Among tequila aficionados, Casa Dragones looms large as much for its small-batch production of crystalline spirits as for its stylish brand HQ – a beautifully restored late 17th-century manse in San Miguel de Allende, which used to house the stables of the Dragones, the legendary cavalry that was a bulwark of Mexico’s fight for independence.
And it is at this curious intersection of brand, history and architecture that the Mexican label’s co-founder Bertha González Nieves, the first female Maestra Tequilera certified by the Academia Mexicana de Catadores de Tequila, cannily uses to spread the gospel of artisanal tequila.
Obsidian Bar by Casa Dragones
Her newly opened Obsidian Bar in the centre of the Casa is a particularly potent salvo. This one follows the opening of a small brass and gold-lined six-seater tasting room a few years ago, which had been designed by the New York-based studio Meyer Davis and the Mexican designer Gloria Cortina.
For her sophomore effort, González again tapped Meyer Davis, this time to transform the old stables, which adjoin a leafy arbour and courtyard, into a mood-lit bolthole of glassy black volcanic stone, timber floors, exposed brick, and obsidian stone found in the agave fields in Tequila, Jalisco, which feed the distillery of Casa Dragones.
Architect Marco Martinez Valle’s interventions into the space are gently done. The palimpsest of the past lit by day with light streaming in through the stables’s extant archways and hemispheric clerestories. Yet the space really comes to life at night with perfectly graded light gleaming off the bar’s brass accents and white granite countertop.
As usual, with rehabilitated spaces like this, the devil is in the details. The titular obsidian which sheathes the barrel vaults was particularly tricky to create, as the stone is brittle and cracks easily. The shape of the shelf struts, meanwhile, are subliminal echoes of the distinctive shape of the Casa Dragones bottle.
The bar offers a quartet of tequila tastings of the brand’s different flavours, ranging from a Casa Dragones Joven served neat in a Riedel tequila flute to the killer Casa Dragones Añejo Barrel Blend served neat in a Glencairn goblet – the alcoholic fumes of the experience somewhat dispersed by the arrival to that table of tasty small bites catered by Hortus, a modern Mediterranean restaurant in town, alongside creamy dark chocolate truffles created by Panio, another local café and bakery.
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