One of the most riveting conversations at the San Antonio Cocktail Conference 2018 was a class focused on the DO’s of Mexican spirits and how those should/could be protected. The class was hosted by Ricardo Pico, Dr Ivan Saldana, Sergio Mendoza, and Miriam Pacheco. I was unfamiliar with many of the other artisinal and agricultural products protected in Mexico. Here’s a helpful list provided by the panel. Tequila (1974) Agave Spirit produced in Michoacan, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Tamaulipas, and Jalisco Mezcal (1994) Agave Spirit produced in Oaxaca, Michoacan, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas, Tamaulipas, Guanajuato, Durango, Guerrero, Puebla Olinala (1994) Craft Talavera (1995) Pottery Café de Veracruz (2000) Coffee Bacanora (2000)…
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Brandy is Dandy
Spirits like Cognac and Armagnac are world renowned treats. But did you know that they are Brandies just like Pisco or Calvados? In fact, most Cognac bottles used to read “Brandy de Cognac”. As the globally recognized cachet of “Cognac” grew, the verbiage was dropped. Brandy is a delicious category filled with rich cultural tradition and massively contrasting terroirs. I created the following infographic to help understand a bit more about Brandy across the globe. This is a good start, but there are even more varieties of Brandy…
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The Desert Spirits
The world of Agave (and non-agave) can be a quite convoluted one when you start to bring all of the other beautiful Mexican spirits into the mix. Here is an infographic that I created to disambiguate some of the major Mexican spirits categories.