The women making mezcal

Mezcal production has historically been male-dominated, and the public narrative has followed suit. The category's marquee names – Ron Cooper, Ivan Saldaña, John Rexer – are overwhelmingly men. The producers most Americans can name are men. But the maestras who actually run palenques have been shaping the category for decades, and in the last ten years several have stepped out from behind the family name to run their own projects.

Graciela Ángeles Carreño is the most visible figure in this group. She leads Real Minero in Santa Catarina Minas alongside her brother Edgar – the fourth-generation producer of a family project that has become one of the category's reference points. The Angeles family's discipline around clay-still production, wild-agave replanting, and long maturation windows shows up in the glass as coherence; every Real Minero bottle feels like the same conversation continued at a higher register.

Doña Juana – Maestra Mezcalera of Mestiza Negra – runs the Santiago Matatlán palenque that produces one of the category's most honestly-priced bottles. She grew up in the village in a mezcal-producing family, learned every stage of the craft after her father's early death, and built a business at a time when almost no women held palenque leadership. Her espadín at 45% ABV, tahona-milled, wild-fermented, double copper-distilled, is the bottle we score on its own terms – the pricing anomaly of our catalog.

Berta Vásquez (5 Sentidos releases) and María de la Luz (Campanilla releases) represent the newer generation – producers whose names appear on single-maestra bottlings that the specialty-importer ecosystem has built entire release calendars around. Their bottles are usually small-batch, often clay-still, and tend to land in the high-40s to low-50s ABV – the signature of producers unwilling to compromise for volume.

The category has been slow to credit maestras by name, but the good labels have caught up. When you see a woman's name on the back label – especially under 'Mezcalero' – pay attention. She is usually the person who made your bottle, and she has often spent longer arguing her way into that credit than the men on her side of the palenque ever had to.