I have been trying to sit down and write about my recent trip to Mexico for the past two weeks. It is hard to put into words the greatest bartending experiences of my life. It started on Monday when I received my weekly Bartenders Bulletin from Ardent Spirits, now usually I skim through it and see what competitions are running or if a bar needs staff but this time something caught my eye. A gig as a judge in Cancun, Mexico for the 2008 Agave Spirits Challenge organised by Tequila.net, how could I pass this up. It was as easy as sending in my resume to Darin “Mr Agave” and giving a little spiel on myself, a simple act lead to the trip of a lifetime.
I played email tag with Darin for the next few days trying to organise times and schedules and eventually got the nod saying that I was the new judge of the Challenge. What an opportunity, judging an international spirit challenge and pretty much paying for it. Of course when I got the yes, my lovely better half dutifully put her hand up to chaperone me to the event. I trip to Cancun; Jill wasn’t going to turn that down for the world. We booked our tickets and organised a 9 day trip to Mexico in a space of 3 days.
Living on an island does have its downside, travel is a bitch. Just to get from my house to Vancouver Airport is a three hour ordeal of ferries taxis and lifts from family and friends. We boarded the plane from Vancouver at 7pm and landed in LA about 6 hours later, for all the people who travel a lot do not ever sleep in the LA airport. It’s loud, dirty and uncomfortable and that’s putting it lightly. While Jill slept I sat up trying to stay awake, counting the mice that would scurry across the floor from time to time. The 7 hour layover seemed to take forever, but soon our 8am flight to Cancun arrived.
Flying into Cancun is something of an interesting experience; you fly in over low level sand marshes dotted with little shacks, quarries and highways. Endless acres of lush green, mangroves and in the distant the “metropolis” of Zone Hotela plonked down on the beautiful white sand coast. We arrived in Cancun to beautiful palm trees, muggy air and bright sun, a pleasant change from the cold wetness of Victoria.
Once we checked into the hotel, we had an hour to kill or should I say freshen up after travelling for over 24 hours. The stench coming off me was border line noxious, and the clothes I was wearing weren’t really suitable for the 28C weather outside. A quick shower and shave and I was at the first tasting, one hour after arriving in Mexico I was drinking the finest tequila. The first tasting was outdoors on the balcony of the beautiful hotel restaurant, now in theory it would have been the perfect setting but with a few judges running late (cough Joe Tequila cough) the sun had already set and the blood sucking locals had decided to start buzzing at our heels.
The first person I met was Darin “Mr Agave” Jones, the organiser and planner of the whole Agave Spirit Challenge. A guy of few words but immense passion for agave spirits, the sheer effort that he, his wife Veronica and his older brother Bryan had put into the event is inspiring. He was quiet and reserved but once he began to imbibe that amber nectar his layers of silence began to peel away revealing a great, passionate guy that knows a lot more about tequila than he lets on.
I felt a little out of place with the rest of the judges. Ricardo Cisneros is the most subtly looking person you will ever meet; you would never be able to tell that he was the head distiller of Herradura tequila, a lecturer at the local university and a Tequilier. This man personally raised awareness for agave spirits within the Mexican community, he is quiet spoken and speaks little English but he understands tequila better than anyone else.
Mark `Poco Tequila` Cannon is a slightly eccentric, fun as hell guy to hang out with who is a historian of everything agave. When you check out his site, you can find listings, labels, tasting notes and photos of bottles of every tequila ever made. His driving skills in Mexico were as defensive as a movie stunt driver. If you have ever driven in downtown Cancun and tried to navigate their round about then you will understand, the guy was braver than I gave him credit for. Who would hire a car in Mexico, living life on the edge? Between him and `Joe Tequila` I found a few great bottles of Mexico distributed only tequila to bring home.
“Joe Tequila” Horrigan is another historian, aficionado who`s sheer size is only dwarfed by his need to know everything about agave spirits. He would look more at home on the front line of a champion NFL team than walking for hours looking in every farmacia, liquor store and grocery store trying to find that special bottle of tequila. Being big and American can sometimes have its disadvantage when you are walking in the “Vegas” strip of Cancun. He was a magnet for every lowlife peddling drugs, cheap, nasty tequila and prostitutes but he did finally find his holy grail in a little grocery store just off the strip. It was watching a four year open presents at Christmas.
Another quiet but extremely knowledgeable judge was Elenna Gamara, of all the judges by far the most beautiful and the rose between the thorns that sat on the panel. Lecturer, chef and sommelier and all round well of knowledge when it comes to food, wine and spirits and the best gourmet guide you could have in Cancun. She invited me, Lance Cutler and his wife out for lunch in a traditional Mexican Cantina. She knows the best places to eat at the cheapest budget.
Finally this brings me to Lance Cutler, the most interesting man I have ever met. Wine maker, agave spirit lover and writer, his self published books on Tequila and Mezcal is the best authority on Mexican spirits I have ever read. He was attributed to raising the profile of Sonoma Valley wines 15 years ago, hijacking buses and wine tasting and showing people in Napa that Sonoma is force to reckon with. A great guy to meet and hang out with.
You can now see how I felt completely out of my element with all these great personalities dotted around me, but I strived on learning as much as I can from the authorities around me. I felt like they were all wondering what I was doing there as well, I began to feel the same way.
