What broke mezcal pricing

In 2015, Del Maguey's tobalá retailed for $120. In 2020, the same bottle was $160. In 2024, it's $200 and increasingly hard to find. The story of mezcal's price curve over the last decade is a case study in supply-demand mismatch, and understanding it is useful if you want to buy smart for the next decade.

The supply side is the fundamental constraint. Wild agaves take 15–30 years to mature. Once harvested, they are gone – replanting is slow, uncertain, and requires enormous patience from producers who are already working on thin margins. The stock of mature wild agaves available in Oaxaca has been roughly flat since the early 2010s, and will remain roughly flat for at least another decade regardless of how much demand grows.

The demand side is where things went vertical. Mezcal's US market grew roughly 20% per year through the 2010s, and the growth accelerated post-pandemic. Celebrity brands (Casamigos Mezcal, Dos Hombres) pulled casual consumers into the category. Specialty importers (Craft Distillers, Mezcal Vago, NETA) built a serious-drinker tier that competes for the same agaves. The result: more buyers chasing a supply that cannot respond.

The middle tier has been squeezed most. Entry-level espadíns have stayed roughly stable in price – $30–$60 remains the commercial floor. The top tier (single-maestro wild-agave bottlings) has absorbed the pressure by raising prices, because the producers can afford to lose the marginal buyer. The middle tier – village-designated espadíns, accessible wild-agave expressions at $70–$100 – has been hollowed out, because producers at that level can't outbid the specialty importers for their own agaves.

The Chinese market is the wild card. Luxury spirits demand in China – historically focused on cognac and Scotch – has begun to touch mezcal's high end, particularly the wild-agave tier. If that trend continues, US drinkers will find the category-defining bottles priced out of reach within a few years.

Our practical forecast: buy benchmark bottles now if you can. The El Jolgorio wild-agave line, Real Minero's entire catalog, Mezcalosfera's single-maestro releases – all of these will cost meaningfully more in three years than they do today. The commercial tier (Vida, Banhez, Koch Espadín) will remain stable. The middle tier will continue to thin out.

The longer-term outlook depends on reforestation. Several serious producers – Real Minero, Rey Campero, El Jolgorio – are running multi-year replanting programs, and the CRM has begun talking about mandated harvest caps. If those efforts succeed, supply will slowly recover by the mid-2030s. If they fail, the category will bifurcate into commercial-industrial and luxury-only tiers, with nothing in between.