Tornillo is a member of the Karwinskii agave family—slender, upright, and often overlooked in favor of its flashier cousins. But in the hands of Felipe and Ageo Cortés, mezcaleros with deep roots in Santiago Matatlán, this humble plant becomes something extraordinary: precise, lifted, and textural.

Fermented in open-air pine vats and distilled in small copper pot stills, Mal Bien’s Tornillo is made in the ancestral way, with time and care. The resulting spirit is light on the palate but deep in character—herbal, stony, and just a little wild around the edges. It’s not about smoke or sweetness. It’s about shape—a mezcal that feels vertical and transparent, not weighty.

This is a mezcal for slow sipping, for quiet focus, for people who want to taste place and plant, not packaging.