This is not the paint-thinner you tried that one time on Spring Break; it's "illegal" in name only, and you won't find a dead worm floating in the bottle. The reposado and anejo mescals from Illegal have all the smoky complexity of a single malt, along with the subtle, vegetal sweetness of roasted agave. They taste dirty in the terrior sense of the word—pungent and earthy and rich—an expression of the soil and the fruit they're made from. It's a refined spirit, sure, but it also tastes like it would fight the other bottles in your bar for talking shit.
