Marfa Spirit Co.

"This town will become a town of elites," griped the bartender as he wiped down the counter at the end of the shift. Marfa has changed a lot, but perhaps you get a more acute view of the changes from the other side of the bar. It's like a watchtower, when everyone else is liquored up and flapping their lips. You see things.

The barkeep also told me about the time that he saw Jack Dorsey and Rick Rubin hanging out here. And the time a bachelorette party got a bit loose, stuffing dollar bills in his pants and literally throwing money around. This ain't your typical small-town joint.

The winds of change blow hard, and as the first and only distillery in Marfa, @marfaspiritco sails the stormy seas. Founded by a trio of hospitality vets, the tasting room and distillery took over the iconic 1920s Goldbold feed mill. The focus here is sotol, a regional spirit that's growing in popularity. A cousin of mezcal, sotol is made of the desert spoon plant instead of agave, though both are part of the dasylirion genus.

It hasn't been all smooth sailing for the operation. It opened in 2021 as only the 2nd company to make sotol outside Mexico. However, activists have protested sotol production here, claiming that it's cultural appropriation and that only sotol made in certain regions of Mexico should bear the name. Anything else defies Mexico's denomination of origin (DO), which already applies to tequila and mezcal.

And this was going to be the case when drafts of the 2020 United States–Mexico-Canada Agreement updated regional trade deals. But TX Sen. John Cornyn successfully lobbied to change the legislation and allow sotol production in Texas.

So here we are, with many asking who should get to make sotol. Some might think this is a ridiculous question, but consider how strongly locals protect production rights in places like Champagne, France and Bourbon County, Kentucky. It can be a complicated issue.

The reality is that everything is political, right down to what we pour in our cups. But sometimes the best thing you can do is fill yours up and have a healthy debate. If you're in Marfa, there's no better place for it than the Marfa Spirit Co.