Behind the Inaugural MXPDX Festival in July
All photos, collages, and art courtesy MXPDX
One of the more interesting Oregon festivals is expanding. This July, Portland will host the MXPDX (Mexico to PDX) fest. It’s an outgrowth of the long-running Fuji to Hood project, and follows the same formula:
MXPDX will team 13 breweries/cideries from Central Mexico with 13 from Oregon to create original collaborations for the festival. Additionally, the festival will import beers from each Mexican craft brewery. A total of 26 beers and/or cider/mead will be featured at the event with brewers from each team in attendance. MXPDX is not just a brewfest. There will be a wide range of authentic Mexican food from PNW kitchens, as well as arts, vendors, live music, entertainment, and much more.
I wanted to get a sense of the thinking behind this new fest was, so I reached out to Ezra Johnson-Greenough, one of the organizers. Below is a rich discussion we had, which got me excited for the fest. But before we dive into that, some important facts:
Tickets and Info
Dates: Cantina Celebración is Friday, July 18, and the main festival is July 19, 2025.
Location: The Redd, 831 SE Salmon St, Portland, OR 97214.
Tickets: General admission $35, 1-8pm, Especial session $50, 11am-2pm. Cantina Celebración $50.
Volunteers: Volunteers will be thanked with a free festival drink package or brewery gift cards. Sign up here.
I think it would be great to hear a bit about how the idea for Mexico emerged from the Fuji to Hood experience. For your second partner country, you could have gone anywhere. Why Mexico?
MXPDX: As close as Mexico is to us and as familiar as we in the U.S. are with aspects of Mexican culture (primarily food) most of us have very little experience with Mexican craft beer. We love the idea of highlighting cultures that are underrepresented here. We also need a place that has a solid up-and-coming beer scene that is interested in Oregon beer culture and breweries. Japan has a great beer scene that, on one hand is 10+ years behind, and on the other hand is more advanced. They love Oregon brewers for their experience and quality; Oregon brewers love them for their enthusiasm, energy, and how quickly they are catching up and growing. You can see and taste the beer getting better every year. We would love to have a similar experience with another country where craft beer is still growing and diversifying.
The close proximity is a big plus too, both because we want the brewers to be able to travel between both events and to encourage tourism in general. Having the support of travel organizations seems almost required these days if you are presenting a larger event.
Connecting with the right people is also essential. And we were able to make the Mexico connection through a number of different resources:
Our board member Michael Wolcott had a connection with Diego Lara, who co-owns Falling Piano brewing in Mexico City. They had met many years ago at the Oregon Brewers Festival and Michael had helped export some Oregon beer to his sister taphouse, Hop: The Beer Experience. We reached out to Diego to see what he thought, and he encouraged us to come visit and see for ourselves.
I reached out to my old Oregon buddy Travis Sandoval from The Commons Brewery. After Commons closed he joined Beachwood Brewing and became the head of their blendery, before he met the Cerveceria Hercules guys and moved to Mexico to join their team. I had heard great things about that brewery from a few of our mutual friends who had visited, so I contacted Travis to get the DL.
I also knew that Little Beast’s Charles Porter is well connected in Mexican craft beer, so I hit him up. Wayfinder’s Natalie Baldwin has also been down as a beer judge, so I asked her for her thoughts too.
And around the same time as those conversations were taking place Charlie Van Meter contacted me about his new gig as Xicha Brewing's head brewer, and to let me know they were expanding and see if I wanted to write an article about it. So I got on a phone call with Xicha owner Ricardo Antunez who I had never met, at the end of the interview I mentioned we were thinking about doing a Mexico/Oregon collab fest and he was very interested. We met for the first time in person when he went out of his way to drive up from Salem and attend the Fuji to Hood festival last summer, I later connected him with our Mexico City partner Diego Lara and they met up in Mexico.
We visited Mexico in person to research the feasibility of the festival one year ago, in May 2024. After meeting and querying as many craft brewers and industry experts as we could, we fell in love with the culture and had a very positive response and decided to pull the trigger.
How did you go about making connections with folks in Mexico? Mexico is huge and does seem to have different beer regions--how did you settle on Central Mexico?
MXPDX: We wanted to stay focused on and around Mexico City as a cultural hub, and avoid tourist areas to focus in on authenticity. From our research, the other big beer region is Ensenada, and to some extent Guadalajara, and then the other touristy areas, and they do become a little bit more expat and American-leaning. I do think if this event is a success we will expand more out of Central Mexico. As far as making connections, as previously mentioned, Diego Lara of Falling Piano Brewing, Travis Sandoval, and Charles Porter were all essential. But the other big unsung hero in making the connections happen is Jess Martinez Ignorosa who is a Mexico City-based beer educator, brewer, influencer, beer judge and one of the most prominent women in Mexican craft beer. She consults for multiple Mexican craft breweries, has a very popular beer education instagram account, and she flies around the world as a professional beer judge, is a leader in the growing Women craft beer organizations of Mexico. Last and perhaps most importantly she has her own acclaimed beer brand "Malteza" which is one of our collaboration partners brewing a beer with Wayfinder for the festival.
