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I recently had an excellent Paloma made for me by my girlfriend’s brother-in-law. We were visiting over the holidays and while we were there, the Palomas became somewhat of a nightly tradition. One, or two if you were feeling frisky, before dinner. A nice holiday treat. While a Paloma might at first glance not seem like a winter drink, there’s no cinnamon, no eggnog, no chocolate, it fits in perfectly with a winter tradition. Prior to this I had not been a big Paloma fan but these ones turned me into a true believer.
A paloma is a simple drink, as most of the drinks I recommend on here are. While I love a fancy cocktail with eight or more ingredients, I can’t in good faith recommend something like that on here. Dang Dude is a newsletter for the people, and most people don’t have the storage space, let alone the extra cash, to buy everything and store everything needed for a fully stocked bar. Replenishing the ingredients that go bad alone would bankrupt me. So, I stick to the simple ones, which are all the better for it.
Off my high horse and back to the Paloma. The ingredients and instructions are thus (as provided by Zak. Thank you!)
Two slices muddled jalapeños (optional)
1 shot of mezcal (or tequila, or vodka, or gin, but really it should be mezcal)
2 shots sparkling grapefruit juice
Splash regular grapefruit
¼ oz lime juice
Lime wedge or crystallized ginger for garnish
Salt (optional)
Ice
If using, rub lime juice on the rim and roll it in salt. If using, muddle jalapeños slices in an old-fashioned/lowball glass. Add ice. Add everything else. Stir. Garnish with lime wedge, ginger, or both. Enjoy.
See, easy. No sweat. A little baby could make it. Let me be clear however, I don’t recommend providing a baby with the tools and supplies needed to craft a Paloma, probably not for the best. The hardest thing to find is probably the sparkling grapefruit juice. Most grocery stores should have something like that though, Squirt being an easy one to find. And if you’re in a bind, a nice grapefruit Lacroix or Spindrift would work just as well. The smokiness of the Mezcal and that unique sweet/bitter citrus of the grapefruit combine on some basal level to form a delicious sip. Trust me, it’s worth it.
A note about liquor purchasing. I don’t know enough about Mezcal to recommend a specific brand. I’m sure that my usual tactic of picking the coolest looking bottle will work just as well with Mezcal as it does with wine. I haven’t been failed yet. Of course, “cool” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So I’ll be more specific. When buying bottles of adult substances cool means two things. One, that label better have a sick font for the brand name. None of this sans serif Millennial bull. I want serifs popping off every letter like there’s no tomorrow. I want curlicues on those serifs, and then curlicues on top of those curlicues. I want there to be so many extraneous lines that I can barely make out what the word is. Two, there had better be a kick-ass graphic. None of this solid color background nonsense. That bottle had ether have an incredibly baroque line-drawing of a cathedral, or a ship, or a seaside town or something of that nature, or a very colorful, very busy image of like a medieval knight riding a horse into battle, or a mouse being friends with a moose. You get it. If it’s just a boring background with only two colors, or some simple type than that’s a boring wine company that has bought too much into modern graphic design. It has no soul. You want your liquor, wine, beer, whatever to have some soul. As everyone knows, the soul of a bottle is found in its label. Oh, and one other thing, it should be the third cheapest bottle in the store. Not the first, not the second – everyone does that – but the third. That’s real class. This has been Dang Dude’s Guide to Buying Liquor.
I don’t have much else to say about the Paloma. There are signs that it was possibly invented in Mexico, but also some hints at a Texan origin. It appears to be a relatively new drink, as the first recipes called for the use of Squirt as the sparkling grapefruit juice. Squirt wasn’t distributed widely until the mid-20th century and was only invented in 1938. The first found reference in a cocktail recipe book didn’t come about until 2005, though a restaurant menu from 1999 also had a reference to one. At least according to this very detailed history I found on some random website. So take that as you will. Here’s a Texas Monthly article that places it in the 60s and 70s.
The history of alcohol and cocktails is a long and varied one. It is one of the most important commodities in the world, it pushed the growth of slavery in Caribbean, toppled governments, and more. Some anthropologists even believe that making it easier to brew beer it is the reason why people switched from hunter-gathering to more agriculture focused societies. The Whiskey Rebellion in early American history was a big event, and one of the first tests for how the newly formed American government would deal with people questioning its power. Rum and molasses were a big part of the so-called “triangle trade” that kidnapped people from Africa and made them slaves in the Caribbean. Prohibition, not just an American event, took the world by storm in the 1900s. Small beer was a substitute for water in much of medieval Europe, with the average person consuming ¾ of liter of alcohol a day. Even today alcohol brings in billions of dollars of business every year and huge amounts of tax money as well. It’s a big deal, which is why it’s a little weird that we don’t know where it came from. But those mysteries are what make life so unique. In any case, I think you should have a Paloma tonight if you want. They’re pretty good.
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Have you seen the Mennonite Cocktail book? http://www.slklassen.com/menno-nightcaps/ Erin interviewed the author for their podcast.