Seven years ago, Joseph Gilbert set out on a culinary quest. The Terra Linda High School and Marin Catholic alumnus had spent some time working in the kitchens of several Marin County restaurants, including Marinitas and Cavallo Point. After a brief stop in Seattle, he set off to Oaxaca, Mexico.
“I flew down there with the original plan of staying six months, learning some Spanish and learning about the food of Oaxaca. Then, when I was comfortable with Spanish, I was going to travel around Mexico and learn about the different regions’ food,” says Gilbert, 32.
Things didn’t quite turn out that way. He did learn about the food, getting a job at a local restaurant. But he also met another American, Jason Cox, and a friendship developed over their shared love of Oaxacan culture, food and mezcal.
“I got a job at the best restaurant in town,” Gilbert says. “It was great and I loved the chef, the food was good, but there were a lot of issues with training their service staff and cooks.”
Gilbert came to the realization that if that was the best and busiest restaurant in town, perhaps he could do something better. Cox had experienced the same thing. Together, the two Americans came up with an idea. They would scour the local countryside for obscure artisanal mezcals and serve those spirits in a small mezcaleria.
Five years ago, the two opened El Destilado (which translates into the distillery), serving food and drinks, and judging by the outstanding online reviews and write-ups in magazines such as the New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar, things couldn’t be better. Another company, Cinco Sentidos (which translates into five senses) soon followed, producing tiny-production mezcals for their restaurant.
“We bottle between 19 and 27 different varieties of agaves,” Gilbert says. “We do a lot of special bottlings and one-offs for liquor stores or restaurants. We also have specialty collections. There must be at least 10 to 16 different bottlings available in the States, depending upon where you are.”
Ironically, neither El Destilado nor Cinco Sentidos is licensed as distilleries, and technically speaking, the products they produce aren’t mezcal.
“It’s mezcal, but we call it ‘agave distillate’ for certification purposes,” Gilbert says. “To be certified in Mexico — like most things in Mexico — it’s kind of a political game. One, it costs a lot of money to be certified. Two, you pay higher taxes. Three, you have to wait for the government to come out and certify you, and they have to certify each batch.”
And the batches Cinco Sentidos produce are small, so small that a new term has been invented to describe them: nano-batch.
“The biggest we do is maybe 190 to 200 liters (about 55 gallons),” Gilbert says. “We never really repeat the same thing. Each batch is completely different.”
Cinco Sentidos primarily works with five local mezcaleros that actually produce the products.
“A lot of these guys are subsistence farmers, and mezcal is something they make at certain times of the year when they are not working the fields growing corn or beans,” Gilbert says. “They don’t have the time or money to pay the government 10 to 20,000 pesos to come and certify a mezcal.”
Cinco Sentidos is not alone. More and more brands are changing over to the designation “agave distillate” because they don’t want to deal with the political side. Marin’s Sammy Hagar and his Mezquila are just one other such example.
But, legalities aside, Cinco Sentidos’ products are a particularly intimate portrait of not only the individual agaves, but of the whole process. And a fleeting glimpse at that, because each bottling is a highly individualized testament to each mezcaleros’ personal process, never to be repeated, and must therefore be experienced with that thought in mind. And experiences like that don’t come cheap. You are not going to find a bottle of Cinco Sentidos for under $100, if you can in fact find it at all. As of now, they only export a couple of hundred cases a year.
Gilbert says they have looked at making a few other distillates, a chili liqueur, sotol and perhaps a digestif. But uber-rare, artisanal, nano-batch mezcal will remain their focus.
“I think we will stick with the agave distillate category, stuff that would typically fall under the heading of mezcal,” he says.
In the meantime, he has a restaurant to run. He has also established permanent residency in Mexico and started a family with his partner.
“I still pinch myself sometimes,” he says. “I never thought I’d live in Mexico this long, or own a business in Mexico, or have a Mexican family.”
Gilbert says he does occasionally miss Marin County.
“Down there, it’s different. Culturally much, much different, and I love it. But every time I come back here, I’m reminded of how beautiful Marin County is.”
For more information on Cinco Sentidos, go to drink5sentidos.com, and for more information on El Destilado, go to eldestilado.com. The only Marin restaurant that stocks Cinco Sentidos is Flores restaurant in Corte Madera.
Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com
