The Mexican Blackbird

During lockdown the New Sheridan Club started entertaining the troops with a weekly virtual pub quiz, delivered via Zoom. This has continued post-Covid as a monthly treat, and a couple of months back one of the questions was actually a task—to create a cocktail in ten minutes using whatever ingredients were to hand, which the quizmistress then judged conceptually rather than by actually tasting it, obviously. One contestant let himself down by putting lighter fluid in his concoction (or so he claimed), whereas my invention was more conventional.

I had some crème de cassis which I’d bought for some other project, and I was reminded of the El Diablo cocktail from the 1940s, which combines this with tequila. I think I’d also recently restocked with Cocchi Americano, which I use as a substitute for Kina Lillet in vintage recipes. It’s bitter-sweet and I always feel it has an element of ginger to it, and I also think that tequila goes well with that flavour too (in fact the El Diablo is lengthened with ginger ale). So my cocktail was slightly inspired by the classic Corpse Reviver No. 2, which is equal parts gin, lemon juice, Kina Lillet (or Cocchi Americano) and triple sec, with a dash of absinthe. In this case I actually used two parts tequila to one part each of lemon juice, Cocchi Americano and crème de cassis. To make it more visually fun, I added the cassis last, pouring it through a funnel that I put into the drink, against the bottom of the glass, so that the liqueur formed a lower layer.

When it comes actually to drinking the cocktail, I would recommend mixing it all together: even if you have a sweet tooth and fancy the neat cassis, the rest of the drink is a bit tart without it. For me, I found I actually preferred it with only half a measure of cassis, as the Cocchi adds some sweetness too.

Mexican Blackbird*
2 shots tequila

1 shot Cocchi Americano
1 shot lemon juice
½ shot crème de cassis

I heartily recommend this cocktail. As you raise the glass you are first hit by the petrolly herbaceous note of the tequila. Then on the tongue is the unmistakeable blackcurrant unctuousness of the cassis, but any possibility of cloying sweetness is immediately scooped out by the tartness of the lemon juice and the bitterness of the Cocchi—making for a distinctly grown-up cocktail. You can taste all the elements and they riff off each other in a way that encourages contemplation.

*A song by the immortal ZZ Top

What do you give the woman who has everything? Her own cocktail

A friend was thinking of ways to mark another friend’s 50th birthday and, being a sterling cove, he decided she needed a cocktail created for her and named in her honour. To which end he approached me. (Yes, it’s the same friend who previously asked me to come up with a cocktail to go with the new Bognor Gothic typeface he had designed.)

To get me started I was given a list of his friend Sarah’s likes and dislikes:

Likes: Vodka, tequila, gin, Champagne/Prosecco, triple sec, fruity flavours

Dislikes: Brandy, whisky, chocolate, creamy drinks

OK, so a Brandy Alexander was out. But the combination of tequila, Champagne and fruit flavours immediately made me think of the Paloma Royale combo I came up with last year. This is a blend of tequila, Champagne and grapefruit juice (inspired by the popular Paloma drink of tequila and grapefruit soda); at the time I felt that it worked fine like that, but I also experimented with adding a sweet/sour element with lime juice and syrup. So I felt sure that you could take this base and tweak it a bit more.

My first port of call was the reference in the list of likes to the orange liqueur triple sec (e.g. Cointreau). Sure enough, adding a little of this worked very well, but it really needed just half a teaspoon (2.5ml). At this level the note of orange is clear, but doesn’t swamp the grapefruit, and the earthiness of the tequila still comes through and you’re aware of the mouthfeel of the sparkling wine too. (I used Prosecco this time.) Judging by the photos it looks as if I used pink grapefruit juice last year and I was using white grapefruit juice this time—which might explain why I previously decided that sweetening wasn’t necessary, whereas this time I had to admit that a smidgeon of added sweetness (i.e. the amount in ½ tsp of Cointreau) was just right. If you have a sweeter tooth you could try pink juice.

Sarah’s Surprise No.1
25ml tequila
40ml grapefruit juice
2.5ml (½ tsp) triple sec (e.g. Cointreau)
100ml Champagne or sparkling wine

Shake the first three ingredients with ice and strain into a flute or Champagne saucer then add the sparkling wine and give a gentle stir.

