Spit out the worm and take a sip of this south-of-the-border specialty. From Issue 9 By Jessica Maria Let’s face it: mezcal isn’t taken seriously. Thanks to legions of pimply-faced 21-year-olds and overweight tourists wearing t-shirts that proudly proclaim that they “ate the worm,” many people think of mezcal – and its country cousin tequila – as rot-gut with a grub. It’s a joke, a frat party dare, a south of the border rite of passage for spring breakers. And that’s a shame. Because once you look past that pesky little larva, you’ll find that mezcal is a surprisingly smooth, terribly tasty, and amazingly adaptable spirit. This misunderstood spirit is often mistaken for tequila, but isn’t. Mezcal can be made from several different varieties of the maguey (agave) plant in and around the state of Oaxaca. Tequila can only be distilled from the blue agave in the state of Jalisco. These [...]

From Issue 9 By Camper English Damn, I was thirsty. We’d hit the Mount Gay visitors’ center, tasted through the product line, interviewed the distiller, and stopped into the gift shop. We’d spent the morning of the trip driving inland and uphill to Barbados’ rainy highlands, where sugar cane fields and broken windmills still litter the landscape, though the island now produces so much rum they have to import molasses from other countries to meet the demand. We tried local apple juice, saw monkey feeding time at the zoo, and drove from coast to coast. The island is only just 21 miles long and 14 miles wide, but you can build up a good thirst traversing it. Then again, I build up thirst traversing the street. Finally, it was time to do some real drinking.

From Issue 9 By Alan Goldfarb The din from the incessant honking of the cars — like so many vuvuzelas — mixed with the sweat on my forehead from the scorching heat and my nerves made me even more anxious to cross the border. I pawed the dust with my Sketchers as I waited and waited for a sign from my own personal “coyote.” When he finally did show, I saw that my driver was well equipped for the less than two-hour drive in a suitably outfitted, black Land Rover (read: air conditioning, yeah!). Of course, there was plenty of aqua fría. Not so astonishing for where we were heading – he had, strapped around his shoulder, a bota bag of vino meant to wet our appetites on the way. The wine tasted strangely of plastic — likely from the lining of the bota, but when a drive is as [...]

Refreshing Summertime Drinks for Peruvian Independence Day By Guillermo L. Toro-Lira San Francisco has always been a city that perseveres. Burned to the ground three times in six months in 1850, it continued to rise again from its ashes like the mythological phoenix, forever cast in the official seal of the City. Now, after being obliterated 90 years ago by the infamous Prohibition Act of 1919, another phoenix is flying again. This bird is pisco, a grape brandy that was the base of a punch that had its own mythological characteristics in the early 1900s. Pisco Punch is San Francisco’s first known mixed cocktail created in the late 1800s and the older sibling to the popular Pisco Sour. With Peruvian Independence Day on July 28, what better way to celebrate than with a piece of cocktail history linking the ports of San Francisco and Peru?