COCKTAILS WITH MEZCAL part 2 – JALISCO SMOKE

In this second post in my series about cocktails with mezcal it starts with tequila:

After a visit to the Cocktail Chronicles this spring reading the recipe for the tequila libation ”Flor de Jalisco” made by Death & Co bartender Joaquin Simo, this cocktail caught my attention and sparkled my appetite. I made one and it was so nice, it`s easy to mix yet it does have that little extra omph. Then on my recent trip to the US and the Tales in New Orleans in july ending up in New York i visited Death & Co and among a range of great cocktails i also tried this one and i was not dissapointed – it was lovely.

I very much like tequila – it has a wonderful flavour and it mixes so nicely with fresh fruits and spices – my fav mixers.

FLOR DE JALISCO

2 oz tequila blanco

0.75 oz fresh lemon juice

0.5 oz agave syrup

1 tsp orange marmalade

Shake and strain into chilled coupe and garnish with an orange twist.

Back home i decided to have some fun and play with it and make it differently and so i added bitter seville orange marmalade instead, a reposado instead of blanco, lime instead of lemon, dried hibiscus flower rim and a dash rich cinnamon syrup. (2:1 demerara sugar, water and cinnamon stick)

Then i added a float of mezcal.

JALISCO SMOKE

2 oz tequila reposado ( i used XQ reposado)

0.75 oz fresh lime juice

0.5 oz rich cinnamon syrup

1 small tsp bitter seville orange marmalade

Float mezcal (I used Del Maguey San Luis Del Rio)

Rim the glass with crushed dried hibiscus flowers, or rim half. Shake, strain and serve  with crushed ice and garnish with a spiraled lime.

It looks like a Margarita but isn´t. A spiraled lime you get by inserting a chopstick through the lime and then you just cut around it in a spiral manner from the top end to the bottom and then take out the stick. The only thing i would like to change is the hibiscus rim, i would like to make it into powder instead.

Its fun how you can play with flavors by switching one or more of the ingredients and get a totally different drink and that`s the whole point of this post apart from sharing my passion for mixing with mezcal.

In my first post on cocktails with mezcal it was the only base spirit but here it plays a different role and is used as a float together with tequila as the base– i think it has a nice effect. Its really fun to use mezcal because of its rich flavours and smokiness, and there´s so many things you can do – mix, float, rinse, rim, spray…and mixing with both tequila and mezcal is fun, wonderfully tasty as well as economical.