An all-natural, handmade agave spirit from the hills of Oaxaca - grown, cooked, fermented, distilled and bottled by the same hands, the way it's been done for six generations.
It's dusk in Santiago Matatlan, and the bats are clocking in. They lift off the hillsides, find the pale flowers of the agave, and do the unglamorous night-shift work of pollination. Below them sit rows of agave that nobody is rushing. That patience is the whole business plan.
Rosaluna is a mezcal you can describe in five words - agave, water, and a lot of love - and then spend an afternoon explaining why those five words are harder to pull off than they sound. It is made in the heartland of mezcal, in Oaxaca, Mexico, by a family that has been doing this for more than six generations. Siblings JJ and Frida Mendez run the still. An American team handles the part where a beautiful liquid becomes a brand people can actually find.
What lands in the glass is mezcal that argues with your expectations. Less smoke. More sweetness. The kind of spirit that makes people who "don't like mezcal" quietly order a second. And it arrives certified organic, vegan, non-GMO, kosher, zero-carb and carbon neutral - which is a lot of paperwork for something that started with a moon and some bats.
"Mezcal is Magic."
- Rosaluna's three-word thesis, printed on everythingHere is the uncomfortable thing about a category having a moment: success tends to arrive faster than the agave can grow. Mezcal demand exploded. Agave takes the better part of a decade to mature. You can see where the math goes - corners get cut, smoke gets cranked up to mask young plants, and "artisanal" becomes a sticker rather than a method.
The land pays first. Mezcal production is famously thirsty and wood-hungry, and a gold rush is rarely kind to the hillside it happens on. The people pay next - the maestras and maestros mezcaleros whose names rarely make it onto the bottle they spent a lifetime learning to fill.
Rosaluna's founders looked at all of that and made a contrarian bet: that the slow, unscalable, single-estate way of doing things wasn't a liability to apologize for. It was the entire point - and, eventually, the competitive advantage.
"They grow their own agave longer, and that maturation is what makes it sweeter and less smoky."
- The single-estate trade-off, in one sentenceRosaluna is the brainchild of four Americans who, on paper, had no business making mezcal: Freddie Martignetti, an investor and adviser; entrepreneur Pepe Mireles; Terry Lee, former COO of the underwear-subscription brand MeUndies; and Nate Brown, a creative director whose previous credits include work with Jay-Z, Drake and Beyonce. It is, charmingly, the most over-qualified branding meeting in the agave business.
Their move was not to invent a mezcal. It was to partner with one. They joined forces with siblings JJ and Frida Mendez Leon Jimenez, whose family has handcrafted mezcal in the hills of Oaxaca for over six generations, and built a single-estate operation around them - one that grows its own agave and handles every step from harvest to bottle. Today Steve McGarry, a longtime Pernod Ricard prestige-sales veteran, runs the company as CEO.
Investor and adviser who helped seed the idea.
Creative director; past work with Jay-Z, Drake and Beyonce.
Former COO of subscription brand MeUndies.
Entrepreneur and part of the founding four.
"Made only with agave, water, and (lots of) love."
- The recipe, and also the entire spec sheetThe flagship is Rosaluna Mezcal Joven, distilled from Espadin agave - the workhorse of Oaxaca - and then deliberately not hurried. Because the plants mature longer, the result skews sweeter and softer, with smoke that whispers rather than shouts. It's the bottle that converts skeptics and behaves well in a margarita.
Single-estate isn't marketing here; it's the production chart. The same operation grows the agave, harvests it, cooks it, ferments it, distills it and bottles it. Nothing is outsourced, which means nothing is anonymous.
And then there's the bottle itself. The label's clay-red pays tribute to the deep red earth of Oaxaca. Two figures stand on it, giving thanks to the moon - a nod to the nocturnal bats whose midnight pollinating made the agave possible in the first place. It's a design that tells you what's inside before you've read a word.
The numbers a spreadsheet loves and a smoke-snob distrusts - until the second sip.
Four American founders partner with the Mendez family's six-generation mezcal operation in Santiago Matatlan, Oaxaca.
Wins at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition and other international spirits competitions put the Joven on critics' radar.
Led by Whispering Angel creator Sacha Lichine with a Shaw-Ross import partnership. Lichine joins the board.
COMERCAM awards Rosaluna the green sustainability certification - a first for any mezcal brand.
Rosaluna spotlights its award-winning mezcal across the on-premise trade.
Skepticism is healthy in a category drowning in romance. So here is what's actually verifiable - certifications earned, a board-level wine veteran writing checks, and a distribution partner whose entire job is getting bottles onto shelves.
Illustrative comparison of Rosaluna's verifiable credentials. Bars scaled for legibility, not for bragging.
"Secured Series A financing with Sacha Lichine and Shaw-Ross - fueled by a shared passion for quality spirits."
- Rosaluna funding announcement, April 2025The Lichine signal is worth sitting with. The man built Whispering Angel into a rose juggernaut and could fund anything he likes. He chose a single-estate mezcal and took a board seat - which is a stronger endorsement than any tasting note. Pair that with Shaw-Ross handling distribution, and the slow-agave bet suddenly has a fast highway in front of it.
Most spirits brands treat sustainability as a press release. Rosaluna treats it as a production constraint - which is harder, slower and far less convenient. Being the first mezcal to earn the Distintivo Verde isn't a trophy on the shelf so much as a receipt for choices made upstream, where the wood and water and labor actually live.
The mission is quietly radical for the category: honor the family, honor the land, and refuse the trade-off everyone says you have to make. Keep the maestras and maestros central. Keep the recipe to three honest words. Then let the certifications - organic, vegan, carbon neutral, and the rest - simply confirm what the method already guaranteed.
"The two figures give thanks to the moon for the pollination of the agaves growing right in front of them."
- Behind the Bottle, on the Oaxacan labelAs mezcal keeps scaling, the brands that survive scrutiny will be the ones that can show their work - traceable land, named makers, real certifications. Rosaluna built for that world before it asked, which is either excellent foresight or excellent luck. With Lichine's capital and Shaw-Ross's reach, the question is no longer whether the liquid is good. It's how many more shelves it reaches without breaking the slow promise that made it good.
So return to that hillside at dusk. The bats are still working. The agave is still in no hurry. But the bottle those things become now sits behind bars in New York, on award lists, and in the portfolio of a man who knows exactly what a category-defining brand looks like. The scene didn't change. What changed is how far its magic now travels.
Same moon. Same bats. Same five-word recipe. Now with a passport.
- Rosaluna, from Oaxacan hillside to national shelf