Farm Shop Norte and Bar Norte

There is a filling station one block north of the Plaza, and what it sells now is lavender. The building at 201 Washington Avenue, on the corner of Marcy, opened in 1935 as a Sinclair Oil gas station and farm supply store, which in that decade was one business rather than two. Ninety years later it is the Santa Fe shop and bar of an organic farm an hour’s drive south, and the farm supply half of the arrangement has quietly come back around.

1935

Downtown Santa Fe is governed by a style, and this building is not in it. Flat roofs, earth-toned stucco, projecting vigas, deep portals: the historic district has enforced that vocabulary for so long that visitors assume it is simply what the city is made of. The Sinclair station belongs to a different American grammar entirely, the one written for people who arrive by car, and it is one of the few structures near the Plaza that admits the twentieth century happened here.

Los Poblanos restored it rather than disguising it. The work was carried out under the heading of historic preservation, which in this instance meant keeping the elements that make the building legible as roadside architecture instead of stuccoing them into submission. That decision is the whole argument of the place. A farm shop could easily have been made to look two hundred years old. This one was allowed to look exactly its age.

The Farm Is an Hour South

Los Poblanos is a historic inn and organic farm at 4803 Rio Grande Boulevard NW in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, a village of ditches and fields along the river that Albuquerque grew around without ever quite absorbing. It is not in Santa Fe, and it has never said it was. Norte is the entire explanation of the name. This is the northern end of the operation, and the goods travel up.

What travels up is lavender first: soaps, oils, salves, and the rest of a line the farm has built over decades on a crop that suits high desert ground. Alongside it come the Farm Foods pantry goods, curated objects for the home, and New Mexico wine and spirits. The more interesting cargo is the farm’s own botanical spirits, gin among them, distilled from what grows on the property.

Bar Norte

The bar sits next to the shop and is small on purpose. The cocktails are built on those botanical spirits and served with a short list of things to eat, and the shop on the other side of the wall will sell you the bottle on the way out. The distance between the field and the glass is unusually short, and unusually easy to explain.

That vertical arrangement is less rare in Santa Fe than it once was. As Above, So Below distills and pours under one Railyard roof, and Santa Fe Spirits has been making whiskey and gin on the south side since 2010. What sets Bar Norte apart is that its raw material is agricultural rather than industrial. The gin begins in a field somebody has to weed.

One Block North of the Plaza

Almost nothing else in this category is this close in. Tonic is a few blocks the other side of the Plaza, on Water Street. La Reina is a drive out Cerrillos Road. Farm Shop Norte is a walk from the bandstand, which makes it the rare Santa Fe drink that does not require deciding to go anywhere.

It also makes it the rare Santa Fe business that is frankly and unembarrassedly an Albuquerque business. So is Marble, for that matter. The two cities are told apart more insistently by the people who live in them than by anyone else, and the traffic between them has always run both directions.

Go in late summer, when the lavender is cut and the shop smells like the season it came from.

Common Questions

Where is Farm Shop Norte in Santa Fe?

At 201 Washington Avenue, on the corner of Washington and Marcy, one block north of the Plaza, in a restored 1935 Sinclair Oil gas station and farm supply store. Bar Norte is next door in the same building.

Is Los Poblanos in Santa Fe?

No. Los Poblanos is a historic inn and organic farm in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque. Farm Shop Norte and Bar Norte are its Santa Fe shop and bar, and there are no guest rooms here.