YOLA Mezcal will release new expressions later this year.
No business school teaches you how to run a company in a pandemic, but that’s the hard lesson that many spirit brands, large and small, were forced to figure out, along with the rest of the world. For YOLA Mezcal, a female-owned small-batch spirit, the past two years gave the brand time to refocus on what matters. As we head into what might finally be a return to normalcy, YOLA is setting itself up for it hopes is its best year yet.
“In 2020, we were like, Ok, this is our year,” YOLA co-founder Gina Correll Aglietti recalls. “We had a music festival. We had a lot of steam, the brand was gaining recognition. Mezcal was the most talked abut category in spirits and we were going to do a big raise and open all these new markets. And then the pandemic hit.”
Yola Jimenez, recording artist Lykke Li and Gina Correll Aglietti co-founded YOLA in 2015, naming the brand after Jimenez, who uses her grandfather’s mezcal recipe and distills the liquid on her family’s farm in Oaxaca. Through their mutual art and culture world connections, as well as buzzy society parties, the brand was poised to be the spirit world’s next breakout star. However, when the pandemic closed bars, the brand lost close to 80% in sales overnight.
YOLA Mezcal co-founders Gina Aglietti, Yola Jimenez and Lykke Li.
“It was very crippling for a small brand,” Aglietti says. “People kept saying, Oh booze is doing great. Yeah, if you sell in a grocery store, and you’re making vodka. But this is a really boutique product and we have a small farm, with a small team, that’s terrified of getting sick.”
The team had also started a bottle redesign in spring 2020. A prototype was made. “But we couldn’t make any changes because we couldn’t afford to,” Lykke Li says. “Then the whole supply chain closed down.”
After an initial panic, the team used the time to focus on their future and rethink their operations.
“It became clear that this was the perfect time to make the company sustainable,” Yola Jimenez says. No piece, from labels to corks, was too small for consideration. Having learned the hard way about the supply chain, the founders looked to source as much as 100% of their materials, such as recycled glass, from Mexican companies; using local companies would also be more sustainable.
Dreams for a new distillery, designed around its mostly female workforce, began to take shape. The focus on a female workforce is rooted in trends that show that for generations, young men have left rural parts of Mexico for big cities and abroad, leaving behind women to staff factories, such as mezcal distilleries.
YOLA Mezcal created buzz via exclusive parties in New York, LA, Mexico City and other cities.
“What if we created a space where women go to work first and second its a mezcal farm? What does it mean to grow and be many things?” Jimenez posed those questions to Mexican architect Frida Escobedo, a rapidly rising star that was just revealed as the lead designer for Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new $500 million Modern and contemporary art wing.
The distillery is still in the design phase; because the proposed building is near an archaeological site in Oaxaca, it requires multiple permits from authorities.
But several ideas have already bubbled up: A zero-waste facility, built with bricks made from agave waste, ramps that make it easier to push (versus carry) heavy loads, and a design that incorporates big communal kitchens, gardens and daycare. “I want it to feel like a place that feels big and open, with a good kitchen, where it’s easy to come and go and feel safe, when even the children can be around,” Jimenez says.
And there’s the spirit itself. This spring, YOLA will release a small-batch “wild” limited edition. “Wild” refers to using foraged or uncultivated wild agave for the mezcal. YOLA’s inaugural wild edition features Jabali, which is considered one of the most rare and exotic wild agaves. The 500-bottle release, due later this year, arrives in bottles specially designed by artist Barbara Sanchez-Kane.
“In retrospect, we’ve come out of the pandemic with so much more strength,” Gina Aglietti says. “We leaned back, zoomed out and put together a more stable, strong foundation to go forward without having to sprint. We were sprinting before. Now it feels like a clear vision.”
