Mezcal has a bad rap, thought of by many as cheap tequila, notorious for the worm at the bottom of many bottles. In fact, mezcal is the term for all agave-based spirits made in Mexico, of which tequila is a subset made from blue agave in certain states. While there is plenty of bad, cheap mezcal on the market, there are also fantastic small-batch, traditional mezcals being produced, where multi-generational distilling families still  harvest the agave with machetes, roast the hearts in pits they dig by hand and distill the spirit in a clay still.

But back to the Pechuga.  It has an even more perplexing story.  I was fortunate enough to share a smoke last week in New Orleans with Ron Cooper, the man uniquely responsible for the rise of quality mezcal in the United States, he who went village to village tasting the local artisan mezcals to choose the finest to be bottled under his Del Maguey label.  He explained to me, a story that was hard for me to believe just six months prior. This particular spirit is called Pechuga, meaning chicken breast, because a raw chicken torso is attached to the top of the still, so that as the alcohol is evaporated out of the fermented agave mash, the vapors pass through the cavity of the chicken, which by the end of the distillation process is merely a nickel-sized morsel of dark, dehydrated meat clinging to an otherwise clean ribcage, so all of that juicy chicken, along with seasonal wild apples and plums added to the mash, is carried by the vapor into the bottle.

I called this article “If You Love Me” because if you did, you would pay the $210 that it costs to purchase a bottle of Pechuga for me, because I haven’t been able to justify doing so myself.

We were supposed to test out drinks until we made one we loved and then enter the recipe in the contest, but I was in a hurry, so I looked around, scribbled down a recipe out of my head and was out of there in less than 2 minutes, but somehow I won. I’d like to claim to be a genius, but I think I’m more idiot savant.

The Sweeney family recipe for winning cocktail recipe contests:

• Include generous amounts of at least 2 featured products
• Base your creation on a classic cocktail ingredient ratio
• Avoid products that would make bartenders cringe
• Don’t make the process so complicated that people won’t want to make it at home.
• Make it brightly colored (Hum is great because it’s fuchsia when diluted, and from hibiscus, not artificial colors)
• Carbonate if possible.  Everyone loves bubbles.

Perfect Puree Press Release:

Vin de Noix

• 10 green walnuts, soaked overnight and quartered
• 500 ml vodka
• 1/2 c maple syrup
• 1/2 vanilla bean
• 2 cloves
• 2 orange slices
• 1 bottle white burgundy

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Combine all ingredients in a half-gallon mason jar and let sit, shaking occasionally for at least 3 months.

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Nocino

We split this recipe between 2 half-gallon mason jars.

• 30 green walnuts, soaked overnight and quartered
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 5 cloves
• 1 vanilla bean
• zest of one lemon
• 2 orange slices
• 2 1/2 c maple syrup
• 1 liter of vodka
• 500 ml dry vermouth
• 1 tsp fennel seed
• 1 tsp szechuan peppercorns

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Combine all ingredients in jars and let sit for at least a year, shaking every once in a while.  Apparently this stuff may not be fully primed for 3 years.

I’ve been toying with concepts of spectrum and sequence as I reconnoiter traditional lists, thinking about how to alter a drinker’s perspective by making the time spent imbibing more complex and experiential.  At the Bax vs. Clift seminar at Tales of the Cocktail last week, they shared the cocktail list for The Tippling Club in Singapore wherein one of the pages lists the cocktails on a flavor spectrum, similar (and probably superior) to what I was considering.

My next ideas are to create a Venn diagram of flavors to show which flavors overlap in different drinks, and a sequential tasting menu of drinks based on the Kaiseki Ryori. Stay tuned.

Bourbon Coke Float

2 ounces Elmer T. Lee bourbon
6 ounces Mexican Coke
Ben and Jerry’s vanilla ice cream
Orange bitters

Pour bourbon into glass, followed by Coke and a scoop of ice cream. Splash Ice cream with a dash of bitters and serve with a bendy straw.