How does the cuisine and culture factor into the selection of this region?
MXPDX: It is very important to us to accurately reflect the culture, but because Mexico City is so big you can find just about every cuisine and flavor represented. The biggest thing that I personally found that is regionally specific there is Suadero Tacos! Food and music were the two biggest things outside of beer that all the brewers told us we needed to get right. Some of those insights: lime doesn't belong in beer, Tex-Mex is not Mexican, cinco de mayo is bullshit, live music is essential to a beer festival, and Cumbia is currently the hottest musical genre.
At the festival we are going to have a variety of popular Mexican music genres from DJs to live bands and some traditional dance and arts performances as well. For food we are going for a really diverse selection at the fest: Mexican bakeries, desserts, coffee, street food, fine food, vegan food, Sonoran food, and, yes there will be tacos and tamales—but really much more than that.
Also, Xicha’s owner Ricardo Antunez has joined us as an organizer and consultant and I have been working with him quite closely on organizing the restaurants and food, as well as some of the arts and entertainment. Xicha Brewing is also sponsoring our pre-party Cantina night the day before the festival, which will be an all-inclusive Xicha cerveza (light and dark just like in an authentic Cantina) and they’re catering the food.
When you're organizing these things, how do you find and incorporate the food-side folks into it?
MXPDX: Ricardo has been invaluable on this. I had already researched and made a list of what I thought were the best and most authentic PNW Mexican food vendors, and then I ran that list by Ricardo who verified them and added some of his own picks. Ricardo and I are the food committee along with Jeremy Herrig of Brews for New Avenues (now on our board) and we tried to vet every food vendor either in-person or by analyzing their instagram accounts etc. for authenticity. We are hoping to finalize most if not all of the food vendors this week.
Who are your partners in Mexico, and what will the fest look like there?
MXPDX: Our main Mexico partners are Jose Fernando Rincón and Diego Lara, co-founders of Falling Piano Brewing and Hop: The Beer Experience. Rincón and Lara were born and raised in Mexico City. They became captivated by craft beer in 2008 at a time when few imported beers were available at their local bars. Utilizing their professional backgrounds in logistics, they began importing beer to Mexico a few years later, and this eventually led to their first taproom in 2014. In 2016, they opened their second location, Hop2, which is the largest taproom in Latin America with 52 craft beer taps. In 2018, Rincón and Lara opened Falling Piano Brewing, and cemented their reputation as leaders of the vibrant and developing Mexico City craft beer community.
Diego has been particularly involved in understanding our established concept as he flew up to attend Fuji to Hood in Portland last summer, and came to Japan with us for Hood to Fuji in Tokyo just last month.
As for what the festival will look like there, I don’t have much to share on that front as we have been focused on the Oregon event. What I can say is that we are planning for April of 2026 in Mexico City, possibly in Ramón López Velarde Garden park a few blocks from Diego and Fernando's Falling Piano Brewing. All of the Oregon brewers have been invited to participate again and travel to Mexico City, I am hoping we may be able to invite even more breweries to participate.
What else did I miss?
MXPDX: I want to emphasize that this isn't just a beer festival, though beer is the starting point of collaboration. There will be Luchador wrestling, Latino run clubs, a pop-up coffee shop from local Mexican-owned roaster Tostado, a Mexican-owned Willamette Valley winery, a full cocktail bar serving authentic drinks to Mexico, and an entire pop-up Mercado marketplace with vendors ranging from tattoos, to jewelry, beads, dresses, grocery, screenprinting and more.
I think it is big news that we are importing one flavor from each of the Mexican craft breweries. So in addition to their original collab beer brewed in Oregon there will also be a beer brewed at each of their own breweries and imported here with a lot of additional cost and effort not only in permitting but in refrigerated air freight! So the fest will likely be the only time you can find their beers in Oregon.
Another aspect that may not be as relevant to festival attendees but I think is important is that all the Mexican brewers are attending and will be at the Cantina party for a more intimate experience as well as the main festival the next day. We are also chartering a shuttle bus to take them around to a few local breweries and suppliers like hop and yeast brands for a field trip day that is part pub crawl and tours and part educational experience. Making sure there is a real value to the brewers and welcoming them into Oregon is a top priority.
We are going to have 13 breweries each from Mexico and Oregon. 13 collaboration beers, and another 13 imported, so 26 total beers. More info about the beer will be available soon, but these are the brewery pairings.