Adding ginger to the original Paloma Royale works well—but with white
grapefruit juice it does need a hint of sweetness added

As I mention in a footnote of the previous post, I’ve noticed in the past that tequila and ginger go well, and indeed my friend had suggested using ginger to give it an autumnal warmth (Sarah’s birthday is in November). An obvious strategy would be to use a ginger liqueur like The King’s Ginger. But (a) I didn’t have any, and (b) based on my previous experience I was worried about making it too sweet. So instead I decided to try muddling fresh root ginger in the cocktail shaker before adding the tequila and grapefruit juice. This does work for sure, and you can adjust the ginger flavour by how big a slice of ginger you use (about an inch across and ⅛ inch thick is a good starting point). You will probably want to fine-strain this, as mashing up the ginger does fill your shaker with bits of fibrous root.

For me this may well have been fine as it was if I had been using pink grapefruit juice, but since I was on the less sweet white juice this time I had to concede that even for me it needed a hint of sweetness. I did try combining both versions of the cocktail by adding triple sec as well, but this was actually a flavour too far and the whole thing became confused.

In the end I found that ½ tsp maraschino did the trick (and I was not unconscious of the reference to the Papa Doble Daiquiri, a version of the rum-based Daiquiri cocktail that adds maraschino and grapefruit juice, apparently preferred by Ernest Hemingway).

It also occurred to me that if you simply garnished the drink with a maraschino cherry, deployed with a barspoon or teaspoon, then enough of the syrup would be transferred to add the same sweetness as using the liqueur, and sure enough this was the case.

Sarah’s Surprise No.2
25ml tequila
40ml grapefruit juice
Slice of root ginger
2.5ml maraschino, or one maraschino cherry
100ml Champagne or sparkling wine

Muddle the ginger in the base of a cocktail shaker, then add the tequila, grapefruit juice and maraschino if using. Shake with ice and fine-strain into a flute or Champagne saucer, then top with sparkling wine. If using the cherry, add it, then give the drink a gentle stir.

Adding a maraschino cherry, using a teaspoon or bar spoon, brings across enough of the syrup to balance the sweetness

The Paloma Royale

The Fumoir bar at London's Claridge's hotel

Last month I gave myself a birthday treat and sloped by the Fumoir Bar in Claridge’s hotel. Claridge’s itself is an Art Deco feast, but the Fumoir is a little-known treasure within a treasure. There is another main bar, but the Fumoir, which used to be a smoking room back in the days when you could smoke indoors, is off the main drag through an inconspicuous door. Within its compact dimensions (it can only seat 36 and you can’t book) are a wealth of decorative period details along with vintage photos of famous people smoking. There are no windows, so it has an intimate late night feel, even during the day.

Your correspondent, roughing it in the Fumoir

As I was chatting to the barman he mentioned one of their Champagne cocktails, which contained tequila and grapefruit juice. He suggested that it referenced the Papa Doble, or Hemingway Daiquiri (a Daiquiri with added grapefruit juice and maraschino) but it occurred to me that this was effectively a high-class Paloma (see my earlier posts on vintage tequila cocktails and cocktails with Ocho).

I am reliably told that the Paloma, a mixture of tequila and grapefruit soda, is the most common way that tequila is drunk in Mexico. The preferred brands are Squirt, Jarritos or Fresca, none of which is available here in the UK, that I have seen; I’ve tried making the drink using Ting but I was underwhelmed. So recipes often involve some actual grapefruit juice, sometimes dispensing with the grapefruit soda altogether; often they will specify a salt rim to the glass and some lime juice (in turn balanced with sugar or agave syrup) or a lime garnish.

Intrigued, I later experimented at home. I essentially stuck to just three ingredients, tequila, grapefruit juice and Champagne, and I definitely think it works. (Even Mrs H. who is frankly not much bothered about cocktails in general, confessed it was pretty interesting and actually quite nice).

But a lot of it lies in the balance. I was using KAR tequila, which has more overt character than some mainstream brands, and a commercial fresh (not from concentrate) grapefruit juice, courtesy of Tropicana. I eventually decided these proportions worked best:

Paloma Royale

Paloma Royale
25ml tequila
40ml grapefruit juice
100ml Champagne
(Optional: 5ml lime juice and 5ml agave syrup)
Shake everything but the Champagne with ice, add to a Champagne flute or coupe and top with chilled Champagne, stirring gently to blend.
(Or you can save time by chilling all the ingredients and simply blending in a—preferably chilled—glass.)

