Breaking Bad stars’ mezcal label Dos Hombres comes to the UK
Breaking Bad stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are bringing their fledgling mezcal label to the UK this month.
Called Dos Hombres Mezcal, the spirit, which was created by actors Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, has now launched in the UK in department store Selfridges.
Paul said the idea to launch a mezcal came about seven years after finishing Breaking Bad. They decided it was still too soon to work on another TV show together given they wanted to pursue other solo projects, but they did want to do something.
“I said ‘what about the booze business, what about mezcal?’, and Brian laughed. I wasn’t joking,” he said during a press tasting over Zoom. While Paul was used to the trendy craft mezcals popping up in L.A. cocktail bars in recent years, Cranston knew it as a cheap “punishment drink” in his student days for people who turned up late to the party or made a bad joke.
They spent a week travelling across Mexico looking for the perfect mezcalero in Oaxaca, eventually finding one that Paul said, “honestly looked like a meth lab in a forest”.
The pair struck a deal with their “maestro mezcalero” to allow them to bottle, brand and sell his spirit, and was given a percentage of the business in return.
Tequila, which can only be made from blue agave in five Mexican states, is subject to more rigid standards than mezcal, but the latter has enjoyed a boom in popularity in recent years. Consumption of the agave‐based spirit in the US grew by 40% in 2019, according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, compared to 9.3% for Tequila. Now large groups such as Pernod Ricard, Diageo and Constellation Brands have started investing more in mezcals.
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A growing number of high-profile actors and celebrities have launched their own agave spirits brands. Sex and the City star Chris Noth, singer Nick Jonas, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and George Clooney have all delved into the Tequila business in recent years, but celebrity mezcals are slightly rarer.
“US was really our only market for the first year – I saw such an opportunity with mezcal when I started seeing this spirit pop up on cocktail lists in the major markets like LA”, Paul said, but there is appetite around the world. To fulfil the growing local and international demand, Mexico’s mezcal production has risen from 1.45 million litres in 2014 to more than 5 million litres in 2018, with an average growth rate of almost 38% per year, according to Statisa.
Cranston added he sees a “huge growth opportunity” for mezcal on the international market as well.
Asked whether they thought about expanding the range with some ready-to-drink canned cocktails, Cranston told the drinks business: “We have tried testing ways of doing that, but I won’t lie to you, it didn’t go so well.”
“We definitely want to do a ready to drink but it has to be really tasty, whether its in a pouch or can. If we can’t get it to where it’s excellent we just won’t do it.”
