About 10 days before Sunday, January 14, 2007, Julio Bermejo came down to Apple to have lunch and pick up an iPod; nothing out of the ordinary about that. While visiting, he invited me to go on a Tequila tour of Jalisco, Mexico with a small group of Tequila masters and enthusiasts. This is truly an honor as as Julio is neither a tour guide, nor are the trips something that can be asked for. Julio invites only those people that he thinks will appreciate an intimate education in the making and history of Tequila and who will ask the kinds of intelligent questions at the distilleries.
I am really quite deeply pleased that Julio felt I was the right kind of person to go on this trip! I know I’m going to learn a ton and I have a slew of questions related to the farming and genetics of Agave that should be appropriate. Hopefully, I’ll even get to do some field work!
Awesome. Even more amazing was that I was able to take the time off and find reasonably priced tickets with such short notice. I am normally a light traveler, but not this time. I tossed clothes into two suitcases with a goal of packing them with tequila bottles wrapped in clothes for the return trip.
The rest of the crew arrived in Guadalajara on Sunday morning, fresh off a red-eye out of Oaklnad. I flew out of San Jose and arrived at about 1:30pm. Oddly, this was the second flight in a row that involved an in flight “medical incident”. A woman sat next to me mid-flight who was clearly in some pain and a bit agitated. She was incapable of dealing with the exit row requirements and was moved back shortly before landing. We hit a patch of turbulence about 40 minutes before landing and she immediately required oxygen. Upon landing, the rest of us were “expedited” out of the plane (onto the middle of the tarmac sort of near the airport) so the emergency crew could carry her out. Whee.
Julio’s driver, Estabon, picked me up and I met the crew in Tlaquepaque for, what else, some Tequila and a bit of shopping.
Picked up my first bottle of Tequila, too. A dusty bottle of 1994 Puro Sangre Anejo 3 year. (Out of stock from that site. List price of $199?!?!?! I got it for a little under $70.)
From Tlaquepaque, we headed to a restaurant called Karne Garibaldi. They have exactly one item on the menu — meat in broth — and you can have either the small, medium, or large plate. It was served with beans, salsa, hot peppers, avocado, grilled onions, and fresh tortillas. Karne Garibaldi is also in the Guiness Book of World Records for fastest service time. It took 45 seconds from order to having an awesome plate of food in front of us.
We then hit an awesome– the largest, I think– liquor store in Guadalajara (La Playa liquor store at Avenida Mexico), pictured at left, before hopping in the bus and heading to Arandas. After checking in to the Hotel Santa Barbera, we piled back into the van and headed to the last night of the town’s annual fair.
What a blast. It was like the state fairs I went to as a kid. Only with much better food and without the sterilization through rules that we find so often in the US these days.
We boat a bunch of random grilled meat products from what I named the Meat Pit of Doom. It was a large brick walled pit with several good sized logs burning in the middle. Around the outside were long iron rods onto which big chunks of meat were skewered.
We had a couple of kinds of sausage, rabbit, and — of course! — pork.
After dinner, we wandered around a bit. Ben headed off to find the cock fights. He did, but he said that it was rather disappointing. The two roosters preferred to mostly sit around and try to ignore each other.
Some of us wandered off to the bumper cars. What a blast! Notice that there are no railings around the bumper car “arena” which resulted in a fair bit of chaos before, after and sometimes during a run. I took a boatload of pictures while driving, hoping some would turn out. Beyond the fact that an oversized, very blond, laughing American had come to their central Mexico town, that I also had a camera and was taking pictures while driving a bumper car provided quite a bit of entertainment for the locals. Which, of course, made me a target for all cars. Excellent.
As I discovered last time, central Mexico and the people of Arandas, in particular, is a wonderful place. The people are friendly, sharing information and culture freely. The food is excellent, focused on fresh with simple recipes designed to accentuate the qualities of the ingredients.
Then, back to the hotel to get a few hours of sleep before visiting three distilleries on Monday.
