Partida Tequila and el Día de los Muertos

November 1st is celebrated as el Día de los Muertos in Mexico, and was the main setting for the classic LucasArts adventure game Grim Fandango. I do not live close enough to the border to have participated in these celebrations, though as an anthropology student I am very familiar with it and have handled a lot of real skulls in my day, always with respect and according to the highest ethical standards. I also collected animal skulls as a child and had a number of them adorning the bookshelves in my room. Not to be macabre, but looking at the teeth of a cow versus a coyote teaches you a lot about how herbivores and carnivores eat their food. The twisting river-shaped lines in the skull of a deer show how the plates came together throughout its life.

If you are going to spend the holiday imbibing Mexico's native liquors, I would suggest spending a few extra dollars to move up to the top shelf. Here I review three tiny 50mL bottles of Partida Tequila. The brand was launched in 2001 and all of these are made in the Tequila Valley of Jalisco on the southwestern coast of Mexico, and all are 100% blue agave.

Partida Tequila Blanco
$40/750mL, 40% abv.

Classic tequila aroma, clean and bracing with a bright finish. These white or silver tequilas are primarily employed in cocktails, where the citrus and other elements will smooth the edges.

Partida Tequila Reposado
$48/750mL, 40% abv.

Nutty and vanilla notes with a smoother finish. Very interesting aftertaste that tends to be reminiscent of good brandy or grappa. Due to the softer body, I'd recommend this for making real margaritas (as in, DO NOT mix this with that bright green stuff in a jug, use a lime and simple syrup and Triple Sec).

Partida Tequila Añejo
$50/750mL, 40% abv.

Aged in Jack Daniel's barrels, once again, bringing a local product home through a circuitous route. Slightly sweet and deliciously smooth with nice oak elements and a touch of orange peel on the finish. The one that you don't want to mix with anything, but merely enjoy from the comfort of an easy chair with a crystal brandy snifter.

Note: These bottles were provided as samples for review.

mole negro oaxaqueño

I've enjoyed my prior experimentation with mole sauces, and have worked a bit to refine my technique. This time I wanted to go with the black mole style of Oaxaca. I used guajillo and pasilla dried chiles. (If you've ever wondered why your homemade salsa and savory sauces don't have the right kick, you're not using the right combination of dried chiles in the right way.) The pasillas are on top, and are so dark green that they appear black in the photo.

As a side note, this is a great opportunity to visit your local international market. I got several months' worth of both peppers for a total of $4, while the same price would have netted only a small bag of one variety at the mainstream grocery store.

I'm not going to go into every ingredient, but my mole included homemade chicken stock, tomato sauce, almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, Mexican chocolate, the aforementioned guajillos and pasillas, onion, garlic, and many other goodies, all properly toasted, layered, simmered, and blended.

I was going to use this for braised rabbit, but I set aside most of the sauce to rest in the freezer next to the bunnies. Do Cryogenic Lagomorphs Dream of Electric Carrots? Instead, I smoked a pork shoulder and used the mole as a topping for burritos. I also included crema salvadoreña, a cultured sour cream that's a bit milder and sweeter than the American version but very tasty.

My mole isn't as smooth or as dark as it should be, but I absolutely adore it, and it goes so well with pork. I need to work on my dried chile balance and to up the proportion. I'm also still working on a proper nut balance, and like what the almonds and pumpkin seeds bring to the blend. I need to work with peanuts and maybe even pistachios. Kaizen is the Japanese quality concept of continuous improvement, and I will continue to work on my mole recipes until I master the skill and one day create my own perfect mole benito.

2012 Margarita

The Margarita is one of America's least-respected cocktails. The origin is so simple: good tequila, fresh lime juice, orange liqueur, and a bit of sweetness if desired. Served shaken or over ice, but fresh and with little bits of fresh lime pulp popping between your teeth. Instead, we get green slushes mixd up with white rum or vodka and as long as it's tart and sweet and served in a salted glass, everyone is happy.

I'm not a tequila expert, but I do tend to be a purist when it comes to the margarita. And while I love the classic lime, I've always felt it was in the spirit of the cocktail to use other freshly squeezed citrus, like my Blood Orange Margarita.

For this I used a basic 4:2:2:1 ratio, which is four parts tequila, two parts lime juice, two parts orange liqueur, and one part simple syrup. The tequila is listed below, but I was really impressed with a new orange liqueur I found. O3 is made by DeKuyper and is clear and slightly sweet like Cointreau. It's made from Brazilian pera oranges and has a great fresh orange peel aroma to it. Not really sour or bitter but focused on the sweet and fruity aspects of the orange.

