Nine years ago Jon Darby founded Sin Gusano, a project celebrating and promoting agave spirits made by independent Mexican producers. Now, Darby has opened Sorbito, a tasting room and bottle shop in Stoke Newington that builds on the regular pop-ups he’s hosted at venues like Brunswick East over the years.
Sorbito’s pale terracotta walls and steel cage lockers are modelled on the warm yet pared-down mezcalerias found in Oaxaca, where the majority of mezcal is produced, as well as the more contemporary mezcal bars of Oaxaca city and Mexico City. Waves of woven textiles decorate the ceiling, subtly nodding to the space’s past life as a carpet store, and offering additional soundproofing. Lining its walls are machines, similar to the serve-yourself wine dispensers that have proliferated across London over the past several years, which preserve the mezcal at the correct temperature. Bottles of agave spirits to take home are stored in the padlocked steel cages and there is a tight menu of beers, agave sodas and mezcal highballs.
Sorbito continues Darby’s mission to “protect the cultural heritage at threat from mass mezcal production”, he tells Broadsheet. He founded Sin Gusano after a 2016 visit to Mexico, when he learnt about the cultural significance of the maguey or agave plant – a native succulent which is the source for mezcal – and was impressed by mezcal’s complex flavour. He promptly left his City job and stayed on to research intergenerational traditions, small-batch producers and terroir, eventually bringing this ethos back to the UK where mezcal had yet to make much of an impact.
“I took the plunge, starting Sin Gusano as a pop-up in Gillett Square, followed by a tasting room at Brunswick East,” says Darby. “Friends came from Mexico to do collaborations, and I was going back and forth smuggling small-batch mezcal from Oaxaca in suitcases – unfiltered, unadulterated, from all over Mexico.” The project gained a dedicated following.
The ultimate aim of Sorbito is to celebrate mezcal and educate Londoners about the diversity and terroir of agave – and what it has to offer beyond the commercial spirits that dominate and homogenise the market. Each mezcal dispenser is accompanied by a photograph of the producer behind it, as well as an outline of how and where it was grown and made, what agave species it’s from and what it tastes like.
“If enough people choose to value quality agave spirits, it could even spark a cultural shift – resisting commodification even beyond mezcal, and inspiring a stronger connection to the land and to each other,” says Darby.
Sorbito
178 Stoke Newington Road, N16 7UY
02046293309
Hours:
Wed to Fri 5pm–10pm
Sat 1pm–10pm
