What is the connection between Washington state and Michoacán, Mexico? In this case: mezcal. Mocel mezcal honors a family’s immigrant legacy. Contributor Macey Wolfer talks to the founders of a celebrated woman-owned mezcal brand.
Though separated by nearly 3,000 miles, Washington and Michoacán have much in common. Both states are known for their roles as agricultural hubs, with Eastern Washington one of the world’s leading apple producers and Michoacán leading the way in avocado farming. Beyond the orchards of apples and avocados, the two regions overlap in their production of intoxicants—while the Yakima Valley is famous for wine and hops, Michoacán is known for mezcal and charanda.
For sisters Rosalinda and Elizabeth Mendoza, founders of the small-batch mezcal brand Mocel, these connections are everything. The Mendoza sisters are the daughters of farmworker immigrants from Michoacán, but were born and raised in the Yakima Valley. They grew up going back and forth between the two states, taking in the unique nature of each place they call home. Rosalinda points out the many parallel qualities of the two regions, but is careful to emphasize what she calls their most precious resource: the people.
“A big chunk of the Mexican immigrants in the Pacific Northwest are from Michoacán,” she explains.
Since 1999, Yakima and the capital of Michoacán, Morelia, have officially been designated as sister cities.
“It’s really interconnected,” she elaborates. “So many mezcaleros were farm workers in Yakima. They were picking cherries or planting pine trees in Washington and Oregon. That is still the case for some mezcaleros. There is a really deep connection that you sometimes don’t see, but it’s there.”
Bringing Michoacán mezcal to the US
Mezcal has been a fixture in the Mendoza sisters’ lives since childhood. Rosalinda recalls playing around in her grandmother’s armoire in Michoacán, finding herb-filled bottles of mezcal tucked among other treasures. As the sisters got older, they started bringing bottles of Michoacán mezcal to share with family and friends back home. They began to realize that it was particularly difficult to find Michoacán mezcal in Washington.
“We started looking at who was importing and telling the story of mezcal, and we quickly realized there weren’t a lot of people from our community telling it from our perspective,” she says.
With minimal systems in place at the time for importing mezcal, Rosalinda says they had to start from scratch to build their brand. The sisters now source Mocel from a co-op in Michoacán made up of families of agave farmers and mezcal producers.
Producing a traditional mezcal–Michoacán-style
Mocel’s maestros follow traditional Michoacán mezcal production techniques, including cooking their agave in an underground earthen oven for about five days and mashing their agave by hand with wooden mallets. From there, the agave mash is typically fermented in underground wooden vats. Mocel producers don’t add yeast in their process, relying solely on wild fermentation, which can take up to half a month depending on the weather.
“Last year was an unusually warm one, so we had the fermentation done a lot faster,” she explains.
Finally, the mixture gets distilled twice with a wooden still, often referred to as a Tarascan or Filipino still. (This style of still was originally brought by Filipino sailors on the Manilla galleons; they introduced it to Indigenous Mexican communities, who adapted it for use in mezcal production.) This gives Mocel a distinctly delicate and earthy flavor profile, though it naturally varies from batch to batch.
“Our production process is not meant for efficiency and yield. We’re maximizing for flavor,” says Rosalinda, adding, “There was a time maybe 10-15 years ago where some mezcaleros started to use stainless steel. Now you’re starting to see them go back to the wood. The metal stills yielded a little bit more, but the flavor was just not the same.”
Mocel’s mezcal is sold in gorgeous handmade ceramic bottles crafted by Michoacán ceramic artisans. Each bottle features artwork influenced by Michoacán textiles, and like the mezcal itself, is unique and shaped by the people who crafted it.
“We wanted the bottle to represent all the beauty and the hard work that goes into making mezcal, but we also wanted to make sure that the mezcal backed it up,” says Rosalinda of the design process.
It’s safe to say that the mezcal does, in fact, speak for itself and match the quality of the vessel it’s bottled in. The award-winning brand has plenty of glowing online reviews and garners even more praise through elegant pairing events, including an upcoming chocolate and mezcal event with Fran’s chocolates.
The Mendoza sisters didn’t always see mezcal production in their future, though they knew they’d one day end up in some venture together. Rosalinda says they’re very different, though they have always been close. The sisters know they can lean on each other through the difficult times that are inevitable to operating a business, especially in a highly regulated industry.
“Running your own company is so hard. We were in the middle of the pandemic when we were trying to import and get certified for our first batch. It was really rough. There’s all these barriers for small producers,” says Rosalinda. “I don’t know how solo founders or entrepreneurs do it. It’s been really incredible to have [Elizabeth] so we can hype each other up.”
Among the many barriers small producers face are the rules and regulations, such as the three-tier structure in the United States, that can result in a much higher price tag than anticipated. This, on top of some consumers’ perceptions about the value of Mexican goods, leads Rosalinda to describe mezcal as undervalued and underpriced.
“Making tortillas by hand is hard work. It’s the same thing with spirits. Questioning the high price of this traditional product that is done by hand–you don’t see the same pushback for Scotch or bourbon,” says Rosalinda. “Once we educate and do the tastings, people get it. There’s just so much education that needs to be done around it.”
These hands-on connections are what have grown Mocel to its success today. Rosalinda says that word of mouth is still the most powerful tool for the brand and notes that they can sometimes see that magic at work through their orders.
“Someone will gift Mocel to a friend in Texas and then that friend in Texas tells another friend and then we notice a couple other people will buy from that area,” she says.
Of all the connections that bring Mocel together, the sisters’ relationship with their grandparents may be the most important of all, as it drove them to honor the Michoacán way.
“We were really close to my grandfather. He didn’t know how to read or write and never went to school. But he was so wise,” reflects Rosalinda. “Growing up as the daughter of farmworker immigrants, you’re very much raised to get an education, to not do the work that [they] did, to get a better life.”
The sisters did go to college. But Rosalinda says mezcal kept calling her back. She began to build relationships with mezcaleros, particularly connecting with the older folks, whom she could easily relate to because of her connection with her grandpa.
“One of the things I always carry with me with Mocel is that it’s a business, but it really comes down to the relationships you have with the different families,” she says. “Who you buy agave from at the end of the day. Those relationships are what’s really important.”
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