The Women Behind Yola Mezcal Aren’t Waiting For Men To Buy Them Drinks

HUR CONVERSATIONS

May 3

YOLA MEZCAL

The Women Behind Yola Mezcal Aren’t Waiting For Men To Buy Them Drinks

By Bonnie Langedijk

Mezcal changed Lykke Li’s life in more ways than one.

“You know, I probably wouldn’t have a baby if it wasn’t for mezcal,” laughs the celebrated Swedish singer-songwriter, who in 2016 — together with Yola Jimenez and Gina Correll Aglietti — launched Yola Mezcal, a women-owned mezcal brand that focuses on preserving traditional techniques while promoting the economic independence of women across borders.

The organic and handcrafted spirit follows Jimenez’ grandfather’s original recipe, who in 1971 purchased an agave farm in Oaxaca, Mexico. Variations of her family’s drink were served at Jimenez’ mezcal bar that opened in Mexico City in 2008. It’s where she shared a first meeting and drink with her future co-founders. After her grandfather passed away, Jimenez inherited the family farm. From here, only women would distill, bottle, and sell the product. Yola Mezcal was born.

Today, it offers more than just a strong drink. “The brand in the beginning was energized from the things we were doing with the community that was around us, whether that was in Mexico or here [Los Angeles] or New York,” says Yola Mezcal’s Correll Aglietti. “We’re not just the product, it’s always gone a bit beyond that.”

In practice, this first and foremost equated to finding an alternative way to enter the global $1.8 trillion alcohol market, which continued to be saturated by legacy brands taking a simplified pink-it-and-shrink-it approach. Instead, Yola Mezcal set out to radically change both the production and consumer side of their brand. In Oaxaca — where the drink continues to be produced today — the local community of female employees are offered autonomy over their hours and the opportunity to bring their children to work, as well as financial independence in the form of direct pay.

On the outside, too, it’s women who humanize the spirit of the spirit. From hosting weekly dinners for friends of the brand like architect Frida Escobedo, middle Haim sister Danielle, and chef Laila Gohar — at the company’s R.M. Schindler-designed headquarters, to organizing Yola Día, an Los Angeles-based, all-female music festival with headliners including Courtney Love, Meghan Thee Stallion, and Cat Power. Part of its proceeds were donated to Downtown Women’s Center.

But let’s let them tell you all about it themselves.

Bonnie: I have a bad thing to tell you. I’ve never had mezcal in my life. Take me through the experience of drinking it.

Yola: I was there when [Gina and Lykke] had it for the first time.

Lykke: Yes, it was a good time. [Although] I also had something else which made me have a very spiritual experience. The word spirit I think really goes well with this because it’s a very heart opening, warm feeling. I’ve struggled a lot with other alcohols as they kind of bring me down. However there are really no side effects to this one except that you have a really good time.

Yola: It doesn’t keep you sober but you feel very energized and it makes you think about things in a different way, you have different conversations. That’s why it has such a history in Oaxaca with the healing process on different aspects of the community. It’s a beautiful plant that takes 7 to 25 years to grow in the sun, and then the process of making it is very simple. It’s just water and distillation. What you’re getting is that flavor of the plant, which is very different from having an industrialized product with fake sugar that has an impact on your body. If you don’t drink anything else, you’ll wake up feeling completely fine.

Gina: I’d say expansive is a word I’d use a lot. Everything opens. We’ve had some events where I’ve thought the mix of people wouldn’t work. Like is this group of people going to actually be groovy by the end of tonight? Somehow the introduction of this particular elixir makes everyone just so much warmer, fuzzier, and more adoring of each other. We’ve been having dinner parties for so long before we got Yola into the mix and then it just became way, way better.

“It’s a beautiful plant that takes 7 to 25 years to grow in the sun, and then the PROCESS of making it is very simple. It’s just water and distillation.”

You’re three women who own a spirit brand, but the alcohol industry is still mostly male focused. I feel that there’s no drink for me. I just think of a man and a cigar and a leather chair.

Lykke: You know we used to have this slogan: ‘Strong woman, strong drink.’ And this was a drink for a modern, working woman. You know, you want to have something strong to take the edge off your day but you also care about what you put in your body. Feel good the day after, [and] for us, that’s our drink.

Gina: That was exactly what Lykke described at one point. She’s said: ‘Why don’t we have that? All our friends are the breadwinners and have careers. It’s not like women are waiting for men to buy them drinks. So why don’t we have that moment for us.’

Exactly. How do you all work together as both friends as well as business partners?

Gina: It's wild. We’re sort of married to each other. I primarily deal with the day-to-day. Yola is spearheading the making of the product and managing everything [in Mexico]. She’s the only one who actually understands all the complexities of making it. Her and I spent the first couple of years going to every single bar and restaurant that we knew and didn’t know, and would tell people the story. Lykke from the jump was the one who actually came up with what this thing could be from a visionary and visual perspective.

Yola: One of my favorite things about the company is how respectful it is. It’s very different from a lot of other products that come out of Mexico and are just passed to some celebrity or something.

You can feel it’s more multidimensional than that. It isn’t just about the alcohol, it’s about women, the culture that surrounds that story.

Yola: The three of us fell in love with Mexico from the first moment. It feels like a place where people are exploring things. Gastronomy, art. We want Oaxaca to have a type of brand that really expresses this. It’s a great asset that we come from different places. I think when you’re trying to make something too specific, it doesn’t always work. A lot of things that come to America are a simplified, dried down, version of things. We really wanted to make it as interesting as we think Mexico is in our interaction. Respect the people who make it.

