CHAPTER 4

Contemporary Concoctions

This chapter is where you’ll look for drinks when you’re feeling adventurous—when you want a drink that has all the flavor elements you love in a Bloody Mary but doesn’t look like a Bloody Mary.

While there are tomatoes—or their first cousins named tomatillos—in some of these drinks, the drinks themselves can be yellow, green, or even clear. There’s a lot of spices in many of them, but the heat is balanced by the sweetness of fresh fruits.

There are also many recipes in this chapter than use South American spirits instead of vodka. As I said, these are the drinks to try when you’re feeling adventurous.

 

Spirits from the Southern Hemisphere

If you’ve sipped on a margarita you’re already acquainted with one of the main Latin American forms of liquor—tequila. But farther down in South America, there are equally delicious distilled spirits that are just gaining popularity in this country.

But there might be some things you don’t know about tequila; it is as dependent on terroir as a wine grape. Tequila is distilled from blue agave plants that grow in the red volcanic soil of the Mexican state of Jalisco. Those grown in the mountain highlands are larger and sweeter than those from the lowlands, which have a more herbaceous aroma and flavor. To be sold in the United States tequila must be at least 40 percent alcohol (80 proof), but that’s higher than the level distilled for consumption in Mexico.

In Brazil it’s sugarcane juice that serves as the base for cachaça, the country’s national liquor and the basis for the lime-flavored Caipirinha cocktail. The Portuguese switched the lucrative sugar-production business from the islands of Madeira to Brazil in the mid-sixteenth century. Almost all the cachaça produced never leaves Brazil.

Like rum, cachaça comes both clear and amber in color. The clear is usually less expensive because it hasn’t been aged, but some of the finer ones are aged for at least a year to give them a smoother finish.

The comparisons are frequently made between rum and cachaça because sugarcane is the base for both. The major difference is that rum is most often distilled from molasses, a by-product that results after the refineries have boiled the cane juice to extract the most sugar crystals possible. On the other hand, cachaça is made from sugarcane juice that is fermented and distilled for the purpose of making the spirit.

And then there’s pisco. Pisco was new to me on my first trip to Chile in 2013, but I’m now delighted to say it’s for sale in most liquor stores. It’s a great addition to many drinks above and beyond the pisco sours touted in its native lands.

Pisco is made in both Chile and Peru and it’s a clear or light amber-colored brandy made by distilling wine pressed from grapes into a high-proof spirit; Chile’s production is about three times the volume of Peru’s because the country has such rich grape-growing regions. Of these South American spirits, pisco comes the closest to adding alcohol with little flavor to drinks, sort of like vodka.