A Sonoma company, partner mezcaleros and agave from the hills.

Bozal is a mezcal brand built around wild agave. It was launched in 2016 by 3 Badge Beverage Corporation, a drinks company based in Sonoma, California, whose portfolio The Spirits Business lists as including Uncle Val’s Gin and Kirk & Sweeney Rum. In a 2023 press release quoted by The Daily Pour, August Sebastiani was named as the founder of Bozal.

The name is the brand’s first statement. The packaging-design site Dieline explained in October 2016 that bozal means “wild” or “untamed,” and that for the mezcal it refers to the particular species of agave grown in Oaxaca and Guerrero. The brand’s range later reached a third state: The Daily Pour reported in September 2023 that Bozal highlights niche, wild-grown agave varieties from Oaxaca, Guerrero and Durango, and that, in partnership with local distillers across those regions, it had brought more than 30 expressions to market since its founding in 2016.

Bozal does not present itself as a single distillery. The company says its agaves grow wild on the “steep precarious hillsides” of the three states, where they are sought after by local mezcaleros, and that each takes between 7 and 19 years to mature before it is harvested by hand with a coa de jima or a machete. Its production page describes the familiar artisanal sequence: agave hearts cooked in earthen pit ovens, crushed by a stone tahona wheel turned by a horse or a bull, fermented in the open air in wooden tanks or clay pots with naturally occurring yeast, then distilled twice. The company also says that for every maguey harvested to make Bozal, two are planted in a mountainside nursery and returned to the wild after one to two years.

The independent database Mezcal Reviews gives one example of how the partnerships work: its entry for Bozal Tobalá lists the mezcalero as Israel Palestino Vásquez, the town as San Juan Bautista Jayacatlán in Oaxaca and the still as a clay pot.

A ceramic bottle with a sans-serif name.

Bozal’s packaging is its best-documented design fact. Dieline reported in October 2016 that the San Francisco agency Swig created custom ceramic bottles for the spirit, drawing on the history of mezcal drunk from traditional copitas, and credited the designer as Kevin Roberson. The writer, Theresa Christine Johnson, noted that a ceramic bottle makes the drinker handle it with extra care, that the earthy colours and simple approach suggest something handmade and traditional, and that this is set against a sans-serif typeface that feels modern, keeping the look minimal.

The ceramic bottle has stayed with the brand through its change of owner. When the brand was sold in 2024, The Spirits Business described the liquid as presented in “distinct” ceramic packaging, and the mezcal site Mezcalistas says Bozal is known for its colourful ceramic bottles.

The range is organised into four families on the company’s website. Ensamble bottlings are blends of several magueys; Single Maguey bottlings each use one non-espadín agave, such as Cuishe, Tobasiche or Tepeztate; Sacrificio mezcals follow the pechuga tradition, in which, the company says, a protein such as chicken, lamb or pork, with seasonal wild fruits and grains, hangs in a basket inside the still during the final distillation; and Reserva mezcals are made in what the company calls the “Ancestral” tradition, distilled only in clay pots. The site’s headline line is “Wildly refined,” which it explains as the belief that “something wild produces a far richer spirit.”

Seasonal releases extend the same story. The Daily Pour reported in September 2023 on Cempasúchil, a Reserva mezcal distilled with marigold flowers, which it described as a symbol of the dead in pre-Hispanic Mexico, and released for Día de los Muertos. Sebastiani was quoted as saying the brand had “always dreamed of crafting an ancestral mezcal that would honor the traditions of Día de los Muertos.”

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all mezcal names: Bozal, Alipús, Real Minero, Rey Campero, Mezcal Vago, Madre and Dos Hombres. Mezcal is distilled from cooked agave, and much of it is made in small production houses that Wikipedia notes are called fábricas or palenques, often in villages in the hills of Oaxaca. The traditional method roasts the agave hearts in pit ovens and crushes them with a stone wheel turned by a horse, and Wikipedia says mezcal has been recognised internationally as an appellation of origin since 1994.

A mezcal brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the village it points to, because the company that sells the mezcal is not always the family that makes it, and one brand can draw on several producers. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and which families and palenques actually make the mezcal.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its mezcal is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Californian brand that went home to Mexico.

In November 2024 Bozal changed hands. The Spirits Business reported on 20 November 2024 that Maguey Imports, the US distribution arm of Maguey Spirits, had bought Bozal Mezcal and its sister brand Pasote Tequila, made in the highlands of Jalisco, from 3 Badge Beverage Corporation, “returning both brands to Mexican ownership.” Just Drinks reported the next day that financial terms were not disclosed. Maguey Spirits has owned Bozal since November 2024.

Maguey Spirits is run by the brothers Alejandro and Christian Rossbach, who, The Spirits Business reported, describe the company as dedicated to “preserving and elevating Mexico’s rich heritage of artisanal spirits,” while Maguey Imports works directly with local producers across Mexico’s agave regions. Alejandro Rossbach, co-owner of Maguey Spirits, framed the deal as a reversal of the usual pattern: “While it’s common for large corporations to acquire small, independent producers, this transaction flips the script,” he said, adding that “a small producer has reclaimed the brands they’ve lovingly crafted” and that Bozal and Pasote were now “proudly Mexican-owned.” He also paid tribute to “the remarkable foundation 3 Badge has established with Bozal and Pasote.” The mezcal database Mezcal Reviews now lists Maguey Spirits as the brand’s owner.

For a design guide, Bozal shows how a container can carry a brand’s whole idea: a ceramic bottle that recalls the copita, earthy colours that suggest the hand, and a plain sans-serif name that keeps the result modern. Compare Del Maguey, which builds its range around single villages, and Montelobos, another mezcal from Oaxaca. For this guide we use fired clay, charcoal and agave grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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