Archive for the 'Travel' Category

I’m back from a tour of nine tequila distilleries in Mexico. I have a boatload of pictures and notes, much of which I’ll post over the coming days.

Pictured above is the tequila and tequila related products that I brought back. From right to left:

• Empty oak barrel with a generic label and a heavy char on the inside. Will be used for aging my own tequila.
• Bottle of Arette Reposado with Arette shot glasses and lime/salt holder.
• Bottle of Rey Sol. Absolutely amazing aged tequila. Sublimely delicious.
• Two bottles of Herradura Antiguo Reposado. Perhaps the best lowland reposado made.
• Two bottles of Tapatio Anejo. This is El Tesoro’s mexican-only product. Great anejo.
• A bottle of a Tapatio / El Tesoro product that has not been named, does not have a product specific label, and isn’t on the market yet. Amazing product– we had the honor of tasting it with Carlos and Lilianna .
• A 1994 bottle of Pura Sangre Anejo that we found in a liquor store in Guadalajara. Got it cheap.
• An Arette flask full of Arette Anejo.
• A sampler pack of Partida Blanco, Reposado, and Anejo.
• A personalized barrel like the other within which I will be aging Tequila.

Next time, I’ll take a larger set of luggage. I passed up a lot of good deals.

Nope — didn’t pay duty. I took the recommended approach of declaring everything quite honestly, targeting around 4 liters of tequila per bag, and being polite on the way through customs. Didn’t look twice at the amount of tequila and were far more interested in my barrels (though not even that was terribly interesting).

The import duties are really aimed at busting people carrying stuff through for distribution. Someone bringing back a couple of gifts and a handful of obviously different stuff to add to a collection isn’t the targeted group.

Ugh. I brought home more than Tequila. Feels like a rabid weasel is trying to crawl through my stomach. I’m having an Alien moment today. Ouch. Now I have a 100.5 fever. Bath time — and you know I’m sick when I sit in the tub for a while.

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.

On Friday (Oct 13, 2006) afternoon (after flying all night and 4.5L of tequila’s worth of bus ride to the hotel), we headed to Tequila Centinela for a tour of the distillery.

If you are in need of a good Tequila, you cannot go wrong with any Centinela product. They are all rock solid product that can be enjoyed as a sipping tequila or in a well made margarita (no mixes). Seriously good stuff. If you can find it, the three year añejo is an absolutely delicious sipping tequila that can usually be had for around $80/bottle. Rarer still is the seven year añejo. Right at the edge of useful aging span for a tequila and an absolutely sublime product.

At left is Christine standing below the main tank/sign of the distillery. Of course, there is a photo of me in the same spot.

We then got a full tour of the operation and then partook of a rather awesome seemingly impromptu party in their parking lot.

The full story contains all of the details.

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Christine and I took a rather amazing trip over last weekend. We were honored to be invited to Lily & Julio’s wedding in Arandas, Jalisco, Mexico.

First: Congratulations to the bride & groom!

I have known Julio for nearly a decade now. One Awesome Dude who deserves to be really happy. And happy he is as he is now married to The Very Awesome Lady Lily.

Congratulations, Julio — we are ecstatic that you have found such intense happiness with someone who is so happy with you!

The wedding was one amazing event. It was a 12 hour celebration of a magnitude that will be hard to describe.

One heck of a great way to kick off what is bound to be a long and happy marriage. Congratulation again!

The wedding was legendary. 800 guests. 15 days before the wedding, there was a change of venue from an already built facility to an empty field. And the execution was flawless…

More on that later.

I’ll be writing up the trip over a few posts. Like the wedding, the trip was something special… a unique bit of traveling experience.

To give an idea of how unique, at right is the picture of the hotel that Christine & I spent the weekend.

The owner always wanted to live in a castle, so he decided to build one for himself right in the middle of a block of downtown Arandas. Over time, his daughter turned it into a Hotel and a completely unique hotel it is. Every bit as unique on the inside as out.

But more on that in later posts…

And, of course, we were in the heart of Tequila country. Not surprising given that the Wall Street Journal labeled Julio (& Tommy’s in SF) as “epicenter of tequila” and Lily is the grandaughter of the founder of the company that makes El Tesoro tequilas (US market name), an absolutely delicious tequila.

While we didn’t visit the La Alteña Distillery, we did tour the Tequila Centinela distillery found on the outskirts of Arandas. Not only did we receive an interesting and educational tour of the facilities, the Centinela folks threw us one hell of a great party.

Details to follow….

So, yeah, it was one hell of a trip. Once in a lifetime kind of trip. Several posts and lots of photos to follow. We spent 3 days with lots of the incredibly fine folk from Tommy’s Blue Agave Club, including many demigods (of which, I hope to join their ranks in January). This is a very special group of people; it was like hanging with old friends — like the whole group had done trips together many times before even though we were new.

I spent part of today mowing paths through the fields and woods surrounding my parent’s house. I’m using a John Deere 750 tractor with a Bush Hog mounted on the back. This thing can rip through small trees and is excellent for mowing paths.

I started by mowing the fields and, at the end of it, my ears were ringing. Stupid me.

When mowing around the pond and into the woods, I put on my iPod with a set of the Apple iPod In-Ear Headphones and it worked brilliantly. It completely deadened the tractor sound while allowing me to listen to decent tunes at a reasonable volume.

I have never been able to wear an in-the-ear headphone before these. These are the first headphones of these types that have not immediately made my ears swell and turn red/itchy.

