This was 2003, and after an aimless, wild 18 months, he crossed over into Guatemala to get his U.S. Rexar (center, sipping a glass) walks through an agave field in Oaxaca. You don’t get that burn in the back of the throat that you get with tequila.”
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“With good mezcal,” he says savoring a sip, “you should get a mouth full of agave, a little grassy pepper flavor, and a hint of smoke. “I bought a bicycle and rode to the beach and read books.” He also came to Oaxaca and drank mezcal. “This was before Tulum was all hotels and high-rises and nonsense,” he says. But after 9/11 he turned inward, decamping to Tulum, Mexico, where he rented a shack for $80 a month. After graduating from Columbia University with a degree in Latin and comp lit, he embarked on what would be a peripatetic life-teaching at a midwest private school, briefly trying his hand at finance in Atlanta, then importing furniture from Mexico to New York.
It also happens to be where Rexer, 57, fell in love with mescal-tequila’s smokier, hipper cousin. Oaxaca is one of the poorest states in Mexico. “Sometimes snakes are hiding underneath.” “You have to be careful,” Rexer tells me of harvesting the plants.
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He pours me a glass of Ilegal Reposado, aged in oak for something like six months, as we watch an 80-year-old man with skin like a leather saddle hack an agave plant to shreds with an axe. It’s a hot-ass-day in July and Rexer and I are standing in a massive agave field in Matatlan, Oaxaca-perfect rows of huge succulents set against a backdrop of blue sky and hulking mountains. How do we scale this thing and not fuck it up?” Or, put another way, Will Ilegal Mezcal be the buzz-worthy spirits answer to Bulleit? Or, are they destined to be another small-batch hobby?Īuthenticity is probably the most overused word in branding these days. And I’m not a rich man.” Now that he’s got the industry’s attention, there’s a more pressing question, and it’s one he admits is legitimate: “Anybody who tells you they didn’t get into this business to make money is lying. “The liquor business is like owning a race horse,” he says. And Rexer acknowledges that guerrilla marketing is basically the only marketing they can afford. It’s cool to be an agent provocateur in these turbulent times. Says Rexer: “We were famous for being famous.” The only problem? Ilegal was a boutique business selling just 6,000 cases a year. Suddenly, Wiz Khalifa was hanging out at founder John Rexer’s bar in Guatemala, smoking blunts with his crew. Its surging social media presence caught the attention of executives at Bacardi who bought a minority stake in the company earlier this year, giving Ilegal’s mezcal national distribution for the first time (plus an influx of cash). The projection that brought viral fame to Ilegal.