Dos Equis

Those two X's are Roman numerals with ambition. Dos Equis is a Mexican pale lager — with a Vienna-style amber sibling — that launched in 1897 as "Siglo XX," "Twentieth Century," German-born brewer Wilhelm Hasse's toast to the hundred years about to begin. It still sells enormously well north of the border.

Hasse brewed it at the Moctezuma brewery in Orizaba, Veracruz, and over time the beer named for the future became simply "the two X's." The Ambar carries one of beer's odder inheritances: Vienna-style lager all but vanished from Vienna itself but survived in Mexico, where German and Austrian immigrant brewers had planted it.

Heineken México owns the brand now, and the United States is its stage — a decade of ads built around "the most interesting man in the world" turned Dos Equis into a bar call for a generation of American drinkers. Brand Finance still ranks it in the global top fifty: not bad for a beer named after a century that already ended.

The green-bottle Lager Especial pours light gold: softly sweet, corn-tortilla grain, barely-there bitterness, entirely lime-and-taco friendly. The Ambar is the sleeper — russet-brown, with toasted bread crust and mild caramel over a dry finish, one of the last everyday descendants of Vienna lager. Both are meant to be drunk cold and without ceremony.