With 25% of all the votes, Del Maguey was twice as popular as Montelobos, bought by Campari in 2019, which took the runner-up spot in the bestselling list with 15% of our bars naming it their house pour. The premium brand was founded by Iván Saldaña in 2012 under William Grant & Sons and since its more recent acquisition Saldaña has been travelling the world to educate the trade on Montelobos, making him one of the category’s most recognised faces.
The extension of our bestselling list to 10 brands in 2022 is testament to mezcal’s continued rise in popularity and below Montelobos it’s a tightly contested ranking with fewer than 10 votes separating Alipus to Ilegal.
Diageo’s Casamigos put in another solid performance to make its second appearance in the list and, with a rm foothold in the top trending ranking, the George Clooney brand looks set to continue its rise in future years.
One of the most popular styles of mezcal remains Espadin, and the vast majority of the brands on our list are of this style. Ilegal is a good example and its appeal to the bar trade also comes from its tag line of “no celebrities, just damn good mezcal”, a slight at the celebrity figures either owning or serving brand ambassadorial roles with agave spirits. Ilegal took home around 5% of the overall votes to maintain its spot in our bestselling mezcals.
In terms of top trending, 2023 looks set to be another stellar year for Del Maguey while an appearance for QuiQuiRiQui at the bottom is a breakthrough for the brand founded in 2011.
Methodology
The results of this report are the culmination of a questionnaire of 106 bars around the world, each cherry-picked to take part based on their performance in global bar awards. We aim to find out not only which brands sell best but also what’s trending. These two data sets give us an insight into the brands that are doing the most volume and the brands that are hot right now.
To read more on the methodology of the Brands Report click here.
