Forbes reported on September 22, 2026 that pox, sotol, destilado de pulque, raicilla and charanda, five Mexican spirits outside tequila and mezcal, are reaching U.S. bars through two Mexico City companies, Casa Dionisio and MEXA.

The article, written by contributor Claudia Alarcón, quoted Isidoro Guindi, who goes by Zury and describes himself as chief executive of Casa Dionisio and a co-founder of MEXA, on why the two firms treat the categories as preservation projects rather than novelty items, aimed at keeping traditional production methods intact while presenting the spirits to a wider drinking public.

What five spirits Forbes put on the list

Pox is a corn distillate historically made by Tzotzil Maya communities in the highlands of Chiapas, where it was used for ceremonial and medicinal purposes long before any brand bottled it commercially, according to Food52's reporting on the category. Sotol is distilled not from agave but from Dasylirion, the desert spoon plant native to Chihuahua, Coahuila and Durango, a botanical distinction that Mexico's designation of origin for the spirit, recognized in 2002 according to Texas Monthly, is built around. Destilado de pulque is a distilled version of pulque, the fermented agave sap drink that predates the Spanish conquest, as Boston Magazine's survey of the category noted. Raicilla is an agave spirit made mainly in western Jalisco that operated outside formal regulation for decades before Mexico granted it Denomination of Origin protection in 2019, per reporting on the spirit's history. Charanda is a sugarcane spirit from Michoacán that received its own Denomination of Origin in 2003, a designation that confines production to sixteen municipalities around Uruapan, according to Distiller.com.

Who is behind Casa Dionisio and MEXA

Guindi co-founded the pox brand Siglo Cero in 2014 with fellow Mexico City resident Marcos Sacal after encountering the spirit on a trip to Chiapas, entering a partnership with brothers Javier and Ángel Pérez, master distillers from the Tzotzil community of San Juan Chamula, according to Forbes's earlier coverage of the brand and Adventure.com's reporting on pox. Forbes's September account described Casa Dionisio's current portfolio as having grown to include DonDante, a second pox label, and Sotomayor, a sotol brand built around Dasylirion harvested in the Chihuahuan Desert, while Corazón Salvaje distills destilado de pulque and MEXA's own labels cover raicilla and, under the name Michoa, charanda. In the state of Morelos, Forbes reported, the pulque distillate is produced in partnership with maestro pulquero Alejo Dávila using agave grown on his land. Guindi and business partner Luis Vences also run SOM, a cocktail bar with two locations in Mexico City's Condesa neighborhood built around the same spirits; earlier trade coverage from El Restaurante quoted Vences explaining that the bar's name stands for Somos México, a phrase that translates as this is Mexico.

What the designations of origin do and don't cover

Forbes noted that of the five spirits, only raicilla and sotol currently carry a formal Denomination of Origin, the legal designation that restricts a name to a defined territory and production method, while pox, destilado de pulque and charanda continue on regional tradition and family recipe rather than statute. Sotol's designation, recognized by Mexico in 2002 and limited to Chihuahua, Coahuila and Durango, is not recognized by the United States, so distillers north of the border can still label spirits made from Dasylirion as sotol, a gap that has drawn objection from Mexican producers according to Texas Monthly's reporting on the dispute. The Forbes piece did not include sales, export volume or bar placement figures for any of the five categories, and did not specify how widely Casa Dionisio's and MEXA's bottlings are distributed beyond SOM's two locations.

What this means

Tequila Watch tracks tequila, not pox or sotol, so none of the five spirits Forbes profiled sit in this publication's database. What is worth watching is whether the same appetite for small batch, terroir driven agave spirits that fueled tequila's export growth now pulls raicilla, the category here closest to tequila's own agave base, into wider distribution, and whether a Denomination of Origin ends up marking the line between spirits that scale internationally and those that stay regional.