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La Mezca will offer more than 20 artisanal mezcals and agave spirits from across Mexico in Mueller.<\/p>\n
Provided by Frida Molina.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0V\u00e1zquez sisters \u2014 best known for building Veracruz All Natural into one of Austin\u2019s most recognizable taco brands \u2014 will open the mezcaler\u00eda, La Mezca, on Wednesday in the Mueller neighborhood at 1905\u00a0Aldrich St., Suite 125-B. The opening marks the sisters\u2019 first spirit-focused venture after seven locations of Veracruz All Natural, plus the restaurant Veracruz\u00a0Fonda & Bar. La Mezca will celebrate small-batch agave spirits and the generations of artisanal mezcaleros who craft them.<\/p>\n
Austin has seen tequila turned trend and\u00a0mezcal often flattened into a smoky curiosity. What the V\u00e1zquez sisters are attempting is something else entirely: an introduction not just to a drink, but to a culture. With La Mezca, they want to show that mezcal is never one thing, never one region or one flavor, but many.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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‘Mezcal is not just mezcal’<\/p>\n
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La Mezca will also offer spirits in cocktails.<\/p>\n
Provided by Frida Molina.<\/p>\n
La Mezca sits beside Veracruz Fonda & Bar, the restaurant that brought the family\u2019s cooking to Mueller. The timing feels inevitable. After years of visiting Mexico City and\u00a0Oaxaca, watching the slow work of maestros \u2014 mezcaleros and mezcaleras, tasting spirits pressed from\u00a0agave hearts that take decades to grow \u2014 the sisters found themselves with the rarest of commodities in Austin: an empty space, next door.<\/p>\n
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A mezcal cocktail at La Mezca, the Austin bar led by the Vazquez sisters to highlight Mexican spirits and flavors.<\/p>\n
Provided by La Mezca<\/p>\n
The bar will feature more than 20 artisanal mezcals and ancestral agave spirits from family producers across Oaxaca, Guerrero, Durango\u00a0and San Luis Potos\u00ed \u2014 many from fourth-generation mezcaleros using techniques unchanged for centuries. The team plans to guide guests through the spirits\u2019 stories, illustrating the differences between tequila and mezcal, the regional variations and the diverse agave varieties. La Mezca will also offer cocktails featuring Mexican mezcals, tequila, rum and gin, rotating seasonally.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMezcal is not just mezcal,\u201d Sebastian Coja, the bar manager at La Mezca said. \u201cYou can have the same type of\u00a0agave from Oaxaca, but from two different towns, and it will taste completely different. Because of the terroir. Because of the maestro. That\u2019s what we want to show people.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sisters plan to invite\u00a0mezcaleros to speak, to lead tastings, to show the difference between tepeztate and espad\u00edn, between bottles distilled by a father or, just as often, by a daughter.<\/p>\n
There is, too, the matter of honoring the maestros. Their names appear on bottles, their stories folded into the liquid itself. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the juice,\u201d Coja said \u201cIt\u2019s also the history behind each bottle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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La Mezca will pair spirits with small tacos.<\/p>\n
Provided by Frida Molina.<\/p>\n
Sip, savor, learn: La Mezca promises to reintroduce\u00a0mezcal to Austinites<\/p>\n
The education will be tempered by food.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe really want to pair the\u00a0botanas with the bottles,\u201d Reyna V\u00e1zquez said. \u201cRotate flavors depending on what\u2019s behind the bar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike the bright, pastel-colored Veracruz Fonda, La Mezca leans into a sense of mystery. The menu features small tacos on yellow corn tortillas \u2014 barbacoa one night, mushrooms or fish another \u2014 each crafted to complement a new pour. House-made salsas bring unexpected flavors, from matcha and peanut to chile verde. Menu highlights include\u00a0taquitos de la calle, like carnitas de hongos with cilantro, onion and habanero popcorn salsa, and pescado al citrus piqu\u00edn, served with crispy potato strips.<\/p>\n
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The decoration inside La Mezca borrows from the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos.<\/p>\n
Provided by Frida Molina.<\/p>\n
The d\u00e9cor reflects the same careful intention as the menu. The sisters designed the space themselves \u2014 no decorators, no consultants \u2014 drawing inspiration from D\u00eda de los Muertos altars with candles, marigold tones, incense and smoke. Everything is handmade, echoing the artisanal spirits they serve. It is, as Reyna puts it, \u201ca new chapter.\u201d Their family\u2019s restaurants have always centered on food; La Mezca, for the first time, centers on drink, though the line between the two blurs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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When asked what they hope people will take away from their first visit, the sisters answer without hesitation: knowledge, respect, and joy. They want people to know that Mexico is more than tequila; that\u00a0bacanora, raicilla, sotol\u00a0and even Mexican whiskey belong to the same lineage. They want mezcal to be fun again. They want you to sit down, sip slowly, and remember that some things are meant to last.<\/p>\n
La Mezca will be open Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from 5 p.m. to midnight, and Fridays and Saturdays from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Mondays and Tuesdays will be reserved for private events, master classes and visits from small-batch producers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"La Mezca will offer more than 20 artisanal mezcals and agave spirits from across Mexico in Mueller. Provided…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":263873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[359,137986,137987,3990,1582,276,20947,2961,224,5337,2222,137984,137985,9733,9063,988,9727,358],"class_list":{"0":"post-263872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-texas","10":"tag-austin-things-to-do","11":"tag-bars","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-california","14":"tag-dining","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-mexico","19":"tag-mezcal","20":"tag-restaurant-bars","21":"tag-restaurant-news","22":"tag-restaurant-openings","23":"tag-restaurants","24":"tag-tequila","25":"tag-texas"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115287782121570088","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}