The earthiness of the tequila comes through clearly; I started with equal amounts of spirit and juice, but I think this elevated level of grapefruit is necessary to get the balance and a bit of sweetness. As with all these things you could add lime juice and syrup for some conventional sweet/sour density (as I've indicated, a teaspoon of each is acceptable to me),* but I always think that if you’re going to use Champagne in a cocktail you should be able to taste it, so I preferred to leave it at this—not austere but delicate.

* And I have seen some recipes that add elderflower liqueur—which certainly has a natural affinity with tequila. I’ve also noticed in the past that tequila and ginger go well, so I must try adding something like the King’s Ginger liqueur to see how that works…

KAR Tequila: drinking yourself to death

A friend gave me this as a birthday present last month, KAR tequila, which comes in an earthenware bottle shaped like a Day of the Dead style skull. This is the blanco but they also make a resposado (yellow skull with red devil motif) an añejo (black skull) and an extra añejo (black skull with sparkly bits). The Day of the Dead ritual, honouring the dead and celebrating the cycle of death and rebirth, apparently goes back 3,000 years. The name KAH means “life” in the ancient Mayan language.

Each bottle is hand-painted and no two are the same. As a result this is an expensive product: here in the UK you can expect to pay £46 for the blanco, £61 for the repo and at least £66 for the añejo. My friend gave it to me as much as anything because he’s convinced it’s the same size as my own skull—I have a notably small head and if I try on one of his hats I just disappear into it. It’s close but not quite (see illustration at the bottom). As he says, if nothing else it’ll make an unusual plant pot. But what about the contents? Are they worth the price tag?

Uncork it and there is a strong, pungent agave character. The palate is fruity and surprisingly smooth and sweet, with a herbal element carrying on from the nose and a petrolly aftertaste. There is a robust vegetable character that is muscular but not rough.

It makes a good margarita (tequila, lime juice and curaçao or syrup—agave nectar is fashionable) , bright, sharp and pungent, with that strong herbal note poking through to balance the drink.

To get a subtler idea of KAR’s character I line it up against some other tequilas: El Jimador, at the better end of the mass-market tequilas here and one that you’re likely to encounter in a supermarket, Olmeca Altos (see my post on it from 2013), Ocho (see here) and Tierra Noble.

KAR is again sweet and smooth on the tongue (and note that it is 40% ABV, as is Ocho, while El Jimador and Olmeca Altos are 38%), with caramel on the nose. El Jimador has a note of orange on the nose and it is thinner and leaner on the tongue, with a slightly soapy flavour compared to the others here. With Olmeca Altos you do feel you’ve stepped up a league: the nose is more expansive, fresh, herbal and fleshy, with a petrolly agave character that follows through on the palate, where it joins toffee notes. Ocho also has that extra dimension compared to the first two, but its juicy grapefruit nose is lighter and frothier than Olmeca Altos. There is a strong agave character but it is more delicate than the Olmeca, which has a more middly, meaty, savoury flavour. Finally Tierra Noble is a bit of a wildcard, because I was given my bottle several years ago at a trade show and to the best of my knowledge it is not available in the UK. It is the most smoky of the tequilas here with a hint of chocolate on the finish.

As a spirit to sip neat, I would definitely choose Olmeca Altos of Ocho over KAR. But how do they compare in mixed drinks?

I line up four Margaritas, made with the same proportions but different tequilas: El Jimador, KAR, Olmeca Altos and Ocho. Initially I use two parts tequila to one part lime juice and one part Cointreau. At this point the El Jimador makes an unsatisfactory drink, because the tequila doesn’t really make its presence felt. The KAR, on the other hand is strikingly more prominent on the nose and tongue. Likewise the Olmeca is again noticeable, with a similar caramel note to KAR but with a fresh aromatic element. Ocho is playful, more elusive and subtle, with a hint of minerality.

As an experiment I increase the tequila to three parts (to one part each of lime juice and Cointreau). Even at this ratio the El Jimador gets a bit lost, but with KAR it immediately strikes me as a pretty perfect balance between the three ingredients, the sort of combination that makes sense of a cocktail recipe. With Olmeca, by comparison, something seems out, not gelling. It’s not unpleasant, but just takes a bit of getting used to. Ocho likewise seems to leer out a bit, stamping its own character on the drink, whereas KAR feels more that it merges easily with the lime and curaçao.

