Dos Hombres Espadin Mezcal
Photos via Dos Hombres
As we recently observed in another review, there’s something about the agave distillate industry—probably the fact that it continues to grow like gangbusters—that gleams like a beacon for Hollywood celebrities looking to launch their own brands. Drawn by the mega payday enjoyed by George Clooney when he sold Casamigos, and fueled by massive new launches like Dwayne Johnson’s Teremana, every actor in Tinseltown now seemingly wants a tequila brand of their own that they can potentially sell to the highest bidder a few years down the road.
Or, you know … a mezcal brand. For Breaking Bad co-stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, embracing tequila’s wilder cousin is a move that does seem on-brand. Whereas tequila has been comfortably subsumed into American culture, mezcal consumption is still in its relative infancy, with the average drinker likely unaware of many differences between the two spirit styles. It’s not hard to imagine that Paul and Cranston saw a long runway of potential ahead of a brand like Dos Hombres when they launched it shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic descended on the world.
When you get right down to it, though, and scroll past the flowery text on Paul and Cranston’s journey to meet Oaxacan mezcal maestros, what you end up with is a $60 bottle of joven mezcal, made from 100% espadin agave (the most commonly used variety) and bottled at a fairly low 42% ABV (84 proof). It’s produced from 6-year-old agave plants—close to maturity, but still considered “immature” by the more discerning distillers and agave distillate geeks in the audience. In other words, it’s a fairly steep price point for a bare bones sort of mezcal as far as the specs are concerned, and it makes one wonder how much of the MSRP is being justified by the celebrity connection.
Tasting Dos Hombres, it quickly becomes clear that the product’s intended audience is indeed mezcal neophytes, not that there’s anything wrong with this. Dos Hombres feels like a calculated attempt to make a very approachable, unchallenging mezcal for a wide audience, though that does cost it no small amount of individuality.