Gina: To kind of echo what Yola is saying, Lykke and I both had the exact same incredible first experience in Mexico City. Not just because of all of its attributes, but because of [everything] we didn’t know about Mexico City. It’s becoming this place that everyone’s going to, which is exciting. It’s getting recognized for how beautiful, sophisticated, and progressive it is. We felt like we found this special treasure and that’s such a big piece of wanting to share this product with people.. A lot of what people are putting out now is a diffused idea of what Mexico is.

Engaging with the community of women in Oaxaca, employing them, and paying them directly, how did that come about?

Yola: The immediate response was ‘Why would you do that? It’s not necessary.’ After a year of working with the mezcal factory with my grandfather, I was able to express [how we should employ women and pay them directly]. This was about daughters, and he has seven, so he was really supportive as he wanted a new life for his daughters too. [The community in Oaxaca] are so interested in ideas coming from outside, [but] this renaissance of mezcal was going to affect the community for good and bad, so we wanted to be smart about it. That means being in constant communication with them. [Them telling us] how it works, how it doesn’t, how they feel included etc.

Following your decision to pay women directly, have you seen other businesses in the region follow?

Yola: There have been other brands, acquaintances and friends of mine, and other mezcal brands that are implementing a version of paying women directly because of conversations we’ve had and it’s working really well. It’s growing. Although they’re in the minority, there are two or three facilities that I’ve been to where 50 percent of the workforce is women. That wasn’t part of the Oaxacan community ten years ago. Every conversation that I’ve had confirms that work doesn’t affect private life or motherhood. We can do both.

The brand is clearly about community, also outside of Mexico as shown with the events and dinners you host around the brand. How did you build that up?

Gina: That was totally natural. We all played similar roles in our worlds. Lykke and I met Yola and had this preview into her world in Mexico which was so rich and diverse. She was such a center point within it. Lykke came into my life with this whole music world around her, artists coming through from Europe to Los Angeles, so it was just this crossover of all our networks. Mezcal just added an extra juicy moment into our lives. It’s magical when you add a little magic potion to it.

You also organized an all female identifying music festival called Yola Día, another testament to building out this idea of female togetherness.

Lykke: The main focus was to highlight female performers. We tried to do a whole 360 where it’s [female] performers, [but also] all the food and beverage [people] and even the security guards, production crew [being women]. It’s really quite unheard of. I’ve been on tour for a decade and it’s never that there’s all female identifying headliners. The genres were very different. It was Courtney Love, who played sober for the first time, and then SOPHIE, Meghan Thee Stallion, Kelsey Lu, Cat Power, and myself. The glue was that everyone was drinking mezcal and was really open. It really was an incredible night as it was so fluid.

Yola: You could feel that. In the audience there were young queer kids [but also] 90s European pop music [crowd] and everyone was dancing and having a great time together. It felt very communal.

Gina: We got this lucky moment where we could push it and run with it, in a way [our partners] wouldn’t have.

*Megan Thee Stallion performing at Yola Día, photographed by Theo Lindquist*

*Lykke Li performing at Yola Día, photographed by Theo Lindquist*

In what way?

Gina: We had Dolores Huerta speak at the height of the festival. Someone was sort of laughing when we brought that up because, you know, having a 90 year old civil rights activist speak at the peak of a music festival just seems absurd. Then Yola did this incredible art project that was about pushing the lines of what a nation is. Fighting for border equality or rights with the ACLU. It was a very specific time to be able to pull it off, because you know, it’s a public event. The wrong few people show up and they make it a totally different energy. And because our message was so clear I think that people knew what they were coming for and what this was. Itt was really beautiful because of that. It was beyond us.

Lykke: As women, we’ve naturally always been the homemaker, the feeder, the nurturer. I think when women really get to have the upper hand on creating a project like that, we [then] also care very much about how it feels. What you see, what you eat etc. For instance, I was working behind-the-scenes too and I had a female tour manager and all the crew [was female-identifying]. That was the first time. I mean really, as in any industry, [usually] when you open the gates, behind-the-scenes it’s all male. I feel like people felt we cared. It was so much about the whole experience, and you could feel that.

Gina: Yeah, it wasn’t just the basics and then slapped on with a female line-up.

Lykke: We had one idea in the beginning which I guess we didn’t do, where you were supposed to walk through a womb, remember that?

Gina: It was a birth canal. But we already pushed it pretty far. I remember when we walked in, there were massive signs about equality and how everyone needs to be kind to each other etc. You didn’t even have to read it all, you could just feel it. I mean I’ve been going to concerts and festivals my whole life and it wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced. Lykke also played one of her best shows I’ve ever seen, ever. And I’ve seen almost every show you’ve ever played in America, so.

Lykke: I did try.

So would the brand branch out into other products or events?

Gina: Definitely. We have a big list.

Yola: What’s great about us spending so much time in Mexico is seeing how things aren’t compartmentalized in the same way as in America. With Mezcal, it’s about food, family, interaction.. From day one we wanted to have the company be about things that we cared about and how every aspect of a night is important. We always try to collaborate with people that are thoughtful as well as create a great community. So we’ll explore that more and more.

Gina: And there’s so much too that comes from agave. So we’re definitely exploring. We got to get Yola Mezcal to Europe and a few other goals ticked [first] and then we’re onto the next.

Once I finally taste mezcal, what's the best way to drink it?

Gina: Au natural, straight up.

And I read somewhere you don’t shot it, right? You have to sip it.

Yola: Sip it. And when you really let the flavor of the plant expand in your mouth, you can see it breathing and opening. The second sip is a little bit different than the first. So I recommend having a little shot and having all of it slowly by itself.

Delicious.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.