There is no doubt that KAR makes a damn fine Margarita. But is it worth the money? Not unless you have a desire to fill your house with gaily-painted ceramic skulls. As a sipping tequila, KAR is smooth and approachable but Olmeca Altos (about £30 for 70cl) and Ocho (£21 for 50cl) offer more dimensions.

Having said that, when my bottle of KAR is finished, I will still have a highly unusual plant pot.

Absinthe, tequila…and cucumber

The experimental Maid in Jalisco. Looking at it, I think I should come up with a cocktail for St Patrick's Day,
garnish it in the same way with thin slices of cucumber, and call it a Four-Leafed Clover…

Cucumber in booze is nothing new—both Hendrick’s and Martin Miller’s gins include cucumber among the flavourings.* But synchronicity dictated that I receive two emails today that embraced the noble plant and, since it is summer and I am in England, what could be more apt?

Emerald Street, a well-written daily offshoot from Stylist magazine, today featured a number of inspiring things you can do with your blender, including a frozen Margarita that includes puréed cucumber (two peeled ones, the juice of five or six limes, 100ml tequila and four cups of ice cubes, whizzed together, plus agave syrup to taste).**

Meanwhile, a post on the Real Absinthe Blog takes a scholarly look at Hemingway’s consumption of absinthe and concludes that, in his writing at least, he only ever drinks it in the traditional way with water, plus the Death in the Afternoon cocktail (absinthe and Champagne). Absinthe has such a powerful flavour that where it does appear in cocktails it is often present in homeopathic quantities (typically the serving glass is rinsed with absinthe that is then discarded before the cocktail is poured in). Last year Gaz Regan in his Regan Report noted the importance of absinthe as a cocktail ingredient but likewise warned against adding too much. Anyway, the post included a link to an earlier item describing the Maid in Cuba cocktail:

2 shots white rum
1 shot lime juice
½ shot sugar syrup
Small handful of mint leaves
3 slices of cucumber
Absinthe

Vigorously shake the first five ingredients with ice and strain into a glass that has been rinsed with the absinthe. It’s essentially a melding of Cuba’s two most famous cocktails, the Daiquiri and the Mojito, with added cucumber and absinthe.

Absinthe is pretty complex stuff in its own right, so you might argue that it is best drunk on its own. However, that would be a coward’s way out, so I found myself wondering what it might naturally synergise with. Gin, with its botanical arsenal, seems a likely contender, and classic absinthe cocktails like the Corpse Reviver No.2 and the Monkey Gland (gin, orange juice, absinthe and grenadine) do tend to be gin-based.*** I wouldn’t say that absinthe had a particular affinity for the white rum in the Maid in Cuba, as it is pretty much a blank canvas, but just thinking about it you can suspect that the herbaceous nature of tequila is going to marry well. And you’d be right. Just try rinsing a glass with absinthe then pouring in some tequila and you’ll see what I mean—the flavours of the two ingredients merge seamlessly.

So, by splicing Emerald Street’s cucumber Margarita with the Maid in Cuba you come up with something we might call the Maid in Jalisco:

2 shots tequila
1 shot lime juice
Agave syrup to taste (½ shot perhaps, although this was too sweet for me)
3 slices of cucumber
½ tsp absinthe

Shake with ice and strain. I started off just rinsing the serving glass with absinthe but I felt that it needed another ½ tsp at least (I was using Jade Terminus). I think the absinthe really works, though I must admit I’m less sure about the cucumber. I think that just by adding absinthe to a Margarita you have something very interesting indeed.

* Evidently cucumber doesn’t work if you infuse it with the other botanicals and distil, so it must be added post-distillation. (See my exploration of how Hendricks is made.) This means that these gins can’t call themselves “London Dry Gin” as this is an EU-defined category that does not allow any additives after distillation. Some people get quite exercised about this and query whether the definition or terminology should be changed, but I have always said that consumers almost certainly won’t consider the term “London Dry Gin” to be a stamp of quality. If anything they will probably assume that it means it was made in London, which it probably wasn’t, as the term does not encompass any geographical requirement.

