Mezcal producers hope to toast brighter future

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage copyrightPatricia Ruíz

Patricia Ruíz, a maker of the Mexican spirit mezcal, didn’t have much to toast with the drink last year.

In normal times her business, Los Dioses de Agave, bottles 1,000-1,500 litres of its La Maliciosa brand every four weeks.

But for more than four months in 2020, production stopped completely at its distillery in the southern state of Oaxaca.

“Our most frequent clients are bars across the state,” she says. But they were all closed by government decree