A former elementary school teacher has turned her passion for Mexican spirits into what's billed as Atlanta's first curated agave bottle shop, tucked inside a converted paper mill in West Midtown. Ancestral Bottle Shop & Market fills its shelves with additive-free tequila, mezcal, and lesser-known Mexican distillates alongside handcrafted market goods and home decor, most of it sourced from small, single-village producers rarely found on typical Georgia liquor store shelves.
The shop operates inside Westside Paper, a 15-acre adaptive-reuse development at 950 West Marietta Street NW that transformed a 70-year-old former paper manufacturing plant into a mixed-use commercial hub along the Atlanta BeltLine, according to JLL. Founder Roxana Aguirre worked as a first-grade teacher before training in Oaxaca, Mexico, to become a certified mezcal sommelier accredited by the Agave Spirit Institute, according to Simply Buckhead. As reported by Atlanta News First, Aguirre founded the shop and is featured in the outlet's ATL Live segment on food, fun, and entertainment around the city.
From Classroom to Cantina
Aguirre isn't new to Atlanta's food and drink scene. Prior to launching Ancestral, she co-founded Patria Cocina in Grant Park in 2018 with her husband Octavio Aguirre, as well as Pata Negra Mezcaleria in Buckhead, per Simply Buckhead's account. Successful tequila and mezcal tasting events at Patria Cocina reportedly highlighted local demand for a dedicated agave retail store, laying the groundwork for Ancestral's opening.
Roughly 90% of the shop's spirit inventory is focused on agave-based distillates, with the remaining 10% made up of Mexican-made gin, whiskey, rum, wine, and handcrafted market goods, the outlet's report notes. Ancestral leans on additive-free, microbatch, producer-owned spirits sourced from single villages across Mexico, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a sourcing approach that has grown more appealing as shoppers grow wary of industrial additives in mass-produced tequila.
Tastings Built Around Education, Not Just Retail
Beyond the shelves, Ancestral functions as a sort of classroom for spirits. The store offers 2.5- to 3-hour guided agave tasting soirées and educational workshops led by an accredited agave sommelier inside its showroom, per the shop's own event listings. It's a format that turns a simple bottle purchase into a longer, guided experience rooted in the traditions behind each distillate.
That experiential model is landing at a moment when the broader agave spirits market is shifting. U.S. imports of distilled spirits reached $12 billion in 2022, with Mexican tequila leading overall spirit import growth as import values climbed from $1.1 billion in 2014 to $4.9 billion by 2022, according to the USDA Economic Research Service. Even so, overall U.S. tequila sales volume has recently flattened while demand for ultra-premium, additive-free spirits keeps climbing, a trend Hoodline explored in its report on a new Mexican spirits bar taking over a historic saloon space.
Ultra-Premium Bottles Gain Ground as Volume Stalls
Market data from IWSR shows that while overall U.S. tequila volumes plateaued in 2024 and 2025, ultra-premium agave spirits volume grew 7% over the same period and expanded to represent 17% of total U.S. tequila sales, as reported by Beverage Daily. Non-traditional Mexican agave distillates such as raicilla, sotol, and bacanora are projected to grow globally at a 7% compound annual growth rate through 2028, outpacing traditional tequila volume growth, a trend also documented in Hoodline's earlier coverage of the Denver saloon-turned-agave-bar.
Georgia's own liquor laws help explain why a specialized shop like Ancestral can carve out room to operate. State regulations prohibit any individual or corporate entity from holding financial interest in more than two package liquor retail licenses statewide, according to the R Street Institute. That statutory cap keeps large chains from dominating the state's package store market, leaving space for independent, education-driven concepts focused on a single category of spirits to take root in neighborhoods like West Midtown.