** Classically the Margarita uses triple sec (such as Cointreau) but it is increasingly common to use agave syrup instead.

*** With the noble exception of the Sazerac, of course, a New Orleans classic that adds a smidgeon of absinthe to rye whisky, Cognac or a blend of the two, along with sugar and bitters.

Some tequila cocktails

A Matador cocktail

Asked to name a tequila cocktail, most people would pipe up with the Margarita (roughly two parts tequila to one part lime juice and one part triple sec, with an optional salt rim, though some nowadays advocate replacing some or all of the triple sec with agave syrup). It’s a great platform for tequila, with a natural harmony like that between rum, lime and sugar in a Daiquiri. And indeed salt and lime, Matthias Lataille of Olmeca Altos (see the last post) tells me, are staples of the cuisine in Mexico. But can you name any more tequila cocktails?

For the Mexican-themed New Sheridan Club party Matthias had come up with some suitably vintage drinks, the first of which was the Picador, from the 1937 Café Royal Cocktail Book. As you will notice, it is identical to the Margarita, though with no mention of salt. Most of the (many) theories about the origin of the Margarita hail from the 1940s, and usually revolve around its being named after a customer called Margarita/Margaret—for example, that it was created in October 1941 at Hussong’s Cantina in Ensenada, Mexico, by bartender Don Carlos Orozco for Margarita Henkel, daughter of the German ambassador. But the Picador predates those, although the book gives no information as to the drink’s origins.*

Picador
¼ fresh lime or lemon juice
¼ Cointreau
½ tequila
Shake
—Café Royal Cocktail Book (1937)

Also in the same book is the Toreador, which essentially takes the Picador and replaces the Cointreau with that other great period ingredient, apricot brandy. I really liked the idea of this one, but I’m not sure there is really a synergy between tequila and apricots.

Toreador
½ tequila
¼ apricot brandy
¼ fresh lime or lemon juice
Shake
—Café Royal Cocktail Book (1937)

El Diablo is a long drink that seems to have been born in California in the 1940s. This is the recipe from Trader Vic’s Book of Food and Drink (1946), with US ounces converted to millilitres:

A Margarita (left) and a Mexican Mule

El Diablo
45ml tequila
15ml lime juice
15ml crème de cassis
Ginger ale
Add all to an ice-filled tall glass and top with ginger ale

Some would boost the tequila to 50 or 60ml and double the lime and maybe the cassis too. Others use ginger beer instead of ginger ale. Sometimes the cassis is dropped in at the end and allowed to sink, like the grenadine in a Tequila Sunrise. It’s a nice drink, though for me the most interesting aspect is actually the pairing of tequila and ginger, so it’s not surprising that Matthias’s final drink is not really a period one exactly, but a tequila version of the Moscow Mule (which in itself is a vintage drink):**

Mexican Mule
50ml Tequila
15ml lime juice
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
Ginger beer
Build in highball glass and top with ginger beer. Some add the Angostura on the top at the end

During my own experiments I made the discovery that tequila goes rather well with pineapple juice. But I should have guessed that I was not the first to notice this, and in fact there is a well-known cocktail called a Matador, which effectively replaces the triple sec in a Margarita with pineapple juice, though some recipes include triple sec as well, and it can be served long on the rocks too. Here is the recipe from Trader Vic’s Bartending Guide (1947):

Matador
30ml Tequila
60ml Pineapple juice
Juice of half a lime
Shake and strain into a cocktail glass

A Paloma made with pink grapefruit juice and
Briottet pink grapefruit liqueur

Some would use more tequila than this, so it’s worth experimenting. But get the balance right and it’s a great combination. Personally I think it works better if you nudge the tequila to 45ml and the pineapple to about 70ml, then add a generous teaspoon of maraschino: the sweetness and subtle cherry favour fill a gap.

So which of these is the way that Mexicans drink tequila? None, apparently. Matthias tells me that the most common drink is the Paloma, which combines tequila with grapefruit soda, such as Fresca, Squirt or Jarritos, plus a lime wedge. You don’t seem to be able to buy grapefruit soda here, so a common alternative is to use grapefruit juice and soda water, plus something to sweeten it.

