The 'Breaking Bad' costars and friends first started Dos Hombres in 2019 Dos Hombres and 's is delicious on the rocks, in a margarita, and in a dozen other cocktails — but don't dare drink it down all in one go. "It's actually sacrilegious to take a shot of mezcal," Paul tells PEOPLE. "Taking a shot of something is like taking down very bad medicine — you just try to get it over with as quickly as possible.
But mezcal is so labor-intensive, it is a true work of art, and so down in Mexico, they say you kiss the spirit, which I love. You just kiss the spirit, and you savor it." On a Zoom video call with PEOPLE, the say they understand why some might consider a shot — tequila is popular in shot form, after all.
But even though mezcal shares a similar profile to tequila, they are vastly different spirits, they insist. "Try Dos Hombres instead of tequila, and you'll taste several differences," says Cranston. "It's like a little kick.
It's like tequila's older brother." Adds Paul: "We always say it's tequila's older, more sophisticated, cooler relative." Dos Hombres Dos Hombres on the market on July 9.
Here, Paul and Cranston talk the milestone, their favorite ways to drink it and what's next. It's a big deal for us. We're very proud to say that this company was all self-funded from the beginning, from Bryan and myself.
It was our brainchild. It took us a little over two and a half years from the idea to when we took it to market. We had to travel down to Oaxaca, find the perfect mezcal, and also learn how to run a company.
We made an agreement to go down to Oaxaca and see if we could find our own, not something that pre-existed that we would just slap our names onto and say, "Hey, send us a paycheck." This was something that we wanted to do organically. We're both very hard workers.
We're from blue collar families, so that's what we know. Dos Hombres I am so proud to say that I reintroduced Bryan to the world of mezcal. Bryan tried mezcal when he was in high school, and it was a terrible mezcal.
And for five decades or close to, he never touched it again. So it was very important to us that this spirit, this mezcal that we brought out to the world, that people could drink it neat in its pure, raw form as it was always intended to be drank. Bryan and I do have kind of different palates.
I come from the bourbon, scotch, whiskey background. Bryan loves things incredibly fruity and doesn't like the taste of a ..
. [ ] Look at you! No, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
But we needed to find something that met in the middle. He needed something incredibly smooth, but I needed something that kind of gave me that warmth. And we sampled 90 plus different mezcals all over beautiful Oaxaca, and we finally were so blessed to be introduced to — who is now our mezcalero, third generation, started learning the ropes when he turned eight years old — and we were introduced to his artistry.
We found both — we found smooth and warm. American audiences that are not used to mezcals, they are kind of leery about it. It's mysterious, but is it too smoky? Ours isn't.
It's very inviting. You sip this and you could taste some of the foundational fruits from around the little hillside area of San Luis del Rio where they have guava, mango, bananas, strawberries, and a Mexican fruit called a sapote. So you could really taste some of the fruit in there that is cross-pollinated by the bees and the bats in this very highly vegetational region.
Related: There are about 35 different varietals of agave plants that you can turn into a mezcal. Tequila is made from only the blue agave plant. We smoke mezcal in an earthen pit while they steam tequila for a couple of hours, and their distillation process goes into these large silos.
So they mass produce tequila, whereas you cannot really mass produce a mezcal that's artisanal. Where we make this in Mexico at what's called a palenque, which is a term for the processing plant where we ferment the agave and where we distill it, there's no electricity, there's no running water. That's because we do it the old-fashioned way like they did it hundreds of years ago.
Related: There's only two ingredients in our mezcal. That's smoked agave and mountain spring water. It is illegal to have any additives.
Honestly, that I think is the major, major difference between artisanal mezcal and tequila. Tequila, by law, you can add quite a bit of stuff. It's only 70 calories per ounce.
It's a very pure cocktail. You can sip on this with soda or something, and all night, you had 70 calories. Dos Hombres It really depends on the occasion.
I think if I'm at the house, I like it neat or on a large cube. But if I have some friends over, I like to make cocktails, negronis, or old fashioneds or just even a classic margarita. That's how I was introduced to it 18, 19 years ago, was from a spicy mezcal margarita, and I couldn't place the spirit, but I was like, "This is amazing.
What is this?" And that's when I fell in love. The slight smokiness of Dos Hombres works so well in a michelada. It blends so well with that tomato based spiciness and then the beer.
I had another one in Austin, Texas just the other day, and I'm so happy with it. But I tell you what, if you try Dos Hombres instead of vodka in a Bloody Mary or what is a Bloody Maria, you'll never go to back to vodka. Dos Hombres Well, someone has to do it.
Someone has to do it. [ ] Look, yes, we are having a lot of fun. But it is a lot of work.
We are pounding the pavement. We've been working for a long time on this, and we know what needs to be done to become successful. And full transparency, we've only hemorrhaged money into this company.
It's true. But we're growing at such a fast pace. We just celebrated five years on the market, and we just dethroned the number four spot.
So we're now the number four mezcal out there, and we're swinging for that number one. And I truly believe that we're going to get there. That's the kind of competitive spirit that we both have, but it's not in a way of demeaning or disparaging any other company.
Those companies that we're in competition with, they're good and we want them to be good, so we have to be at our best to be able to beat them. For more People news, make sure to Read the original article on ..