The trick is to set the volume limiter to a reasonable level in a quiet room and then not worry about blowing out your ears when in noisy environment like on a tractor or in an airplane.

We also spent some time tooling around the pond in a little boat, hunting bugs, snakes, frogs and anything else that moves.

Tomorrow, I hope to get some picks of vultures as they pick a dead possum clean on top of the dam. That and grab a few captures of the wildflowers that are now accessible off the freshly mown paths.

This is the events of our last day of the vacation, a travel day. All photos from this day can be found here..

Over night, the Sea Bird docked in La Paz. We left the ship after breakfast to climb aboard busses to head to a serpenteria in La Paz.

Odd, but very neat, place. Apparently, the professor started collecting various snakes, lizards, and other dessert creepy crawlies over 15 years ago with the intention of making such creatures less scary and more approachable by the general population.

The place is located in a side neighborhood of La Paz, down several dirt roads. It otherwise looks like a nicely fenced in yard until you enter and realize that all of the beautiful gardens are actually habitats for iguanas, snakes, turtles and the like.

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This is the events of our sixth full day of the expedition. All photos from this day can be found here. The daily expedition report is also available.

This morning, we awoke in the Bay of La Paz. We spent the morning looking for whale sharks. A couple of local folks showed up with extra boats and a spotter plane to help us find the whale sharks.

We came within a few feet of a 12 to 15 foot whale shark. It swam directly under our boat and we could see the huge fish in detail, including being able to see the spots and the exact shape of the tail fin.

Whale sharks area really quite magnificent creatures. Unfortunately, they are impossible to photograph without an underwater camera or happening upon them at the rare time when they decide to feed right at the surface. Fortunately, the ship’s videographer happened to be on the zodiac where the whale shark did exactly that!

In the afternoon, we went for a cruise off the shore of an island where sea lions breed. Noisy creatures. Very noisy. It is as if they really want to live by themselves, but can’t stand the solitude so they pile on top of each other and complain — very very loudly — about any perceived infraction of personal space.

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This is the events of our fifth full day of the expedition. All photos from this day can be found here. The daily expedition report is also available.

We awoke this morning in the San Jose Channel north of La Paz. The sea was beyond calm; I have been on rougher waters on a farm pond. Very few clouds in the sky.

We spent the morning looking for whales. Didn’t find much more than a spout or two in the distance.

However, we did find a group of dolphins. Several hundred dolphins feeding, whistling, playing and generally swimming around doing dolphin things.

A couple of dolphins jumped out of the water to do a tail stand or, even, a double flip.

There were also a lot of random birds and quite a few sea lions. There was a minor scuffle between a dolphin and a sea lion. Not clear who won, but the sea lion departed rather quickly with a bark of frustration.

While the dolphins were riding the bow wave of the Sea Bird, we could quite distinctly hear their whistles. Funny; as soon as the ship slowed down to drift in the middle of the dolphins, the ones riding the bow wave immediately departed. Seems they like the thrill of bow riding only when we are moving at a decent clip.

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This is the events of our fourth full day of the expedition. All photos from this day can be found here. The daily expedition report is also available.

After a long night of trying to sleep in pitching seas, we awoke to seals barking at sunrise at Land’s End right at the edge of the Cabo San Lucas harbor. To be fair, I was the only one that couldn’t sleep. Christine slept like a log.

The rocks at Land’s End are spectacular. Huge rocky monoliths sticking hundreds of feet vertically from the sea. There is even an arch.

There were a few clouds in the sky, making for an even more impressive sunrise.

We moored in Cabo San Lucas for refueling and resupplying.

Cabo’s economy is entirely tourist driven and it is booming. This is clearly a playground for rich americans. One look at the numerous multi-million dollar, US based, private yachts in the harbor confirmed that! As such, there are a multitude of mega-construction projects.

Beyond the simple beauty of the town and emphasis on Tequila, it felt like every other seaside party town. Lots of cheese-ball gimmicky bars and restaurants. Even so, there were about a dozen little hole in the wall eateries I would have loved to have visited. A couple of places offered “you catch it, we clean/cook it” policies. And the place is cheap. Certainly, a place we will have to revisit some time. Just have to figure out how to avoid the TGI-McFunsters crap.

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This is the events of our third full day of the expedition. All photos from this day can be found here. The daily expedition report is also available.

At the beginning of Day 4, we went whale watching. We ended up following several whales that were mid-courtship. It seems that gray whale males don’t fight for the affection of a female. Instead, two males will go after a single female where one male actually helps the other during the mating process.

Like the day before, whale watching was divided into two groups; odd cabins go second, even cabins go first. When not whale watching, William — one of the crew of biologists / naturalists on board — gave an amusing lecture of the history of Tequila. As it turns out, Louise — the ship’s “hotel manager” — is a big fan of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant and we had a long chat about the finer points of Tequila, including sampling one that I have never encountered before. Given that we are in an odd cabin, it was an excellent way to warm up before whale watching.

The rest of the day has been spent on the move. We traversed south through the “un-navigable waters”, past San Carlos, and onwards into the open Pacific waters south to Cabo San Lucas. There were whales spouting all around us, lots of random birds and the occasional dolphin and/or seal bouncing through the surf (quite the argument over which one it was ensued).

To our east is the shore of one of the numerous islands along Baja. Beautiful towering cliffs and hills with the sun setting against them and clouds gathering around their peaks. One particular mountain caught my eye in that it looked like a regular hill that had simply been sliced in half with the raw face of the cut facing into the pacific. Unfortunately, the light wasn’t very good when I took the photo.

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