Makeshift Paloma
2 shots tequila
2 shots grapefruit juice
½ shot lime juice
¼–½ shot sugar syrup or agave nectar
[½ shot grapefruit liqueur]
Soda water
Shake everything but the soda and strain into an ice-filled highball. Top with soda

Some serve this with a salt rim too, or just add a pinch of salt to the mix. Trying it out, I feel the basic recipe lacks heft in the middle, and it works better with a little grapefruit liqueur (Briottet do one)—the sweetness balances things a bit and it stops the grapefruit character from being watered down by the soda.


* It has also been observed that the Margarita is not very far from a Daisy, a Victorian drink where citrus and a syrup or liqueur are added to a base spirit: and “margarita” is Spanish for daisy…

** The story goes that the Moscow Mule was invented by John Martin, who bought the rights to Smirnoff from impoverished Russian Rudolph Kunett in 1939, along with Jack Morgan, owner of the Cock ‘n’ Bull pub in Hollywood, which had its own brand of ginger beer. Head bartender Wes Price says that they invented the cocktail as a way to promote two products that were proving hard to shift. To seal the drink’s image they came up with a signature vessel, a copper mug with a kicking mule engraved on it—this was apparently prompted by the fact that Martin had a girlfriend who had inherited a copper factory that made copper mugs that were also proving to be poor sellers. In a stroke of genius Martin bought an early Polaroid camera and would get barmen to pose with one of these mugs and a bottle of Smirnoff. He’d give them one copy of the photo and take another copy to the next bar, to show them what their competitors were up to. It worked.

Tequila: busting myths and fighting red tape

Matthias addresses the mob

The New Sheridan Club’s summer party on Saturday had (rather inexplicably, I admit) a Mexican theme. It proved a rich seam, with Frida Kahlo rubbing shoulders with Zorro, plenty of bandidos and Zapatistas, and one guest who came with a bloodied chainsaw and the head of a drug rival in a bucket. Our games included cutting the heart from an Aztec sacrificial victim and shooting a glass off the head of William Burroughs’ wife Joan Vollmer, in a recreation of the ill-fated “William Tell routine” in Mexico City.

A welcome bonus came in the form of Olmeca Altos tequila: Matthias Lataille, the brand ambassador, gave us a brief masterclass at the beginning of the evening, with a tasting of the plata unaged spirit and the reposado, aged in oak for 6–8 months. There was also a menu of tequila cocktails from the 1930s and 1940s which Matthias had prepared.

I like tequila (I like all the boozes, frankly) but I don’t know much about it. This seems to be a common obstacle for Matthias: during our masterclass he was unsurprised by comments from people who said that they had never before tried tequila in a stemmed tasting glass (rather than knocking it back from a shot glass), and never before 2am! The product’s reputation as an exotic but rough-and-ready shortcut to oblivion is clearly a problem if you’re trying to get people to savour its aroma and flavour as a premium sipping spirit.

In fact Matthias tells me that tequila is one of the most heavily regulated spirit categories. It must be made from at least 51% blue agave and can be produced only in the state of Jalisco and limited regions in the states of Guanajuato, Michoacán, Nayarit, and Tamaulipas. There are plenty of premium tequilas made from 100% agave, but in the cheaper ones the rest of the sugars come from sugar cane. (In fact, Matthias tells me, the prices of these two raw ingredients are constantly fluctuating, meaning that at times agave is actually cheaper than sugar cane.)*

Tequila must be between 35 and 55% ABV, but is typically 38–40%.** A blanco or plata must be unaged, or kept for less than two months in stainless steel or neutral oak; a reposado must be barrel-aged between two months and a year; an añejo must be aged between one and three years. In 2006 a new category of extra añejo was introduced, aged for at least three years.

