Friday, August 19, 2016

Tequila...You may have tried Mezcal...but do you know Sotol?!?!

Sometimes Sotol is referred to as "tequila's crazy little brother" and we have decided we like him a lot!


The two bottles we ordered arrived just in time for this weekend!  We kick off my favorite person on the entire planet heading into his birthday week and our kids are back in school! With all the feels and prep we are cheersin' this weekend with sotol! 

Here is a little education, but feel free to skip this part if you just wanna know how sotol tastes. I get it, but my inner nerd is fascinated by this part so if your like me go ahead and keep reading. 

Sotol  is a distilled spirit made from the Dasylirion wheeleri, Asparagaceae (commonly known as Desert Spoon or, in Spanish, sotol), a plant that grows in northern Mexico, New Mexico, west Texas, and the Texas Hill Country. It is known as the state drink of Chihuahua, Durango and Coahuila.



It's not actually agave. Though dasylirion was first classified as an agave by John Hutchinson in 1934, it took another sixty years for an American Ph.D. student named David Bogler to conduct DNA tests that revealed it should properly be classed in the Nolinaceae family. Sotol takes its name from the Nahuatl word “Tzotolin,” meaning “palm with long and thin leaves.”
Dasylirion grows wild in desert regions, requiring up to 20 years to mature, at which point the plant is harvested, the heart is cooked and the juice is fermented and distilled, with some sotol going into oak barrels for aging. Like tequila, young plata sotol is clear, while the golden reposado is aged several months, and the light amber anejo may have up to two years of age.
It’s one of the most transparent plants out there, because it gives you what it feeds on,  Forest-grown sotols tend to be pinier, with notes of mint and eucalyptus, while desert ones have mineral, leather and earthy notes.
Because the plant can take so many years to mature before it can be harvested for sotol  and an entire plant is needed for a single bottle of sotol, scaling beyond small-batch levels is sotol producers' biggest challenge. So it isn't easy to get your hands on. However, with a little determination we have tried a few.  Ordering online (Hacienda de Chihuahua) this is the one we got first! We found another one which our incredibly awesome friends helped us find and order:





We tried some at a restaurant in Mexico earlier this month:






Flavorwise, there's a distinct family resemblance between tequila and sotol: both have an herbaceous brightness and a gentle, fruity sweetness. But while tequila (especially younger styles) has a distinctive peppery snap, sotol is more grassy, with gentle layers of floral notes in lieu of tequila's spicy bang. We liked it sipped on its own, its gentle, savory vegetal flavor makes clear it deserves to be tasted on its own merits. 

We had it neat in Mexico and I had it with some orange slices and warming salts on the side but Jon didn't bother with the accoutrements. He didn't feel it necessary. We have experimented with some fun drink recipes as well:


This one is:
Sotol
Kings Ginger liquor 
Cointreau
Lime 
Tajin Mexican seasoning (either on the rim or sprinkled on top) 



This one is:
Sotol
Creme de Cassis
Fresh Lime
Fever Tree or Goslings Ginger beer
Mint and lime garnish

Hope you have something good to celebrate this weekend... If you don't... Find the good in today... Find something to celebrate! 

Much Sotol Love,
Lauren