Lunazul Reposado
$30/1.75L bottle, 40% abv.

A decent and affordable tequila with a good bit of oak and earth on the nose. It's got that classic tequila tang to it but with more depth than I was expecting. As a cocktail ingredient it made for a great margarita, just enough agave aroma and flavor to make it authentic without being overwhelming in any direction.

NV Hacienda Los Azteca Pretexto

During Paul's recent month-long stay south of the border, he asked me what he could bring back. Naturally I asked for a bottle of Mexican wine, and he delivered. We recently popped this open along with an appropriate meal of Cuban mojo-marinated flank steak, thoroughly seared, sliced, and served on tortillas with roasted red peppers.

The NV Hacienda Los Azteca Pretexto is a blend of the 2005 and 2006 harvests and comes from Querétaro in central Mexico, just north of Mexico City. $37, 13% abv. It is a blend of 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc, 15% Syrah, 10% Merlot, 10% Malbec, and 5% Tempranillo--not unlike a lot of red blends coming out of California these days.

Definitely let this one breathe for about an hour. There's nothing wrong with it straight out of the bottle, but it really becomes sublime with a little air. There's an initial nose of blackberry jam that yields to reveal green bell pepper, fresh hay, and a touch of chocolate. Very mild and smooth with restrained blackberry flavors, and an elegant finish. This is only the second Mexican wine I've tried, but I am once again amazed. It is made much more in the spirit of Spain or southern France rather than, say, the wines of California, Chile, or Argentina. I can't speak to the Mexican wine industry as a whole but I would love to go around the US slipping these into blind tastings.

Interested in a more local perspective on this particular wine? You can read a review en español by a Mexican wine blogger, Rafa Ibarra.

2005 Barón Balch'é Reserva Especial

The Roommate doesn't drink, but she was kind enough to snag me a bottle of Mexican wine during a summer trip to Cancún. I told her, "I don't really care what it is, I just want to be able to say I've tasted a Mexican wine." She found a shop with a helpful proprietor. To use a baseball metaphor, I was expecting a foul ball or perhaps a single. Instead, The Roommate knocked it out of the park.

The wine she got was the 2005 Barón Balch'é Reserva Especial from the Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California, Mexico (just south of the US border). This is a beautifully restrained 12% abv--it drinks like silk. I've had similar low alcohol wines from places like Israel and Turkey, which runs counter to the conventional wisdom that the closer you get to the equator, the higher the alcohol must be.

It's a proprietary blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Syrah, much like a lot of the creative blends coming from California in the US. It's got a blackberry nose with a touch of leather. Good berries: cherry and blackberry, with a lingering cassis flavor on the finish. For a hotter climate this is surprisingly smooth and mild, far more delicate than you would imagine. I served it with a Tex-Mex dinner of turkey tacos and baked beans (trio of black, kidney, and pinto--good flavor combination). However, this could be outstanding with any grilled or roasted meats.

Food & Wine has an informative article on the wines of Baja California. And as that writer points out, Mexican wines are difficult to find outside of the country, but I would strongly suggest trying some of the more European-styled wines like the Barón Balch'é. You can add another wine country to your merit badge sash, and get to enjoy a delicious bottle in the process.

The name is unusual, and on first glance it looks more Hebrew than anything else. But it's actually a combination of Spanish and Mayan, meaning roughly "noble ceremonial beverage".

Now for the fun part... I had this with dinner the night before I was going to meet up with Fredric Koeppel for a wine tasting, and couldn't resist the opportunity to give him a blind pour. You can read his full writeup on his blog. Part of it was just the joy of sharing an obscure wine with a friend, but I also needed to, in some small way, get revenge for his classic Blind Petite Sirah Tasting that stumped a room full of wine lovers, retailers, and certified experts.

P.S. Lots of people ask me, "Should you sniff the cork when you open a bottle of wine?" I've never learned anything useful from smelling a cork, but looking at it closely can be helpful. The cork on this one was constructed well, no leakage, mold, or other problems, but it was a 2004 cork in a 2005 wine. Is this a big deal? Not for this wine. There's not a big collector market in Mexican wine and it's a pretty recent vintage. Most likely they just had extra 2004 corks lying around and wanted to use them up. If you're shelling out a lot of money for a special bottle, it's a different story. If the cork is from a different region, different winery, or substantially different year, then you might have a counterfeit bottle on your hands, the restaurant might be committing fraud, or other foul play is afoot. Check out the New York Times Freakonomics blog for a story on the trade in empty wine bottles from highly collectible vintages.