Dos Hombres came at a time when “everyone was launching a Tequila”, referencing the high number of celebrity-backed brands entering the market.
The date of 9 July will mark seven years since their mezcal hit the market, so Paul feels they’ve been around long enough now where bringing out Dos Hombres Tequila won’t be met with the same groans as it might have done back in 2019.
“With mezcal, we were just laser-focused on a niche spirit that we both really fell in love with and now this [Tequila] is just a natural progression,” he says. “We really had to solidify ourselves as a respectable, honest brand first. We’re not trying to fool anybody. It’s water and agave, the way that the spirit is meant to be. That’s it.”
Cranston talks about the stigma around celebrities’ involvement in Tequila, and of the category’s saturation. “Good enough is not good enough. We had to be great, or what we feel is great anyway – so, pure and natural, no additives, no adulterants, no sweeteners – no anything.
“If there are people who are leery about celebrity brands, I can’t really say I blame them because there have been a lot of charlatans who have come in looking for a paycheck as opposed to looking to do the work.”
Cranston compares it to his acting experience: “It’s no different than what we do in our work and talking about Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan [the show’s creator] would never just accept ‘that’s fine’. It’s just not acceptable. He’s got to reach for excellence or nothing. And so that takes a lot of time and a lot of work.”
Paul adds: “To launch a Tequila now, we’re not launching a new company, we’ve already done the heavy lifting. We’ve built these incredible relationships throughout the years with the massive liquor-store chains, the mom-and-pop stores, the restaurants. So now when they all hear that we’re doing this – a very clean, honest Tequila – it’s a no-brainer for them to bring us in.”
Tequila selection
Despite Dos Hombres’ foundations in mezcal, Paul says the team members have always been open to exploring other agave spirits, namely Tequila.
“We love agave spirits as a whole and we’ve fallen in love with everyone who we’ve met down in Oaxaca and San Luis del Río during our journey with the mezcal side of things, but we’ve been kicking the can around about Tequila for some time,” he says.
“But honestly, it was just really important to us that if we did lean into Tequila, it just had to be done the right way.”
The pair partnered with Tequilera Tap Distillery (NOM 1614) in Amatitán, Jalisco, to create their two Tequilas; a blanco and a reposado.
Both expressions sit at 40% ABV.
Cranston and Paul also roped Julio Cova out of retirement, who counts on nearly 40 years of Tequila-making experience, to oversee production as their maestro tequilero.
Paul notes that when Cova told them ‘‘look, I will come out of retirement for this project, if you decide to lean into Tequilera Tap”, he and Cranston “were really celebrating”.
“With his background, he’s basically a full-blown chemist who really knows what he’s doing and we couldn’t have been more excited,” Paul says.
Paul also emphasises how he and Cranston weren’t in a rush when finding something that they both liked, rather than shooting for the first thing they tried and slapping their names on it – even if it came from Cova.
“The first liquid Julio presented to us was great, but we were like, is this the best option that we have?”, Paul recalls. “Can we go back, or can we keep going? And we did that over and over again. I’m sure Julio was kind of scratching his head at one point wondering if we were ever going to get there, but we feel we’ve landed on the perfect juice.”
Cranston stresses that as it was with mezcal, the Tequila had to be something that both of them fell in love with, “or we just weren’t going to do it”.
Cova took the pair through both highland and lowland Blue Weber agaves in different blends.
“Aaron and I just seem to naturally gravitate towards the lowland agave,” Cranston says, adding the discussion of how to cook it – in the brick ovens and the autoclave – followed after.
“We experimented with what percentage of the agave would be in the brick oven and what would be the autoclave, and it was really trial and error,” Cranston says. “We really had to write down notes of what we were attracted to, and then compare those because we were only looking for the one juice.”
According to the team, the Tequila is slow-cooked in both autoclaves and traditional brick ovens, then crushed using a roller mill before being double-distilled in copper and stainless steel stills. The liquid then rests for up to 30 days in open-air fermentation vats.
Paul also notes the difficulty of locking into something they would both like, and that the search turned out to be harder than they thought. “Maybe that’s why a lot of people just don’t do it,” he ponders.
“There’s a lot of Tequila out there and I don’t know why they do this, but they are added with things to make a certain flavour profile that the brand wants to sell. That just did not interest us.”
People’s tastes
Dos Hombres Blanco’s tasting notes are said to include black pepper, lime, orange zest and toasted cinnamon, while the finish features a touch of coconut.
The reposado, which was matured for four months in ex-Four Roses Bourbon first-fill barrels, then brings a lightly-oaked character to the profile.
