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An Encinitas woman finds a sippable way to pour her love for Mexico into a bottle A Spirited Connection mezcal as the company grows. "When I'm big, and when I can, I really want to give back to education in Mexico," she says. "at is the heart of what I've always cared about and the passion [that] pushed me to do this. Education in Mexico looks a lot different than it does here. And in Oaxaca, there's a lot of poverty and students don't have access to equal education like we do. ey don't have simple materials like our kids have." In a market that's becoming ever more competitive with celebrity endorsed brands and big marketing budgets, Workman says Olavida's edge is in its approachability. "It's not an overly smoky, in-your-face mezcal," she explains. "It's sippable, but then it's also really nice in a margarita. My goal with [Olavida] is to basically convert someone who tells me they don't like mezcal. If I can get them to try it, every single person is like, 'Oh my gosh, I love it.'" olavidamezcal.com S OME COUPLES HAVE A SPECIAL SONG. But for Caela Workman and her husband, their special thing was the Mexican spirit, mezcal, right from the start. "When I met my husband [about] eight years ago, we fell in love with mezcal, and that kind of became our drink," remembers Workman. "It was nothing more than that." It has ended up being much more than that. When her cousin mentioned some friends who'd started a mezcal brand in conversation a couple years ago, it got her wheels turning. ough an Encinitas resident and native, Workman's ties to Mexico run deep: her family had a home there when she was growing up. She felt the pull to do something that could combine her love for Mexico and the smoky spirit. It was her husband who gave her the nudge to try her hand at creating her own mezcal. "He was like, 'Why don't you figure out how to actually do it? You have the skills, you're bilingual, you've traveled to Mexico your whole life.' And so I figured out how to do it," Workman says. As a dual language elementary school teacher in North County, creating an alcohol brand was, understandably, a bit out of Workman's wheelhouse. "I've never run a business," she says. "I learned something new every single day in terms of building the brand." Named Olavida — "wave of life" — Workman's mezcal is crafted from 100% mature agave espadín and distilled by a family in Oaxaca's Santiago Matatlán. Stateside, Workman is a one-woman mezcal powerhouse, importing, selling, and distributing Olavida. Since her first bottles officially debuted on December 22, 2023, she has already grown her business to seeing bottles on the beverage programs of more than a dozen local liquor stores, and restaurants including Waverly and Valentina as well as one in Santa Barbara. Bootstrapped from the beginning with just a few investors to get it off the ground, Olavida may still be in its infancy, but Workman has big plans that include much more than simply selling more Indulge dining BY DEANNA MURPHY | PHOTOGRAPHY BY VINCENT KNAKAL ranchandcoast.com 82 JUNE 2024 RANCH & COAST MAGAZINE