Aguascalientes Wants Your Next Pour of Mezcal

Governor Tere Jiménez has decided Aguascalientes needs a seat at the table, and that table is covered in mezcal.

She installed the Consejo Consultivo del Mezcal y demás Derivados del Agave, an advisory council that will push the state's agave spirits into national and international markets. The council brings together producers to coordinate strategy on quality, production standards, and commercialization. The move is the most concrete step yet by Aguascalientes to position itself as a mezcal state, a label that has never historically applied.

"We don't just want our mezcal sold here in Aguascalientes. We want it sold worldwide. Let's show the world what the people of Aguascalientes can do," Jiménez told producers during the installation ceremony. She framed the effort as a matter of state pride, telling producers they had the governor's office behind them and urging them to continue pursuing the certifications that export markets require.

The pitch is ambitious for a state nearly synonymous with the San Marcos Fair and thermal springs, not agave fields. Aguascalientes has roughly 1,500 hectares of agave under cultivation, according to state agricultural data, a fraction of Oaxaca's 100,000-plus hectares. The state's altitude and climate differ from the highland and coastal zones that produce the best-regarded espadín and tobalá, meaning its mezcal will need to find a market niche that doesn't depend on the flavor profiles that built Oaxaca's reputation. Mexico's mezcal dominance has long belonged to Oaxaca, which shipped over 6.8 million liters to international markets in 2024 alone. Jalisco and Durango round out the triangle. Aguascalientes, a landlocked state of 1.4 million people, has been a footnote in the agave spirits story. Its tourism identity draws on colonial architecture, the world's largest fair, and natural hot springs in the Calvillo mountains. Its agave spirits identity is something it now has to build from scratch.

The council's secretary, Esaú Garza de Vega from the state's economic development office, framed the effort as a coordinated push to improve agave cultivation and bring producers up to export certification standards. Training and certification are the gatekeepers, since international buyers demand traceability that small-batch palenqueros have historically struggled to provide. The council will generate proposals and activities to improve conditions in agave production and mezcal quality, according to Garza de Vega, and serve as a permanent channel for producers to voice opinions and needs to the state government.

Aguascalientes does have agave history, even if it has not been a mezcal marketer. The state produced agave syrup and regional spirits for decades before the mezcal designation boom of the early 2000s. But turning regional production into an export brand requires more than a council meeting in the state capital. It requires the kind of distribution relationships that Oaxacan producers spent twenty years building in Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo. It requires the brand recognition that lets a buyer reach for something beside the familiar Oaxacan bottle on a crowded shelf.

Mexico's mezcal industry is worth roughly 38 billion pesos annually, employing over 36,000 people across 1,700 production units. Oaxaca captures the lion's share, accounting for over 85 percent of certified production. The remaining slices get fought over by a handful of states trying to build identity around the same blue weber and espadín varietals. Aguascalientes enters a crowded race for attention in a category where the established player holds nearly every advantage.

Export certification in Mexico runs through the Consejo Regulador del Mezcal, which verifies agave origin, production methods, and bottling standards. NOM-070 compliance is the baseline, but gaining export certification typically requires additional quality controls, laboratory testing, and traceability audits that small producers find burdensome. The council plans to help producers navigate these requirements, though specific export targets and timelines were not disclosed. Jiménez said the state government would keep "opening doors" for mezcal sales abroad, calling on producers to continue their training and certification processes and reminding them that staying in the field is difficult work.

For now, the council exists on paper. The council's first meetings will determine whether it functions as a genuine coordinating body or another layer of state bureaucracy that produces resolutions and press releases without shifting market dynamics. The real test comes when the bottles leave the palenque and try to find shelf space next to a Oaxacan espadín at a bar in Chicago. If Aguascalientes can get there, it will have done something no Mexican state outside the mezcal triangle has managed in the modern export era.