Mocel Mezcal co-founders Elizabeth Mendoza, left, and her sister, Rosalinda Mendoza.
Rosalinda Mendoza couldn’t have picked a worse time to leave her corporate job to focus on the startup she co-founded with her sister, Elizabeth.
It was October 2019. She had just quit as a senior client executive at IBM to devote all her time to Mocel Mezcal, a producer of small-batch-ultra premium mezcal made in Michoacán, one of the 31 Mexican states.
The future was bright. The pandemic upended everything.
Even then, despite supply chain challenges from delayed international licensing to a widespread cardboard shortage, Mendoza’s confidence never wavered. When the Yakima-based company began U.S. sales in 2022, pre-orders “were absolutely incredible.”
Today, Mocel Mezcal ships to more than 30 states across the country and is distributed in California, Oregon and Washington. Its Cupreata and Ensamble expressions both won Double Gold Medals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, known as the “Oscars of Spirits.” Double Gold means every judge on the panel awarded the spirits a gold medal. Wine Enthusiast gave the artisanal Ensamble a 95-point rating.
“We have something really special,” she says of their product.
Old-World Approach
Mendoza and her sister were born and raised in Yakima by immigrant parents from Michoacán. They grew up traveling back and forth between the two places and, as they hit drinking age, would bring bottles of mezcal back from Michoacán.
Mezcal has been made from just agave and water in Michoacán for centuries, as agave is native and abundant there. Michoacán is officially part of Mexico’s Mezcal Denomination of Origin. Mocel’s Michoacán mezcal is traditionally crafted using ancient distillation methods and is more earthy, herbal and less smoky and fruity than Oaxaca, which is more common on store shelves in the United States.
“Our mezcal is not industrialized. It’s very pure,” Mendoza says, adding that 95% of the mezcal sold in the U.S. comes from an agave called espadin, whereas Mocel uses cupreatea, inaequidens and espadincillo. “Imagine if 95% of the wine we got in the U.S. was Riesling or just Merlot. That means you’re missing out on all these other varieties.”
An Entrepreneur at Heart
Mendoza has had stints at some of Seattle’s powerhouse companies, including Starbucks, Amazon and Microsoft (the latter two were short, months-long internships). She earned her MBA from the University of Washington Foster School of Business in 2015 and always had a passion for entrepreneurialism. She remains involved in university entrepreneurial leadership programs as a mentor and judge.
Running a business across two countries has reinforced her belief in relationships and trust, particularly when sourcing raw ingredients directly from farming families in rural Mexico.
“In Mexico specifically,” she says, “the contract is more like, ‘Do I trust you? Do I respect you?’ It’s about the person as opposed to the sheet of paper.”
She has big plans for the company, which sells its product almost exclusively online and in bars and restaurants. She’s open to retail distribution and is looking at entering the Japanese market “because it’s another region that really cares about craftsmanship.”
“For us, it is really important to be able to tell the story of Michoacán, the history, and how it connects us,” she says. “If we don’t tell our story, somebody else is going to tell it for us, and It’s not going to get the love and justice that it deserves.”