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Sherry is to Tequila as Vermouth is to Whiskey

Sherry and tequila are showing up together on more and more cocktail menus. I wrote a story about that in the Sunday, February 20th San Francisco Chronicle. 

(Del Rio cocktail by Josh Harris of the Bon Vivants. Photo: Craig Lee)

More drinks including Tequila and Sherry
Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Sherry and Tequila are having a love affair. Bartenders are using more of each ingredient lately, but increasingly you'll see the two sneaking off in a drink together, canoodling in a corner of the cocktail menu.

One of the first outward signs of this attraction came in the form of La Perla, a drink created several years ago by beverage consultant Jacques Bezuidenhout, which is still on the menu at Bourbon & Branch. The cocktail contains reposado (lightly aged) Tequila, manzanilla Sherry and pear liqueur.

A not-too dissimilar flavor combination has popped up recently. At the Hideout at Dalva, a tiny backroom cocktail bar in the Mission District, Josh Harris serves the Del Rio. The drink is made with blanco, or unaged, Tequila, fino Sherry, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, plus a dash of orange bitters and a grapefruit zest.

At Gitane, the Sherry-centric Claude Lane restaurant, bar manager Alex Smith and two other bartenders collaborated on a drink called the Flor Delice, made with reposado, manzanilla, St. Germain and orange bitters, plus maraschino liqueur.

In New York, this combination shows up yet again on the menu at Mayahuel, a bar dedicated to Tequila and mezcal. The Suro-Mago uses blanco, manzanilla, elderflower and orange bitters, and adds a rinse of mezcal to give it a smoky touch.

 Read the rest of the story and get the recipe for the Del Rio, a simple and delicious drink.

Tequila Distillery Visit: Patron

In November I visited seven tequila distilleries in Mexico. Here are some pictures and notes from my visit to the Patron distillery in the town of Atotonilco.

(The distillery is on a huge plot of land. It's a huge distillery. This is the front gate.)

(This is the hacienda, which is the center of the distillery. Nice place.)

(This is agave going in to the rollermill. Patron is 50% rollermill agave and 50% tahona agave.)

(Fermenting tahona agave. Tahona agave ferments and is distilled with the fibers.)

(Outside the distillery they prepare the spent agave to be fertilizer.)

(They use a mix of barrels for Patron.)

• The distillery is actually 12 distilleries operating independently. 
• Most of the agave comes from the highlands
• They recycle the first agave juice out of the ovens, don't use it for fermentation
• Ferment in pine wood, not stainless
• Have unusual stills designed by master distiller
• Tahona agave takes 2 hours to crush
• Patron silver is 75% of sales, reposado accounts for 10 percent and anejo accounts for 15

Tequila Distillery Visit: Don Julio

In November I visited seven tequila distilleries in Mexico. Here are some pictures and notes from my visit to the Don Julio distillery in the town of Atotonilco.

(Cutting up the pinas before baking.)

(Now when I see pinas, I get thirsty.)

(Fermenting agave.)

(Stainless steel pot stills.)

(We had a cocktail contest after the distillery visit. My team of writers won, of course.)

• Don Julio uses all estate-grown agaves
• Has a widerspacing between agaves than average
• They have 18 furnaces, each of which holds 25 tons
• Fermentation takes 24-30 hours
• Their agave is larger than industry standards, with a higher sugar content
• Inside the stainless steel stills is a copper coil

Tequila Distillery Visit: Sauza

In November I visited seven tequila distilleries in Mexico. Here are some pictures and notes from my visit to the Sauza distillery in the town of Tequila.

(First we visited the agave nursery. Sauza is unique in that they propagate their agave not by using baby plants but by... fancier scientific means.)

(This is what an agave looks like if allowed to propagate.)

(You can see close-up that instead of producing seeds, the mother plant produces little baby plants.)

(We had a lecture about plant propagation.)

(I just like this picture from the distillery.)

(This is the diffuser. Super clean at Sauza.)

• The blue color of agave comes from a wax on the plant. This wax covers the pores of the plant to protect it from drying out in the dry season.
• Unlike most tequila distilleries, at Sauza they shred agave and use the diffuser before they cook the agave juice in autoclaves.
• Then they only cook the juice for 3-4 hours.
• They ferment in covered fermentation tanks
• The first distillation is in a column still, second in a stainless steel pot still
• The Tres Generaciones line has a third distillation in a copper pot still

 

Tequila Distillery Visit: Herradura

In November I visited seven tequila distilleries in Mexico. Here are some pictures and notes from my visit to theHerradura distillery in the town of Amatitan.

