Category: Press Release

No one knows the bonding power of booze better than brand director of Ilegal Mezcal, Kaylan Rexer.

Her speciality is bringing people together, united under the great causes of advocacy and alcohol. Ilegal is markedly political—you’ve probably seen their street art campaigns—and strives to support everything from LGBTQ+ rights to economic stability in the lives of Oaxacan mezcal artisans. Read on to find out more about this boundary-pushing brand and how Kaylan uses her platform to speak up on issues that really matter.

No image may ever be able to capture the complete sensations of NYC Pride—the ferociousness, liberated joy and unbounded togetherness—but photographer Michael Hoerner certainly comes close. In a series of vibrant images, punctuated by a large-scale, black and white piece, Hoerner taps into the raw energy of it all and documents some of the characters populating the scene. In a way, Hoerner’s work is a time capsule.

The images were taken during Pride in 2008 and yet they feel as if they were taken yesterday. Hoerner’s exhibiting the photos just blocks from where they were taken, in the old Perry Street Theater, which Ilegal Mezcal now calls home. Here, they’ve hosted a series of concerts with proceeds to benefit Planned Parenthood. And now the show “Ilegal Pride,” curated by Gramercy Park Hotel’s Rose Bar Creative Director Matthew Green and Ilegal Mezcal’s brand team leader Kaylan Rexer, stakes claim to the walls with a portion of proceeds benefitting select LGBTQ youth charities.

For some people, drinking tequila, a type of mezcal made from the blue agave plant in specific regions of Mexico — as well as other kinds of mezcal — is even a way to signal dissent from the presidency of Donald Trump, who has made a border wall between the United States and Mexico a priority.

When Mr. Trump announced his intention to run for office, John Rexer, the founder of Ilegal Mezcal, a company based in Oaxaca, Mexico, started a line of merchandise denigrating Mr. Trump’s character. The company hosts concerts with Planned Parenthood at an unmarked theater in Manhattan’s West Village and only makes mezcal “with espadin agave because it’s sustainable,” said Kaylan Rexer, 29, Ilegal’s brand director.

Mezcal in Guatemala

Even in daylight, candles are necessary at Café No Se. The bar is a bit of a vortex: a dingy-yet-charming cave with no natural light in Antigua, Guatemala. Following the path of Café No Se’s several windowless rooms and through a crawlspace door will eventually deposit the adventurer at yet another bar, where they serve only mezcal. In this room, I met with John Rexer, head honcho of not just the bar, but his own mezcal brand.

Yes, mezcal is still made in Oaxaca, Mexico, and not in Guatemala. And no, John Rexer is from neither. He’s originally from New York and migrated to Antigua around 2003, penniless and disillusioned with America and its politics after 9/11. Soon after arriving, he ducked into a closed-up doorway with a “for rent” sign during a rainstorm and subsequently found himself the new proprietor of an agave spirits bar. The only problem was that there were no agave spirits to be had in Guatemala and mezcal, Rexer’s elixir of choice, wasn’t yet legal for exportation out of Mexico.

Should you ever find yourself in Guatemala, be sure to make your way to Antigua, a beautiful colonial-era town an hour or so outside of Guatemala City full of stunning Spanish Baroque architecture, restaurants, shops and bars. And, should you find yourself in Antigua, be sure to make your way to Cafe No Se, a speakeasy-cum-mezcal bar-cum bookstore-cum live music venue started by American ex-pat John Rexer in “2003 ish maybe 2002” (his and his team’s words) and the home of Ilegal mezcal,