The first few tasters were of almond tequila liqueurs, which for a mixologist like me was an experience in itself. I have never tasted a tequila based almond liqueur, they were more complicated and tastier than any Amaretto I have ever tasted. With the sun setting and me going on 26 hours without sleep, we finished the first tasting and headed to dinner at Hacienda Sisal. A short bus ride through the hotel zone and we were dropped off at Club Internationals sister hotel “The Sands”. Hacienda Sisal is like a Mexican chain restaurant, gives you everything that you want from Mexico but a little more stylish and classy.
We all sat down to eat dinner and tuck into cuisine that Mexicans think tourists want to eat, Fajitas, Enchiladas and Tacos dotted the menu. The food was excellent and when the Mariachis started playing I knew it was time to get out of there and start the next tasting.
I am not going into details on every tasting we had; they were a blur of tastings, sun baking by the pool, shopping, adventuring and sun baking by the pool. Jill and I had one free day on the Wednesday so we went exploring at the local strip mall. If it wasn’t for the Spanish getting spoken everywhere you would have swore we were in Vegas. Big, loud and gimmicky the mall oozed a mediterranean flavour that you would be more accustomed to in the Riviera. After a few hours of looking in fashion stores and tourist outlets we caught a bus and headed back to the hotel to settle into some time by the pool. Buses are the best form of transport in Cancun, stick your finger out and for 60 cents they will take you anywhere.
The next day when we finished our first tasting at the hotel, I hooked up with Lance and his wife to head to the University. We caught a cab to the campus and meet up with Eleena who said she was going to take us to the best culinary experience of our lives. She drives us into the real Cancun, a mixture of new cars, older, detoriating, identical housing and snotty nosed kids running around the streets. When you think of a typical Mexican city, this is what the Hollywood hotshots look for. We parked in a small away from the main drag alley right outside the front door of the quaintest cantina I have ever seen, there stood El Pocito.
A white stuccoed wall with a very small door way stood in front of me. A small thatched awning hang over the door, as I entered I had to staunch over to get my 6’5” frame through the door. It was a small square room with concrete floors, more thatching on the roof and a large TV in the corner blearing out local Mexican news. After the owners recognised Eleena and gave the traditional greeting, we were seated at a small table set up for five. As I don’t know any Spanish, I let Lance and Eleena order for us. They just ordered one of everything, to truly let me experience real Mexican food.
Soon after ordering we started getting the plates, plate after plate of interesting meats and dishes.
queso relleno (mince topped with goats cheese), cochinita pibil (pork with spicy red pepper pastes), sopa de lima (stewed turkey with tortilla), warm tamales served in coconut shells, longaniza de valladolid (a smoky sausage). The plates kept coming and I kept getting egged on by Eleena to eat more and try everything. As I washed each mouthful down with a gulp of delicious agua de tamarindo, an interesting flavoured fruit juice with a definite taste of oak. Once we had finished the mains on came the desserts of flan and dulce de papaya (papaya sprinkled with cheese). What a delicious experience, a true Mexican lunch. I sat there watching the rest of my group talk in Spanish and realised I was miles away from the dreary weather that would await me at home.
We headed into the market to pick up a few things then caught a bus back to the hotel. I didn’t want to leave downtown; I wanted to explore more and see more and eat more. But we needed to get back, premium tequila awaited me. The tastings continued late into the week, 85 agave spirits in total entered the competition and I got to taste every Tequila, Mezcal and Sotol. It came the final day, the Friday when we had the opportunity to see what we had been tasting, the final awards event was held at Hacienda Sisal.
The room was set up beautifully, bright colors around all the bottles laid out on display. Everything we had tasted that week was available for the guests to try and of course for the judges to go over again. The final tasting was short and sweet, the highest six rated agave spirits were poured for us on the main stage. We took our seats and knuckle down for the final decision making drink. After tasting all of them and giving them a rating for 1 being our favourite and 6 being our least favourite.
After the tasting had finished and we knuckled down to some real drinking, now when I drink as many people do my inhibitions tend to evaporate. I am sure the rest of the group that was with me that night remembers the 2008 Tequila Princess. Not quite sure what I was thinking but it happened and everyone had a good laugh, I know I won’t be reprising the role anything soon. The winners were announced, the show was over and now all was left was to say our goodbyes and get ready to head home to Canada.
Our flight didn’t leave until late in the evening so Jill and I bunkered down by the pool for the day drinking cerveza and trying to soak up as much of the gorgeous Mexican weather as we could. We later headed to the airport and got comfortable for the flight to San Francisco. While I was in downtown Cancun I had bought a few bottles of good agave spirits and rum that you can’t get in Canada. I had wrapped them up tightly in my clothes and given them sufficient padding, I also got enough fragile stickers put on my bags to add another pound to my luggage. I didn’t want to lose a single drop of this elixir I was smuggling (legally) back into the country.
But what do you know it, when I was going through US customs (which by the way takes forever being an Australian immigrant) Jill went on to collect our bags. As I walked up to her, she gave me a slight grimace and said she could smell the rank smell of alcohol and the bag was soaked. I couldn’t believe it; I had lost a bottle of Tapatio tequila. This didn’t make me feel confident on being able to get it all the way back home and to top it off all our clothes were now soaked in expensive tequila.
We got home safely the next morning and began the arduous trip to the ferry, it was good to be home but the allure of Mexico was still in my memory. The food, the people, the culture and the tequila, I hope that I get to go back sooner rather than later. To all the fantastic, extraordinary people that I met, “muchos gracias amigos”. Till next year we meet.