Why Two Famous Actors Waited Six Years to Make Tequila

He is the co-CEO of Dos Hombres now, but JB Woodworth is also employee number one, beginning back in February 2020, seven months after Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul launched their first Dos Hombres mezcal at Tales of the Cocktail, in New Orleans.

Six years later, Woodworth is overseeing the brand's biggest move yet. A tequila line arrived on shelves two weeks ago, with a Reposado expected to hit stores in September, and an Añejo planned for the middle of 2027.

For a celebrity-led agave brand, the order of operations is unusual.

Most start in tequila, often before they understand what kind of liquid they want to make. Dos Hombres did the opposite. The brand first built a mezcal business and deepened its understanding of the agave category before turning to tequila. They brought a maestro tequilero out of retirement, partnered with a high quality distillery, and adopted a price point that pushes back against what most "celebrity tequila" embraces.

This is the story of how Dos Hombres was invented, is made, and why.

For the past five years, fans kept telling Cranston, Paul, and the team that they loved the Dos Hombres tequila. The brand had no tequila. It had mezcal, made in San Luis del Río, Oaxaca, by third-generation maestro mezcalero Gregorio Velasco Luis.

The mix-up became so common that Dos Hombres turned it into a marketing campaign: "It's Mezcal." Even with the campaign, the miscommunication kept happening.

Woodworth says the team always wanted to do more in mezcal first, beyond Espadín, and those special releases are ongoing. But because the team still felt its mezcal exploration wasn't finished, they had little interest in chasing a tequila launch just because the category was hot.

The brand waited until the timing felt right, and until it found a production partner that could expand to make sufficient cases of what will likely become a popular tequila brand.

The team visited seven different distilleries, both Highlands and the Valley. The Highlands candidates were excellent, but the liquid the Dos Hombres team kept returning to carried the unmistakable character of the Valley. Minerally. Peppery. Lifted by the volcanic water that runs through Amatitán.

Tequilera TAP, NOM 1614, sits in Amatitán in the Tequila Valley. The distillery is owned by a collective of agave farmers, which gives Dos Hombres something many brands cannot count on at launch: a long-term agave supply controlled by the same people who run the distillery.

It also produces tequila for Cazcanes, Inspiro, Tres Agaves, and Tequila Pantalones, among others, and is widely respected for the range of equipment and the flexibility it offers brand partners.

The distillery is part of the Dos Hombres equation. Julio Cova is the rest of it.

Cova retired on July 31, 2025, and is a legendary tequila maker. He spent about 15 years with the Beckmann family at Casa Cuervo. He has worked with many brands at Tequila TAP. He is, by Woodworth's description, "a 70 year old guy" with the energy of someone half his age.

But he was truly retired when the Dos Hombres team first arrived at the distillery.

And the opportunity to work on Dos Hombres was enough for Cova to request permission to rescind his retirement. According to Woodworth, Cova told the board of directors: "Breaking Bad is one of my all-time favorite shows. I think it would be so, so fun to work on, and I really respect what they've done to help popularize mezcal."

Woodworth, Cranston, Paul, Cova, and the Tequilera Tap team tasted through many different potential flavor profiles to refine the formula for Dos Hombres.

The final Blanco recipe is 100% Blue Weber agave from the Valley. It is cooked 75% in autoclaves and 25% in brick ovens. After distillation, the liquid rests for 45 days in stainless steel tanks so the components, in Woodworth's words, "hang out together," a process he likens to letting a good wine breathe. The result is a Blanco that leans minerally and peppery, with a clean finish. It is bottled at 40% ABV.

The Reposado uses ex-bourbon barrels from Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.

That choice was tested, not a default assignment. Dos Hombres ran a blind tasting against Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam barrels with Cranston, Paul, Cova, and the broader team participating. Four Roses won unanimously, and the brand bought roughly 300 Four Roses ex-bourbon barrels for the launch.

It also bought a handful of rare casks, including Hungarian oak and French oak, with tequila resting in those barrels now. Those are not part of the core expressions. Woodworth views them as candidates for future single-barrel releases, including programs already being discussed with major hotel partners.

