Spirits

Take on tequila slowly, don't make eye contact

Tequila
Tequila

I had an old baseball coach who was fond of paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous advice to Oliver Wendell Holmes -- "When you strike at a King you must kill him."

Coach's way of putting it was a little less elegant, if no less poetic: "If you're going to throw at a mudderbleeper, boys, you better hit the mudderbleeper."

What both of these wise men meant was that half measures accomplish nothing other than exposing one's intentions and rendering one vulnerable. Coach's prescription applies to most areas of human endeavor and I have followed it most of my life. But there is one area where I take caution -- one ought not apply the dictum to the drinking of tequila.

My advice to you, son, is to leave the stuff alone. At least don't step to it. Approach it with your hat in your hand and your eyes cast down and maybe, just maybe, senor will let you live. Only the foolish approach a bottle with murderous intent. Maybe if there's six or seven of you, you'll prevail, but the chances of you surviving unmarked are slim.

Tequila is there to be enjoyed, but it must also be respected lest you add your voice to the mournful drone of the tequila monologues: There was a brown bottle of Two Fingers in Billy's Ford LTD, in the parking lot of the Bossier City Admiral Benbow Inn in 1977, a motel that moonlighted as an inexplicably vibrant disco. The sad stink of lime and salt-stained polyester, after the shock of discovering a Lincolnesque shop instructor in a clinch with Billy's old English teacher, the one he thought he might ask out after his divorce was final.

He talked me into it, that tequila party. I still don't quite know how it's supposed to go -- lime, salt, tequila? I guess I could Google it now -- you can find anything on the Internet.

Pepe Lopez was the brand we bought when we really felt like punishing ourselves. We bought it because of the cute little sombrero that covered the cap. Sometimes we'd even go cheaper, switching Pepe's chapeau to some further-off brand. We thought we were slick but in retrospect the employees at Mr. Thrifty probably pitied us.

Anyway, I laid off it for a long time. In that interval it somehow became hip and all the bright young people were shooting it in bars. I gave in to peer pressure one night in 1991 and allowed a hip young music writer to guide me on a death crawl through the worst rock 'n' roll bars in Tempe, in the shadow of Arizona State University. He introduced me to various members of the Gin Blossoms and the Epic publicist who was pushing Pearl Jam. At some point we sensibly abandoned the car and continued on foot. It took Robert three days to find his car -- but to be fair, he didn't feel much like looking for it the first two days. As the late, great Warren Zevon said, "I don't want to talk about it."

I have friends of means who drink the stuff, who buy the pricey bottles and the fancy salt. I class them with the jaded gourmands who feast on puffer fish; the danger is the main part of the thrill.

I could go on. But I won't. The stories are too pathetic and tequila deserves better than a catalog of pain and regret. The National Drink of Mexico is blameless -- it's not tequila's fault the gringos misuse it. A bottle of tequila is like a loaded gun; it can save your life but it's freighted with horrible potential. It makes some people nervous. And there's nearly always some idiot who wants to shoot it. It is not made from cactus, but from the sap of the Weber blue agave, a succulent plant that's related to the lily and is indigenous to the arid highlands of central Mexico. It's believed that agave has been cultivated for at least 9,000 years to make a mildly alcoholic drink called pulque. Spanish conquistadors quickly learned to distill pulque into the more potent "tequila wine." The city of Tequila -- in the heart of the agave-growing belt in the state of Jalisco -- was established in 1656.

There are two basic types of tequila: 100 percent blue agave and mixto. The 100 percent blue agave must be distilled and bottled in Mexico. A mixto may contain as little as 60 percent agave juice blended with other sugars. Then there are the grades -- blanco, reposado and anejo. Blanco is unaged and untreated with additives, reposado is "rested" in oak for two months to a year before bottling, and anejo is "aged" tequila that has spent at least one year in oak barrels. (Few tequilas are aged longer than three or four years.) These grades apply to 100 percent blue agave tequila and mixto. It is possible to draw some general conclusions -- 100 percent blue agave stuff is usually superior to (and more expensive than) mixto. Anejo is generally considered superior to (and more expensive than) reposado. Serious tequila drinkers -- some do survive to full maturity -- are fond of saying that, as with wine, one should not be intimidated by price lists or the opinions of others. One should try lots of different tequilas, though not all at once.

I use it sparingly these days, though I keep plenty on hand should we suddenly have occasion to host a college mixer. A margarita is sometimes a possibility, though we finally got through the Skinny Girl stuff that we purchased for professional reasons a few years ago. Checking the shelves, I find an unopened bottle of Sauza Conmemorativo and a just about dead bottle of Jose Cuervo silver.

What I'm featuring now is George Clooney's well-reviewed Casamigos Tequila (about $42), an excellent if deadly product. I like the blanco best, which probably marks me as hopelessly unsophisticated. What they say about this stuff -- which Clooney has put his money into -- is that it's a highland tequila made from agaves at least 7 years old (many cheaper tequilas use agaves around 3 years old).

The idea is that the older agave better reflects the particular terroir -- the volcanic and mineral-rich soil -- of the Mexican mountains. A few other points of note include a particularly long cooking of the heart of the plants, called pinas (72 hours, 10 times the industry standard) in stone hornitos ovens rather than the steel boxes others use, and a cold fermentation process of 80 hours -- double the industry standard. Maybe a chemist can tell you if this is more than puffery. All I know is that it's Clooney's tequila and so long as I approach it with respect and don't make any sudden movements, it probably won't kill me.

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Style on 05/31/2015

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