While Cranston wouldn’t go as far as calling himself a connoisseur, he knows what he likes and believes that “just like anything else, whatever anyone’s personal preference is …you’re right, that’s what you like.”
About how he views drinks and taste, he sees it like movie genres.
“Just as someone would enjoy rom-coms, thrillers, or horror movies, it’s whatever people like, and they’re never wrong,” he says. “I think that taking that into consideration when we’re appealing to our customers is the best way to go.
“Oh, you like that blanco? Well, let me introduce you to the reposado. What do you think of that? It’s a little richer, a little deeper. And it’s like oooooh, wooo. It’s fun to expose people to something they haven’t tried before.”
Cranston’s approach to the category and market is that he wants everyone on their A-game, even the competitor brands.
“We know we’re going into a category that is far larger [than mezcal], so the competition is fierce, but very early on Aaron and I would tell people, much to their surprise, that we hope everyone who makes a mezcal does a good job, that everyone make a good quality mezcal,“ he says.
“That’s the same way we feel about Tequila, because we don’t want anyone to be turned off by it.”
Cranston had to take some convincing initially when Paul first broached the idea of creating a mezcal brand to him due to an unpleasant experience in his younger years, but now he’s much more clued up on the spirit.
“Fifty years ago, I tasted mezcal for the first time and swore off it (it was cheap stuff in a plastic bottle) but now that I’m in the mezcal business, I know about what can happen if you make an inferior product.
“That’s what we are highly focused with our Tequila with quality control, the flavour profiles, consistency, and that there are no additives – all these things that we can do and how we can then present them to our audience.”
While the blanco is out now, the reposado will follow in July and an añejo in 2027. The pair won’t deviate from agave spirits with Dos Hombres either.
Paul says: “We’re definitely staying within our lane and we have a rhythm of going down to Mexico at least once a year, visit our operations and sort of dream about the future – and also just thank everybody that’s making this possible. But obviously, never say never.”
Paul also considers that while the Tequila boom in the US might have slowed down recently, it’s “still the only category that has shown growth in the last year”.
“Other spirits have slumped and I think we got a false inflation through Covid-19,” he says. “Everyone was celebrating when they came out of that. People were swiping their credit cards: ‘we made it, we’re not gonna die alone’, if you know what I mean. ‘We’re marching forward’. But then reality set in and it was a bit more ‘all right, we gotta slow down on the drinking. So now it’s levelled out.”
Behind the bar
Paul and Cranston have staged numerous pop-ups and bartending shifts on their Dos Hombres escapades over the years, and share some of their favourite cocktails, which are both agave-based of course.
“Who doesn’t like a Margarita? It’s the most popular cocktail in North America,” Cranston says, noting he “just made a spicy Margarita for a podcast that we were doing and it turned out great”.
Paul vouches for Cranston’s Margarita – “Bryan took his time and it was phenomenal” – and says he’s about a “good classic cocktail”.
“Give me a good spicy mezcal or Tequila Margarita,“ he says. “Or a Mezcal Negroni, or a Mezcal Penicillin.”
The pair have also seen Dos Hombres stocked at their favourite bars. For instance, Paul with The Bowery in New York. “It’s my home away from home and I love the tiny little bar inside there – the vibe, their cocktails and I was begging for them to carry our mezcal for years. We’ve finally cracked it.”
Cranston adds his own: “One of my favorites is going to Gallaghers on 52nd Street in New York because my first Broadway play was right down the street and I always used to pop in. I love that little square bar that they have right in the middle, and one of the bartenders there recently told me ‘you know, I’ve been experimenting with a rusty nail, but instead of Scotch, I put your mezcal in there’. It’s amazing.”
Ultimately, Cranston says that while they’ll both promote the brand and the new Tequila, the liquid “has to speak for itself”.
Paul says: “It’ll be refreshing to those people that are hesitant to lean into a celebrity brand. I think it’ll be refreshing for them to know that Bryan and I have never made salary on this. Never. Not once.
“We’ve only haemorrhaged money into the operation because we believe in it and we love it. We’ve hired every single one of our employees personally. We are incredibly hands-on and we talk about this every single day.”
To mark the launch, Paul and Cranston linked up with their Dos Hombres mezcalero Gregorio Velasco and maestro tequilero Julio Cova for a cinematic campaign titled Strip Away the Noise.
“This film pulls back the curtain on the patience, passion, and craft behind it and puts the real stars, Julio Cova and Gregorio Velasco, front and centre,” Cranston said.
To watch the spot, click below.
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