Four Roses is the starting point, not necessarily the long-term contract. The Reposado will sit in the barrels for approximately four months. The Reposado was originally targeted for July with approximately 10 weeks of aging, but the team is now considering pushing into September to honor a four-month rest, for additional depth and flavor. It will retail at $49 and, like the blanco, will be bottled at 40% ABV.

The Dos Hombres Blanco opens with cooked agave and a minerally, peppery profile that comes from Valley agave and Amatitán's volcanic spring water. The tequila has a noticeable finish and a bit of burn, but is quite clean and crisp.

The mix of autoclave and brick oven cooking is built for approachability without erasing the character of cooked agave. The 45-day rest in stainless steel softens the alcohol and integrates the components before bottling.

The Reposado is still in barrel as of this writing, with bottles drawn for tasting at the two-and-a-half-month mark. The early samples suggest a Reposado that picks up the Four Roses bourbon character without losing the mineral spine of the Blanco. Cova's recommendation is to extend aging to four months instead of the planned 10 weeks.

Both expressions are designed against the celebrity-tequila profile that has dominated the last decade. Woodworth says the team explicitly did not want "vanilla birthday cake" sweetness or anything that tasted engineered for the lowest common denominator.

The benchmark, in his words, was "earthy, minerally, peppery." Something with enough character to stand up in a cocktail.

The Reposado is the next step, launching most likely now in September given the four-month aging window. An Añejo is targeted for the middle of 2027, and some of the rare Hungarian and French oak casks already resting at the distillery may turn into single-barrel projects next year.

Bottle size is expanding too. Dos Hombres tequila is launching in the standard 750ml at retail, with a 375ml format planned for the Blanco. The core Mezcal expression from Dos Hombres has seen success at this half-size. Industry-wide smaller sizes are catching on with drinkers who want a bottle for a weekend rather than a month.

International markets are also on the calendar. A 700ml bottle is heading abroad, with a major Australia launch planned for January 2027 alongside a Cranston and Paul tour through Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, and Auckland.

A higher-proof blanco, somewhere between 45% and 48% ABV, is on the medium-term horizon, after the launch finds its footing.

Dos Hombres Blanco is available in 35 states already, a massive undertaking for the brand and its distributors to launch all-at-once instead of state-by-state. Bar and restaurant placements will pop up throughout the summer.

The team's strength in the mezcal category has always been with bars and restaurants. More than 8,000 accounts across 90-plus national restaurant chains already pour Dos Hombres Mezcal, and the tequila is being added to signature cocktails at many of those venues.

Pricing affordability was a major piece of the rollout strategy. Many "celebrity tequilas" land at $50 or higher for blanco. Dos Hombres is $39 for the Blanco and will be $49 for the Reposado.

Woodworth's view is that anything over $40 felt like the wrong choice for a brand that wants its tequila to be viable as a cocktail base in chain restaurants and beyond.

The question is fair, and celebrity tequila carpetbaggers are not rare.

In this case, Cranston and Paul are not silent investors. They participated in every tasting along the way. They spent time in Oaxaca and worked through more than 90 mezcals from different villages before settling on Velasco's liquid.

They did the same on the tequila side, with months of taste tests focused on cooking methods, fermentation, resting, and barrel selection.

Cranston has lobbied the Mexican government on infrastructure for San Luis del Río. Paul designs the Dos Hombres apparel that funds the village give-back program, which has installed a water filtration plant, opened a medical center with a nurse who visits twice a month, and helped pave roughly 25 miles of road into a village that had waited 70 years for it. The same give-back model is being designed for the community near Tequilera Tap in Amatitán.

Dos Hombres has a returning maestro tequilero with nearly four decades of experience, a distillery owned by agave farmers, additive-free liquid, a deliberately approachable price, and a brand that built a mezcal business before it built a tequila one.

That is not a guarantee that every tequila enthusiast will fall in love with the bottle, but it's a very solid pour. It's a straightforward tequila designed to appeal to a broad segment of tequila drinkers, both in cocktails and neat.

For bottles online, head directly to Dos Hombres, where the new Blanco is available alongside the existing mezcal lineup, with the Reposado to follow later in the year. It will also be available in most better liquor stores, and in restaurants in much of the United States.

Dos Hombres is a presenting partner of The Tequila Report.