Kosher Mezcal: Which Bottle to Buy and Why

First, the thing worth saying out loud: this is not a tequila post. Mezcal and tequila are cousins, not the same drink, and if you buy mezcal expecting tequila you will be surprised in the first sip. Here is the mezcal shelf, what separates the four bottles on it, and which one to start with.

What mezcal is

Both drinks are made from agave. The difference is what happens to the agave before it is fermented.

Tequila steams its agave in ovens. Mezcal roasts it - in a pit dug into the ground, over hot rocks, under earth, for days. That pit is where the smoke comes from. It is not a flavouring added later; it is the cooking method soaked into the plant.

Mezcal is also made mostly in Oaxaca rather than Jalisco, usually in much smaller batches, and it can be made from many agave varieties. Most of what you will meet is Espadín, which is the workhorse - and all four bottles below are Espadín.

If you want the full comparison, we laid it out in tequila vs mezcal.

The four bottles

El Silencio Espadín Joven - $34.99. The matte black bottle you have seen behind a cocktail bar. Double-distilled, approachable smoke, citrus and a faintly salty finish. It is the easiest of the four to put into a drink without the smoke taking over, and it is the cheapest. This is the one to buy first.

Del Maguey Vida - $37.99. The bartender's mezcal, and the most traditional-tasting bottle here. Made by the Cristóbal family in San Luis del Rio from wild-harvested agave. Roasted agave, mesquite smoke, green pepper, a mineral core. If you want to know what mezcal tastes like when nobody has smoothed the edges off, this is it.

Rosaluna Artesanal Joven - $39.99. Three ingredients: eight-year-old Espadín, water, time. The gentlest of the four - bright, silky, tropical fruit on the nose and only a hint of smoke on the finish. The bottle for somebody who has decided they do not like mezcal. It is also gluten free and vegan, if that matters in your house.

Casamigos Mezcal - $89.99. The expensive one, and the one people buy as a gift. Oaxacan Espadín roasted over volcanic rock, but tuned deliberately soft - the smoke sits behind the agave rather than on top of it. Rounder and sweeter than the category usually runs. Whether it is worth two and a half El Silencios depends entirely on whether the name on the bottle matters to the person opening it.

Which one to buy

Never had mezcal. Rosaluna. It gives you the agave without asking you to enjoy smoke on day one.

Making cocktails. El Silencio, or Del Maguey Vida if you want the smoke to be the point. A mezcal margarita or a smoky Negroni wants a bottle with some presence.

Sipping neat. Del Maguey Vida for character, Casamigos for comfort.

Buying it as a gift. Casamigos. It is the bottle that reads as a gift on sight, and the mezcal is genuinely good rather than just well dressed.

How to drink it

Neat, in a small glass, at room temperature. Do not shoot it and do not put it on ice - cold flattens the roasted agave and mutes exactly what you paid for. The traditional service is an orange slice on the side, sometimes with chilli salt, and it works: the citrus lifts the smoke and the salt keeps the sweetness in check.

In cocktails, mezcal will substitute for tequila almost anywhere, but use a little less than the recipe says the first time. It is louder than tequila.

Food-wise it is very good beside anything grilled or charred. Smoke likes smoke.

A note on the labels

Every bottle above says joven, which just means unaged - straight from still to bottle. Mezcal does have aged categories, reposado and añejo, but they are rarer than in tequila and the whole point of the category is what the agave and the pit taste like without a barrel in the way. If those age words are new to you, blanco, reposado and añejo explained covers them.

The full range lives in our mezcal collection, with the wider tequila and mezcal shelf alongside it. For the kashrus question on agave spirits generally, see which tequilas are kosher, and if it is the Casamigos name that brought you here, the Casamigos range guide covers the tequilas too.