First Shipment

They arrived on a Tuesday morning. Four wooden crates, shipped from Oaxaca via Mexico City, cleared through customs at Felixstowe, and delivered to a warehouse in south London. Inside: 279 bottles of artisanal and ancestral mezcal. Each one with a handwritten label. Each one with a wax seal pressed by hand. Each one with a clay copita wrapped separately in tissue paper.

This is Gota Gorda's first UK shipment, and for us at Mescalito it represents the end of a long journey and the beginning of a much longer one. We've spent months working with Dani Tatarin — Gota Gorda's founder — and her producing families in Oaxaca to bring these spirits to the UK. What follows is an introduction to what's inside those crates, and why we believe these are some of the most exciting mezcals available in Britain today.

What Arrived

Four expressions. Two maestros. One shared commitment to making mezcal slowly, honestly, and well.

Espadín Capón

Agave Angustifolia · 45.9% · Felipe Garcia · Copper Alembic

£90 · 158 bottles

The entry point. Capón means the agave's flowering stalk was cut before it bloomed, sending all the plant's remaining energy back into the piña. The result is a spirit with more depth and sweetness than a standard espadín — citrus and hay on the nose, bitter chocolate and ripe plum on the palate. If you're new to mezcal, or if you're looking for something to convert a sceptic, this is where to start.

Tepextate

Agave Marmorata · 49.6% · Felipe Garcia · Copper Alembic

£135 · 57 bottles

Wild agave, harvested from rocky hillsides where the plants can take fifteen to twenty-five years to reach maturity. You cannot rush a tepextate. You cannot cultivate it. You can only find it, cut it at the right moment, and hope the spirit is as extraordinary as the plant. This one is. Green coffee and dry grass on the nose; cedar, toasted fennel, and a long herbal finish that keeps evolving for minutes after your last sip.

Jabalí / Tebequil

Agave Convallis / Tebecuel · 50.3% · Felipe Garcia · Copper Alembic

£180 · 41 bottles

A blend of two wild agave species — jabalí and tebequil — co-fermented and distilled together. Jabalí is notoriously difficult to work with; the sugars are unpredictable and the fermentation can go sideways without warning. When it works, though, it produces something unlike anything else: petrichor, wet leaves, red clay, followed by red fruits and white pepper. Only 41 bottles exist.

Tebequil

Agave Tebecuel · 49.2% · Felipe Garcia · Copper Alembic

£360 · 23 bottles

The rarest expression in the shipment. Twenty-three bottles of a single wild agave distillate — slate and fermented plum, hay and white pepper, with a finish that goes on and on. This is a bottle for a special occasion, or for someone who wants to understand what mezcal is capable of at its most extraordinary.

The People Behind the Bottles

Every one of these bottles was made by Felipe Garcia at his palenque in San Simón Almolongas, Oaxaca. Felipe is a third-generation mezcalero. His grandfather made mezcal. His father made mezcal. Felipe makes mezcal the same way — with a tahona (a stone wheel pulled by a horse), open-air fermentation in pine vats, and distillation in copper alembic stills. There is no automation. There is no shortcut. There is only the agave, the fire, and the hands that have been doing this work for decades.

These spirits are curated by Dani Tatarin, founder of Gota Gorda. Dani is a Canadian who moved to Mexico after a twenty-five-year career in bartending — she ran The Keefer Bar in Vancouver, won a string of industry awards, and served as president of the Canadian Professional Bartenders Association. She didn't come to mezcal casually. She came to it through years of tasting, travelling, and building relationships with producing families across four Mexican states.

Gota Gorda means "fat drop" — from the expression sudando la gota gorda, to sweat the fat drop, meaning to work hard at something. It's a fitting name for a brand built on the premise that nothing good comes easy.

Coming Soon: The Ancestral

There is a fifth expression that didn't make this shipment but is on its way: an Espadín Ancestral by Felix Ángeles, one of Oaxaca's most respected mezcaleros. Felix works in Santa Catarina Minas using clay pot distillation — the most ancient method, producing a spirit with a softness and mineral quality that copper cannot replicate. His agave is crushed by mazo (wooden mallets), fermented in open-air pine vats, and distilled in clay. No modern equipment touches the spirit at any point in the process.

We'll announce pricing and availability as soon as it clears customs. If you want to be the first to know, join the newsletter.

What Happens Now

These bottles are available to UK bars, restaurants, and retailers through Mescalito. If you're in the trade, get in touch. If you're a consumer who wants to try them, check our Find Us page — we'll be updating it as stockists come onboard.

And if you simply want to learn more about what's inside these bottles — what mezcal is, how it's made, why these particular spirits are worth your attention — start with What Is Mezcal? in the Teachings section. We wrote it for exactly this moment.

This is the beginning. More producers, more expressions, more stories. But it starts here, with these 279 bottles, these two maestros, and this one founding producer who sweated the fat drop to bring them to you.