while we were at dinner a few chose to have an aperitif. not sure why they felt that urge when they knew they were going to have a lot more alcohol, but oh well. i skipped the dinner drink and opted for water. lots of water.
we arrived a little bit early, and i took a few pics of the lounge. i'm not sure if i was really allowed to do so or not, so they were fast and well, not exactly 100% in focus.
we met our bartenders for the night, Neyah and Duggan, who hail from San Francisco were our teachers for the night. Duggan spoke about Peruvian Pisco and Neyah handled the single-village Mezcal.
prepping the 1st of ?? drinks for the night.
yup, that's an egg he's cracking into the glass.
'rock candy / pure cane mix' and egg whites.
the front of the pisco bottle.
and pisco. that's the back of the label on the front of the bottle. the liquor is so clear you wonder if there's actually anything in the bottle.
(a slightly different angle)
drink #1: the pisco sour
pisco, egg white, lime/lemon mix, bitters
our trio of bites, top to bottom are:
prosciutto truffle brie
foie gras & minced grapes
smoked scallop and caviar
drink #2: pisco straight.
trust me, that's not water! it was very strong. matt describes it as grapey. it is a brandy and they are made from distilled wines. just go with it.
we heard stories about the making of this spirit. it's not yet available in the states. duggan, our bartender is also the producer of pisco. but i think the most moving is the one that explains how to drink it.
you have a glass, held in the left hand. a man must take the bottle. women are not allowed to touch the bottle (cultural etiquette here). so man #1 pours a drink, admires the botttle, then passes it to the next man. man #2 admires the bottle while man #1 drinks and enjoys the liquor. man #1 then passes the glass to woman #1, who takes the glass with her left hand, man #2 pours her a glass which she drinks, then hands to man #2, who takes it with his left hand and pours a drink, hten passing the bottle to man #3... see the pattern? so duggan poured the 1st, passed the bottle, and down the bar it went. bottle before the glass, all the way to the end where Neyah took it, and it started over again. because as duggan put it so poetically, 'there's still some left in the bottle and we can't have that!'.
the reason you drink pisco with the left hand has to do with the fact that a young boy - 10 or 12-ish in age, a nephew of the guy who runs the distillery i think it was, had his right hand blown off from a bottle rocket or land mine or something. TBH i didn't think i was actually 'in school' and needed to take notes!
by the time we were done with the pisco - which didn't quite make it 2 full times down the bar, we were all pretty happy, and most people were up and out of their seats. talk about a lack of teacher control in the classroom :-).
then it was on to the mezcal. talk about some great stuff.
drink #3: mezcal marguerita. the best damn marguerita you'll ever have. those frozen red things you get at tex-mex eateries - they have their place, and i'll still order them. but no way can they compare.
lime juice, cointreau, benesin mezcal
this drink is dry, spicy, and pretty smokey. and the mezcal is 100% agave.
front of the benesin mezcal
with the mezcal neyah gave us a slide show on the agave plant, and how the mezcal is made. we saw images of the plants growing on the hills, how they harvest them, and what they do with them to get them to the liquid alcohol stage.
drink #4: straight up.
now i used to drink what we called 'liquid smoke' back in my clubbing days. it wasn't uncommon to go through a 5th of tequila - jose gold - in a night. (gee i hope my parent's aren't reading this!) but man, that stuff is rockgut compared to this.
this is Del Maguey, single village mezcal, 100% tobala (agave)
and if i drank a bottle of this on my own i'd be dead from alcohol poisoning.
thank you neyah for the opportunity to gnaw on some actual agave. it looks like beef jerky but it doesn't taste like it. i didn't care for it personally, but am glad i had the chance to taste it.
i was drinking this one really slowly. in fact i couldn't finish it. you can see how the agave kind of shreds as you gnaw. made me feel like i should've been on survivor or something, using it to floss my teeth.
2oz mezcal
1/2 oz benedictine
3 dashes Peychaud's bitters
ice cubes
orange zest for garnish
i also learned that benedictine is a saffron-honey liquer and is in the absinthe family. matt really liked that. i'm not so hip on the absinthe. but i notice that on march 7th there's a soiree to absinthe.
and as an aside for myself mostly, neyah was using a strainer which i had been trying to find but no one knew what i was talking about. he said it's called a julep strainer or a bowl strainer. so now i know and i can go get one, yay!
and one last pic of our instructors for the night. neyah on the left, duggan on the right.
standing ovation.
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