There was once a time when all agave-distilled spirits were called mezcal. Tequila was simply a regionally specific iteration. As much for preservation as it was for marketing purposes, laws were put into place that ultimately made tequila and its production distinct—and cast everything else as second tier. This is no longer the case. With a boom in sales as an indicator, mezcal has not …
For ages, the semi-secret, word-of-mouth Quiquiriqui Mezcal and 184 Hackney Road/Mezcaleria Quiquiriqui bars on East London’s Hackney Road were underground favorites for London’s liquor connoisseurs. Now the woman behind the mezcal-loving venues, Melanie Symonds, has opened a liquor shop—Brahms & Liszt—on Chatsworth Road, Clapton. At Brahms & Liszt, the focus is on the hard stuff. This is the place to come to for unusual liquor …
Back in March 2013, musicians and non-musicians alike gathered at London retail concept space LN-CC for a multi-sensory experience like no other. Thomas Bullock—a DJ and record producer with decades of street cred who fell in love with mezcal later in life—had kept the new bar area inside LN-CC well-stocked with a collection of rare and small-batch mezcals he imported himself. Yet displaying the distilled …