Olmeca Altos is a premium expression from the existing Olmeca brand, the fourth biggest in the world and the largest in Europe. It was developed as a collaboration between master distiller Jesus Hernandez and UK bartenders Henry Besant and Dre Masso. Regular Olmeca has a lot of Aztec styling about the bottles, and it looks as if the Altos versions originally did as well, but they are in the process of switching to a simpler, cleaner design, with “Olmeca Altos 100% agave” stamped into the glass (with the word ALTOS dominating, to help distinguish it from regular Olmeca) and a certificate of authenticity as the only front label. The glass also has a knobbly texture to it; I’m not sure if this meant to suggest rough-hewn stone or just rustic glass, but I gather the whole redesign was aimed at emphasising the “craft” qualities of the product. (The dedicated Olmeca Altos website features the slogan “The Colours of Tequila”, along with a lot of super-saturated imagery of red soil and blue-green fronds; perhaps this is just meant to pick up on traditional colourful Mexican folk art, but it does rather suggest that you can expect some psychedelic experiences drinking this stuff!)***

New style plata and old style reposado bottles

The production process is fairly “crafty” as these things go. The agaves are all grown in the Los Altos region, at a height of 2,104 metres, where the red volcanic soil is apparently perfect. After 7–8 years the plants are harvested; the leaves are trimmed off by skilled jimadores, leaving a piña, the heart of the plant. These are then cooked to release the sugary sap. For Olmeca Altos the piñas are all cooked slowly in a traditional brick oven, which they say brings out the herbal flavour of the plant. Next the fibrous flesh must be pressed to release the juice. A proportion of the agave that goes into Olmeca Altos is crushed using the traditional tahona method, where a two-tonne wheel carved from volcanic rock rolls over the pulp.

The distillery, Destilería Colonial de Jalisco, was originally built to make Patrón, but after that deal fell through they were left with the brick ovens and the tahona stone, relatively unusual in a modern distillery. To make the most of it, Olmeca produce the super premium Tezón, which is 100% agave, all of it mashed by the tahona. Olmeca Altos is intended to get as much of that character as possible, but at a more affordable price (it’s about £30 a bottle for the plata in the UK), to which end, it is made from a blend of tahona-crushed pulp and modern milled juice. It is also specifically aimed at cocktail-making, which might explain the emphasis on the less aged end of the scale.

The tahona wheel: in the old days it would be pulled round by
a mule, but today it is machine-powered

So what difference does the tahona make? The alternative method is to put the cooked agave through a steel mill, where the pulp is washed with water to extract all the sugars, before the solid matter is sieved out. With the tahona method, however, the crushed pulp is fermented as it is, fibres and all, which one assumes imparts more of the agave character to the finished product. It is slower to crush the pulp in this way and the fermentation with the plant fibre is slower, so it is inevitably a more costly process.

One treat at our masterclass was some strips of cooked agave that Matthias handed round for us to taste. They are a dark brown and look a bit like anchovies. They are juicy in the mouth, but with a fibrous core, which you don’t really want to swallow. The flavour is complex: I’m hit by caramel first, and something that reminds me of poached pears. Other people suggest plums, plantains, sweet potatoes, dates, figs. This is a very handy experiment, because I can see that Olmeca Altos is about extracting as much of that agave flavour as possible.

Matthias with some strips of cooked agave flesh

To help me get a handle on this flavour, at home I dig out some other tequilas that I have knocking around, for comparative purposes. I have blanco, reposado and añejo samples from Excellia, a French-owned brand (from the people who brought you G’Vine gin) that matures the spirit in barrels previously used for Sauternes and Cognac (ex-bourbon barrels are more common), plus a blanco and reposado of Tierra Noble (samples that were pressed on me at a trade show a couple of years ago, and I don’t think the brand is actually distributed here; I seem to remember that their schtick is also that the tequila is both grown and aged at high altitude).

It’s hard to describe the essential taste of tequila, but I guess it is herbal, smoky, almost petrolly at times. For me cooked pears are in there and something like tarragon or anise. Out of the three unaged samples, Olmeca Altos has far and away the strongest agave herbal character, big, pungent, caramelly, with a tart orange note and a hint of onion, banana, pencil lead and maybe fresh wood (odd, given that I don’t think it is rested in oak at all), and butterscotch on the palate. Excellia is similar but smokier and not as sharp or big. Tierra Noble is sweeter and softer, with a buttery and slightly floral nose and a distinct chocolate finish on the palate. Perhaps the latter was designed more for drinking neat, and we know that the Olmeca Altos is intended for cocktails, so I guess they wanted a big flavour to push through other cocktail ingredients. But none of these spirits is rough or fierce.