(Here they split the agave in two before baking.)

(The magic of Herradura is that it ferments naturally- no yeast is added.)

(Sleeping tequila.)

• Agave grows for 7-10 years before harvesting
• Jimadors work for 6 hours a day and harvest about 120 plants
• They use clay/brick ovens, each one holding about 48 tons
• Agave cooks for 26 hours then cools for 24
• They use a rollermill to shred the agave after cooking, then a diffuser to get out the last bits of sugar
• The fermentation takes about 4 days
• The first distillation takes 3 hours, the second 6
• They use stainless steel stills
• They don't move the barrels around, refill them where they are. Use same barrels for about 10 years before replacing
• Between Herradura, El Jimador, and Antiguo, all of which are 100% agave products, they say the only difference is the amount of aging and the percent of alcohol. [That's not quite true, here is a chart that spells out the differences.]
• They age in all new American oak barrels. 
• The reposado is aged for 11 months

Tequila Distillery Visit: Jose Cuervo

In November I visited seven tequila distilleries in Mexico. Here are some pictures and notes from my visit to the Jose Cuervo distillery in the town of Tequila.

(First we visited an agave field.)

(The jimador harvested the agave plant to get the pina, or pineapple, center.)

(I planted my own agave from the cuttings of a mother plant. I'll need to go back there in 7 or so years and drink that sucker.)

(After harvesting, they load the agave pinas into the ovens. I didn't notice at the time, but it appears they put the whole agaves into the ovens without chopping them into smaller pieces.)

(Copper pot stills.)

(We sampled some Reserva de la Famila out of the barrel.)

• April and May are the planting months for agave
• Agave is harvested year-round, though they usually avoid the rainiest month
• Cuervo irrigates their agave
• They prune the leaves of their agave plants for three reasons: Because they're sharp, to avoid insects laying eggs in them, and to help the heart grow faster
• For Reserva de la Familia, they cut out the cogollo, not for the mixto
• Cuervo owns 4 distilleries
• The distillery had 110,000 visitors last year
• They use only oven, no autoclaves
• The product of the first distillation, called ordinario, is cloudy
• Heads and tails are called vinasas. They are mixed with the agave fibers and made into fertilizer. This happens here and at most distilleries we visited.
• Reserva de la Familia agave is grown in special fields. It is aged in a combination of French and American oak barrels.

 

 

(I think it's a raven and not a crow, but hey look, I took a cool picture!)

(We had a horse and lasso show before dinner. )

Tequila Distillery Visit: Cazadores and Corzo

In November I visited seven tequila distilleries in Mexico. Here are some pictures and notes from my visit to the Cazadores and Corzo distillery in the town of Arandas.

(Autoclaves cook agave much faster than traditional brick/clay ovens.)

(It's a huge operation here. The liquids travel in pipes through a tunnel beneath a road separating parts of the distillery.)

(Stainless steel stills.)

• In 1922 the recipe for Cazadores reposado was created
• They process 200 tons of agave per day in the distillery
• The autoclaves cook agave for 10 hours at 120 Celsius. Soon they're reducing the cooking time to 8 hours. 
• After shredding the agave (after cooking it in autoclaves), they put it in a diffuser; a relatively recent technology that gets the last bits of the sugar out of the agave
• They allow the agave to ferment for about 4 days. The tequila undergoes an alcoholic then a malolactic fermentation
• The first distillation takes about 10 hours, the second takes about 24 hours
• The stills are stainless steel
• They do have a column still that they use "when demand is high"
• Corzo starts from Cazadores reposado. It is then redistilled and re-aged.
• They aged in new white American oak, with some French oak for Corzo

(After the tour, dinner and a dance show in the distillery.)

Hot Buttered Fun

Hot Buttered Fun would be a good party band name, right? 

My latest post on FineCooking.com is up. It's a recipe for the Hot Buttered Anejo, which is a hot buttered tequila that I had one night when the brand Avion was pouring drinks at Elixir. 

Check it out here.