Beer, tomato and lime

Yola’s Michelada

  • Yola’s Michelada
  • Yola’s Michelada
  • Yola’s Michelada
    Yola on the cover of last year's Bon Appetit Travel Issue
  • Yola’s Michelada
    Yola's partner, Gina, at an event sponsored by Yola Mezcal, to benefit Planned Parenthood
  • Yola’s Michelada
    Yola Mezcal, in the flesh

NOTES

An easy summer drink, Yola uses fresh tomato where most recipes call for tomato juice. Yola sometimes adds a touch of Oaxcan smoked worm salt, a classic accompaniment to mezcal served straight-up.

INSTRUCTIONS

Fill a large beer glass with ice. Using your hands, squeeze the juice and pulp from the tomato into the glass, discarding the peels. Add the juice of one or two limes (according to taste), and season with a pinch of salt.

Fill the glass with beer, and stir. Crack black pepper on top, garnish with a few drops of Tabasco sauce (if using), and enjoy.

RECIPE

DIFFICULTY

EASY

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SERVES

1

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PREP TIME

5 MINS

Michelada

  • medium 
    ripe tomato
  •  
    limes
  • pinch 
    sea salt
  •  
     
    ice
  • can 
    light beer
  •  
     
    black pepper to taste
  •  
     
    tabasco (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

Fill a large beer glass with ice. Using your hands, squeeze the juice and pulp from the tomato into the glass, discarding the peels. Add the juice of one or two limes (according to taste), and season with a pinch of salt.

Fill the glass with beer, and stir. Crack black pepper on top, garnish with a few drops of Tabasco sauce (if using), and enjoy.

Yola Jiminez is the owner and face of the all-female run spirit brand, Yola Mezcal. We were set up on a blind date on my recent trip to her hometown of Mexico City, and somehow, I have seen her nearly once a week since. Running an international liquor brand involves a lot of travel, staying out late, and keeping up to date with the myriad inventive ways bartenders and mixologists are using your product. Yes, it seems every marketing agency and influencer has their own mezcal these days, but I can guarantee, none of them have roots as deep as Yola’s. She grew up visiting her grandfather’s palenqe in Oaxaca, a passion project she would go on to transform into a sustainable business with her partners, singer Lykke Li and Gina Aglietti. Their Instagram says it all with their highly populated hashtag, #StrongWomenStrongDrink. They have positioned Yola Mezcal at the heart of the creative communities they serve, and while you can find them at the best restaurants in New York and LA, they make a point of supporting a dizzying array of art shows, fundraisers and like-minded events. 

When I asked Yola what a woman whose world revolves around the bar does to recover from a big night out, she offered this michelada recipe without batting an eye. I had expected her to come back to me with some adaptogenic, turmeric-laden something or other, but her enthusiasm for the fresh twist on the classic Mexican drink was so much more convincing. This is a morning-after cocktail, in salad’s clothing, and Yola promises that after one, “you will immediately feel better, but for maximum effect, chase it down with one more.” Yola is currently designing and building a guest house of her own in Mexico City with her partner, Miggi Hood. I’m personally hoping this recipe will be a fixture on the breakfast menu.

Yola Jiminez in Her Own words

Julia Sherman: When did you start Yola mezcal? how did you find your partners, and what does that collaboration look like? 

Yola Jiminez: We started the brand three years ago but our friendship began long before that. I met my two partners Gina and Lykke a decade ago in Mexico City at different times when I was starting to work on my farm and mezcal. They were friends and lived together in LA. They encouraged me from the beginning and they both became mezcal ambassadors. I would go visit them often and we made dinners that Gina cooked and where Lykke would sing, and I would bring mezcal.

JS: Why mezcal?

YJ: My grandfather was born in an old mezcal—making town in the mountains of Oaxaca and had a deep love for the drink all his life. He bought a farm in the late sixties in San Juan del Rio and began producing mezcal himself with a mezcalero whose family had been making it for generations. I grew up going to the farm.

JS: At what point did you get involved?

YJ: When my grandfather died, I wanted to keep the tradition alive. I inherited part of the farm and began working on it eleven years ago. It took a long time to make the palenque and the mezcal production sustainable. But now we are able to make Yola by-hand, self sufficiently. We plant all our own agave, and using only natural  practices.

JS: So as three women owners, did the focus on women just come about naturally?

YJ: Yes, we wanted to preserve traditional mezcal, and be able to support the women in Oaxaca who I was already working with. We wanted to see a spirit brand that addressed sophisticated women, and that cared about the process, history and craft of products. We wanted to show that you can have a meaningful experience from something that isn’t usually considered wholesome, like alcohol.

JS: Yours is a women-run mezcal brand, but are all your employees women as well? Is that very unusual?

YJ: The great majority of our employees are women. I made this a priority after I visited different mezcal making towns in Oaxaca and saw that entire families work in the production, but only the men were paid for their work. I wanted to change this. We pay the women who work for us directly. They determine their own hours and which aspect of the process they want to work on. I also met very talented female producers and mezcaleros. We wanted to showcase them, and hopefully create more jobs for women in a region where there aren’t many prospects. Now we have an all-female bottling facility, management and sales force. It is still very unusual to have a female-run company in Mexico, especially in spirits. But I see more and more women in managing positions in mezcal and it is very exciting.

JS: Have you faced any challenges in working this way?

YJ: There haven’t been any challenges from it really, it has been a wonderful and inspiring experience to work with women.

JS: Tell me a little bit about the guest house you are working on. Has this always been a dream of yours?

YJ:  No it’s a new dream that was born from finding this beautiful house and wanting to share it with other people. It’s exactly how I felt about mezcal.