El Cabrón started by chance. Co-founder Ana Gomez was sourcing batches of different Agave distillates direct from Oaxaca, Zacatecas, and Jalisco. She wanted to give producers outside of the well-known tequila brands a chance and shine a light on the cultural revolution that is actively taking place in Mexico. The project didn’t really get off the ground, but little didn’t she know that future co-founder Chris Peel happen to sample her products at an agave fanatic friend’s house.
Aftering getting in touch with Gomez, the two set about creating a brand, tasting products in transatlantic Zoom calls, all with the aim of bottling spirits that use agave from different, rare regions of Mexico to create ancestral mezcal and 'tequilas’. This means spirits that can’t actually be bottled as Tequila because they can only come from five regions: Michoacán, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Tamaulipas, and Jalisco. It also only has to be 51% blue weber agave.
The ‘tequilana’ that El Cabrón makes came from Zacatecas, where Don Lupe does his thing. Gomez’s original Mexican operational partner led the team to a man who has organised over 240 independent agave farmers and mezcal producers in the region to set up a distillery. His commitment to sustainable Agave farming and distilling aligned with El Cabrón. Zacatecas falls outside the region for the denomination of origin for Tequila, it has a long tradition of producing agave distillates and he feels they have been unfairly ruled out of the Tequila market.
The other aim of El Carbon is to shine a light on the unsustainable nature of mass-produced 100% agave, particularly those being produced in a commodity format by the big players, and to highlight the inevitable problems that these restrictive regulations are bringing, most notably the risk of corruption and the blocking of the market for other farmers, who endorse sustainability and biodiversity, rather than over-farming practices for this amazing plant.
El Cabrón will launch a Raicilla this year and is working to bring more varieties of mezcals and other diverse and sustainable products to the market. We look forward to seeing what they do next. The first four expressions are available below. Be sure to check them out.