Liquor Laws are for the Little People

The El Paso Inc. has a big write-up about Paul Foster’s renovation of the Plaza Hotel this week. The renovated property will include a couple of bars.

That lobby bar will have a Great Gatsby art deco feel with a three-story staircase that features a 30-foot tower of tequila bottles. McGrady said the owners are working to amass one of the largest tequila collections in the country, if not the world.

Well, gee, I hope their work to amass one of the largest tequila collections in the country (if not the world), hasn’t included actually buying any tequila yet, because the liquor industry in Texas is strictly regulated. Bars can only buy tequila from liquor stores licensed to sell to licensed bars. I’m pretty sure that the Plaza doesn’t have a liquor license yet. And I’m pretty sure, restricted, as they are, to only buying tequila from Texas liquor stores, it’ll be hard to amass one of the largest tequila collections in the country (if not the world).

The old bar on the ground floor of the Plaza Hotel used to be more Maltese Falcon than Great Gatsby, more Dashiell Hammett than F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was three steps down, a place where it was always midnight, a place to meet another man’s wife, a place where a gumshoe could meet a dame, with black vinyl booths and bartenders who could remember your drink and forget that you’d ever been there.

Here’s looking at you, kid.

5 comments

    1. I have probably consumed the largest collection of tequila in the nation (if not the world).

  1. I wonder how many materials and such this “Atlanta-based” company that understands El Paso so well has sourced locally?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *