Viva Mexico!
Hola to our summer sizzling friends here at the WWC!
It’s been a hot week so far in Winnipeg, which is a nice change from my last entry to our whisky page. There’s also more change to write about this month, like Tequila and Mezcal!
That’s right, this month we are exploring a completely different spirit.
Tequila, a distilled spirit using the Blue Agave plant (Agave Azul or Agave Tequilana) as the primary source(and in 100% Agave Tequila the only source) of fermentable sugars, is made in the Mexican province of Jalisco(and in the city of Tequila, Jalisco) and in specific areas in 4 other provinces(Nayarit, Michoacán, Guanajuato, and Tamaulipas) The Blue agave grows in red volcanic soils and more than 300 million of the plants are harvested each year!
People like their tequila! Blanco, Reposado, Anejo and extra Anejo are the varying aging terms used for Tequila(with some terms different for Mezcal) We will sample em all!
Mezcal, in short, is not limited to the use of Agave Azul like tequila is, and has its own specific regions of Oaxaca, Guerrero, Durango, San Luis Potosí, Puebla, and Zacatecas. There are many different species of the succulent cactus-like plant, which in turn creates more flavours for our palates to enjoy.
Why are we sampling Tequila and Mezcal this month?
For starters, it was recently Cinco de Mayo and we loooooove themes here at WWC.
Secondly, our big scuba diving board member John, brought the idea up and had a line on some really cool artisanal Mezcals that tickled our fancy.
And lastly, we love quality spirits here at the club and have some experience venturing away from the whisky world to better educate our palates. This is another one of those opportunities!
Not to mention, we just had a Shelter point dram room tasting last night, and others soon to follow. So theres never really a shortage of whisky to sample.
We have 7 Tequilas and 3 Mezcals to sample on May 26th and I expect we will also have a few members of the club with a heck of alot of knowledge contributing to this event. The cost is $55 for this event on Zoom and includes ten 15ml samples of amazing Mexican spirits.
The Lineup:
Tequila:
Ocho:
Plata(Blanco)
Cascahuín:
Blanco
Reposado
Añejo
Extra Añejo 43% vol.
El Mayor:
Añejo
Mezcal:
Rezpiral
Abel Martinez Maestro Artesano; Espadin 8-10
years February 2020, 48% vol.
Berta Vasquez Maestra Artesana; Tepeztate 22-
24 years February 2020 48.5% vol.
Mezcal TBD
We have a few club members to thank for the success of this event, Darrell Marleau has donated one of his favourite tequilas for the night, Kiltlifters head honcho Darren for a bottle of Mezcal, Brendan O’Shaughnessy for assisting in the selection and quality of spirits chosen, John Marchello as the brain child and procurer of some very unique and very limited editions of Mezcal, and of course Mark Kaufmann, our guy to bring it all together in a nice little Mexican package!
I hope to see all our WWC Tshirt wearing members in our first non whisky event to help us bring this 2021 Summer to life. See you there!
James Burton WWC VP