Nice bottle, shame about the price

I decide that I should bite the financial bullet (£25 for 35cl) and get some Patrón the highest-profile “ultra premium” tequila, and probably the one that invented the market. It is also made with a blend of tahona-crushed agave, fermented on the fibre, and milled juice. At this price I’m expecting intense agave flavour—but its aroma is subtle, mellow, rather undemonstrative, when put up next to the other white tequilas. The palate is less smooth than the Tierra Noble, but then it is bottled at 40%; so I add a splash of water and it develops a sweeter feel on the tongue, but still with a slight bitterness on the finish. There is agave flavour there, but I am frankly underwhelmed. The Olmeca Altos has far more 3D herbal punch, and the Tierra Noble has more sweet, smoky aroma and unctuous mouthfeel. The labelling brags about how each bottle is hand-blown (click on the picture on the left: you can see little bubbles in the glass), but it seems that that is where your money is going.

Moving on to the reposados, the Tierra Noble has a sweet, smoky nose with that herbal, petrolly “blue” note and a palate of smoky pears, tarragon herbs and a bit of chocolate and coffee. This time the Olmeca Altos has a milder aroma, buttery with orange citrus. The palate is honeyed and more herbal, reminiscent of that cooked agave, with hints of anise and wood smoke, and again that citrus. The Excellia is smoky but with a brighter nose, tart like gooseberries and white pepper on the finish. (The añejo Excellia, for the record, has a surprisingly quiet nose but lots of dark, varnished wood on the palate, yet still that discernable herbaceous agave character.)

The motley collection of samples (the jam jar contains the
Olmeca Altos reposado, as there were no full bottles available)

As a bonus, I have a bottle of Aqua Riva Reposado too. This is the brand that has famously been launched by Cleo Rocos, who as a teenager was the foil in Kenny Everett’s TV show. But I gather she hasn’t just casually leant her name to it—she’s a genuine tequila fan and the spirit is made to her specification.**** She makes blanco and reposado “barman” tequilas for cocktails, and a premium sipping resposado too. It is all 100% blue agave. I have the barman reposado (discounted in Sainsbury’s) and to me it seems fiercer than the others, with a sharper, steelier nose and a palate more dominated by high notes. This character persists in cocktails, and I’m not really a fan.

It’s hard to know where tequila is going at the moment, though Patrón seems to be leading the way for the high-end concept. The big news now is the opening up of the Chinese market, but the demand is only exacerbating an ongoing shortage of agave, leading to stories of unscrupulous tequileros buying up truckloads of immature agave from the mezcal-producing regions and illegally making tequila from it. This in turn is putting the squeeze on mezcal—along with the Mexican government’s attempts to pass legislation that would effectively outlaw most mezcal. Some are even predicting that the inability to meet sudden Chinese demand could be the end of tequila as we know it.

So perhaps the moral of all of this is to get out there and drink some decent tequila while you can.


* Agave, incidentally, is not a cactus; it was long considered part of the lily family, though it looks as if they’ve now decided it really belongs in the asparagus family.

** The majority of tequila I encounter actually seems to be 38%, lower than most premium spirits.

*** Which reminds me of the myth of the mezcal worm, one of the stumbling blocks that Matthias doubtless has to deal with. Many people probably think that the difference between tequila and mezcal is that the latter has a worm in it, which bold souls will dare to eat, believing that it contain mescaline, or some such. In fact the “worm” is the larva of a moth that preys on agave and the presence of one in a bottle suggests a severe lack of quality control; the idea of deliberately including one was a gimmick dreamed up in the 1940s. The real distinction between tequila and mezcal, Matthias tells me, is more like the difference between Cognac and Armagnac—they are both made from the same raw material but in different regions (giving an influence from the terroir) and using different distillation methods. Modern tequila is run along more industrial lines, whereas mezcal tends to be more rustic, in some cases being distilled in ways that haven’t changed for 200 years. Mezcal production is centred around the Oaxaca region and there is a wider range of permitted types of agave that can go into mezcal, though the bulk of it is Agave americana, whereas tequila can only be made from the Agave tequilana blue agave.

**** Another odd marketing ploy is her theory that if you drink nothing but 100% agave tequila and cocktails containing this plus agave syrup (but not sugary liqueurs like Cointreau) then you won’t get a hangover. This is probably based on the fact that agave nectar is pure fructose and has a very low GI, making it suitable for diabetics. But whether any of that makes it through fermentation (in which the sugar is consumed by yeast) and distillation, I am sceptical.